Reprocessing

Specific concern was expressed about both the environmental and proliferation risks of plutonium reprocessing and nuclear materials shipments.

Pyongyang violated its obligations under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty by secretly reprocessing enough plutonium to produce two nuclear weapons in the early 1990 s.

Russia has offered to provide nuclear enrichment and reprocessing services for the civilian reactor it is building in Iran.

The United States has also proposed measures to prevent nuclear proliferation by strengthening controls on enrichment and reprocessing technology.

There arises also the problem of returning to Ukraine or obtaining compensation for nuclear components, obtained from nuclear warheads, which, after reprocessing, can be used as fuel for nuclear power stations.

The Conference notes that the nuclear technologies of enrichment and reprocessing are usable both for peaceful purposes and for the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

Still, the plant along with its spent nuclear fuel, extracted plutonium, and nuclear reprocessing waste poses significant radiological hazards that a military strike could disperse into the environment.

Nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technologies are once again the subject of particular attention from the international community because of their dual use nature.

Israel started investigating the nuclear field soon after its founding in 1948 and with French support secretly began building a nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant in the late 1950s in Dimona.

The Russian Federation is ready to establish strict but objective criteria that would regulate transfers of the most sensitive nuclear technology, such as uranium enrichment and chemical reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

My Government remains deeply concerned about the surplus plutonium and highly enriched uranium that will continue to result from the dismantling of nuclear warheads and from the growing commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.

Nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technologies are once again the subject of particular attention from the international community because of their dual use nature (civilian and military).

States which, like Sweden, used nuclear energy for peaceful purposes should be given assurances of access to fuel without the need for enrichment and reprocessing capacities.

At the same time, we defend the inalienable right of all States to develop their own systems to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, including with respect to the complete nuclear fuel production and reprocessing cycle.

We will continue to work for agreement on these controls in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, while also working to ensure that States renouncing enrichment and reprocessing have reliable access to fuel for civil nuclear power reactors.

(f) quot Nuclear installations quot include nuclear power and research reactors, fuel fabrication, uranium enrichment, isotopes separation and reprocessing facilities as well as any other installations with fresh or irradiated nuclear fuel and materials in any form and establishments storing significant quantities of radioactive materials.

It also urged Japan to abandon its plans to open the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant in 2007 as the first commercial scale plant in a non nuclear weapon State.

It shared the opinion of the Director General of IAEA that there was no reason to build additional facilities for uranium enrichment or reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuel.

Globally dispersed radionuclides mainly from reprocessing and solid waste disposal

The participation of the largest possible number of States is vital first and foremost the nuclear Powers, but also countries which possess the potential to produce nuclear explosive devices and have uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing facilities.

Political constraints and monopolies in the area of fuel supply and reprocessing prevents developing countries from enjoying their inalienable right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy and risk the continuous and secure operation of their nuclear power plants.

As a result of the current dismantling of nuclear weapons by the United States and Russia and the ongoing reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in several countries, substantial quantities of plutonium and high enriched uranium (HEU) are recovered.

No reprocessing or export of spent fuel has ever taken place.

(e) quot Nuclear installation quot means a nuclear power reactor, a nuclear research reactor, a critical facility, a conversion plant, a fabrication plant, a reprocessing plant, an isotope separation plant, a separate storage installation and any other installation or location in or at which fresh or irradiated nuclear material or significant quantities of radioactive materials are present.

And there is the disconcerting prospect that new civil nuclear energy players will insist on building uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing plants of their own, rightly described as bomb starter kits.

Mr. Zeller (Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League) said that reprocessing plutonium waste for fuel placed public safety and the environment at serious risk and undermined the goal of nuclear non proliferation.

Technical teams from both sides worked out a project on the safe transportation of fresh highly enriched fuel of the BN 350 reactor and its reprocessing into low grade nuclear material.

23. In late 1992, IAEA again approached the nuclear weapons States with a request for proposals for removal of the irradiated fuel assemblies, reprocessing and permanent storage of the resultant wastes.

Accordingly, the Agency is unable to draw conclusions as to whether there has been either diversion of nuclear material or reprocessing or other operations at the radiochemical laboratory since February 1993.

The spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology poses a particularly dangerous risk.

In addition, a number of countries with nuclear energy programs have the capability, if they choose, to manufacture nuclear weapons within a matter of months if their security perceptions change, because they have mastered the critical technology uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.

The corresponding annual figures for large fuel reprocessing plants are 200 500 μSv.

The Conference affirms the need to assure a reliable supply of nuclear fuel at reasonable cost to NPT parties that are in compliance with the Treaty and their safeguards obligations, which possess civil nuclear power reactors, and that do not pursue enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.

Realizing the threat to the non proliferation regime, countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, France, Germany, and Japan formed a Nuclear Suppliers Group that restrained the export of enrichment and reprocessing facilities.

The verification arrangements needed to underpin such an agreement would entail great challenges, having necessarily to focus on the largest and most complex of nuclear installations, that is to say, enrichment and reprocessing plants.

Several decades from now, reprocessing might offer a safe means of spent fuel disposal.

This would give countries confidence that they can count on reliable supplies of fuel to run their nuclear power plants, and therefore do not need to develop their own uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing capability.

An example of our policy is our joint project with the United States on the safe transportation of fresh highly enriched fuel of the BN 350 reactor and its reprocessing into low grade nuclear material.

As President Bush has proposed, tighter controls should be adopted on enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

One of the alternatives that the report analyses as an incentive for a State to forego the development of its own activities related to the complete nuclear fuel cycle, particularly as concerns enrichment and reprocessing, is to provide assurances of the supply of nuclear fuel based on various options.

Such developments, as well as the expected release of the fissionable material from dismantled nuclear weapons and the ever growing amount of plutonium from the ongoing reprocessing of spent civilian fuel, require an effective international verification mechanism.

Among other things, it must ratify the additional protocol and suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities.

In effect, the Agency would be submitting to pressures applied by other countries that, possessing nuclear technology, seek to reserve for themselves control over nuclear fuel and its reprocessing in order to maintain dependent relationships, to the detriment of the sovereign right of all countries to achieve their independent development.

But putting US weapons back into South Korea acquiring real missile capability allowing the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel moving closer to breakout capability all of these steps now have their advocates, and these voices will grow louder.