Illicit trafficking and the need for a new convention

I have recently recieved a Diplôme d’Université (D.U.) en Droit Nucléaire International (with très bien) from the University of Montpellier 1. I suppose that this makes me a just another pro-nuclear lawyer in the eyes of some.

Anyway, while I made it quite far, my dissertation was not quite good enough to make it into the OECD's Nuclear Law Bulletin. I know who made it there, and that person really deserves the honour. Instead, I've been asked to submit my paper, or another one, to an INLA prize committee, since it was deemed to be of "prize quality". I have not made up my mind on that yet, especially since I know who I'll be competing against.

In any case, I've decided to put my paper online at the moment. I am sure that it will be of interest to some of my readers. I chose illicit trafficking simply because I'm a bit fed up with non-proliferation and disarmament. I wanted to investigate a new area, and what I found was quite unsettling.

My deep thanks goes to Lyudmila Zaitseva and Friedrich Steinhausler of the University of Salzburg for introducing me to the shadowy world of illicit trafficking, Angela Woodward (VERTIC's dear leader) for providing the funding, OECD's Selma Kus for being so supportive, and my Viennese friends who never ceased to offer encouragement (Alexis, Karim & Lisa).

Report on VERTIC's TC meeting

VERTIC has come out with a new brief on technical assistance, for those interested in how international law is implemented in practice. It goes through key points and themes raised at a assistance-providers meeting early last year, and comprehensively outlines what assistance is available in respect to developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons related legislation.

While the brief primarily directed towards states, others may be interested in finding out what precisely is being done to implement all those arms control and disarmament agreements that have been agreed to. Reading between the lines, it is clear that a lot of work remains to be done.

This brief was made possible by the fact that all relevant organizations did participate in the meeting. VERTIC's legislative assistance programme is presently funded by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Download the report here.

News from Open Skies

The Verification Research, Training and Information Centre is releasing an exciting report on the implementation of the Open Skies Treaty. The author, Hartwig Spitzer, is spokesperson for the Center for Science and International Security (CENSIS) and an associate member of the Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Center for Science and Peace Research at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He is also a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Hamburg. He has participated in the Open Skies Consultative Commission’s Informal Working Group on Sensors since 2005.

This briefing paper, entitled 'news from open skies', contains a lot of information on the work of the consultative commission and how the treaty is implemented in practice.

Download the report here.

Daniel H. Joyner frames the debate on the law and WMD proliferation

This is shamelessly lifted from the International Law Reporter:

Daniel H. Joyner (Univ. of Alabama - Law) has published International Law and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Oxford Univ. Press 2009). Here's the abstract:

Proliferation of WMD technologies is by no means a new concern for the international community. Indeed, since the signing of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1968, tremendous energies have been expended upon diplomatic efforts to create a web of treaties and international organisations regulating the production and stockpiling of WMD sensitive materials within states, as well as their spread through the increasingly globalised channels of international trade to other states and non-state actors.

However, the intervention in 2003 by Western powers in Iraq has served as an illustration of the importance of greater understanding of and attention to this area of law, as disagreements over its content and application have once again lead to a potentially destabilising armed intervention by members of the United Nations into the sovereign territory of another member state. Other ongoing disputes between states regarding the character of obligations assumed under non-proliferation treaty instruments, and the effect of international organisations' decisions in this area, form some of the most contentious and potentially destabilising issues of foreign policy concern for many states.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of international law and organisations in the area of WMD proliferation. It will serve both as a reference for understanding the law as it currently exists in its political and economic context, as well as an analysis of areas in which amendments to existing law and organisations are needed.

I have known Daniel Joyner for many years. I am quite pleased that he is considering joining the International Law Association's committee on 'Nuclear weapons, non proliferation & contemporary international law' under the chairmanship of Professor Jonathan L Black-Branch. This committee has a lot of work ahead of it, since we intend to report back to next year's 74th biannual conference in the Hague.

You read it right the first time. 74 biannual meetings. The ILA was founded in 1873, which makes it one of the oldest non-governmental organizations in the world. Many of the founders of the League of Nations were ILA members, but that's obviously another story.

VERTIC presentation on CTBT OSIs

VERTIC has published my January 2009 presentation to the New America Foundation.



This presentation was the first delivery under a project funded by the Ploughshares Fund. A report on on-site inspections under the CTBT is presently being prepared by the Centre, and will hopefully be finished by the summer.

Bypassing safeguards

At the present, I believe that the likelihood of an Iranian break-out is slim. The principal reason for this argument is that Iran's installed capacity at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz is still low, and that a break-out would entail significant political and security risks for the country. As long as Agency safeguards are in place at the Iranian sites, the international community is likely to get advance warning of any attempt to divert material or to use the existing facilities for nefarious purposes.

The problem is that not all of the nuclear fuel cycle is under safeguards. Processes downstream from the uranium conversion facility are generally covered. But uranium mining and milling as well as certain nuclear related activities (such as research centres or centrifuge assembly sites) are not monitored. Since this is the case, it is easy for a fairly technologically advanced state to construct a parallel nuclear fuel cycle, using indigenous uranium resources to fuel a clandestine weapons programme.

Figure 1: safeguards coverage under INFCIRC/153

The most appealing option for the cheater is to divert material where safeguards are not applied, in this case the nuclear ore. Let's take Iran as an example. At present, Iran's stockpile of uranium yellowcake is unknown. The only thing that is known, really, is that the country imported 600 metric tonnes from South Africa in the 1970s. If the Iranians have used that material up until January 2009, it would have about 188 tonnes of yellowcake left by now. But again, material accountancy is not carried out, and Iran is under no obligation to give answers if asked.

Status of Iran’s mines
The status of Iran’s two known mines is largely unknown, but the OECD publication Uranium 2007 at least sheds some light on the status of activities. In Saghand, the AEOI is presently engaged in sinking two cylindrical shafts, each having 4 meters in diameter and extending 350 meters in depth, as well as tunnelling (about 620 meters in total). All projects are scheduled to be implemented by the end of 2009. Ore will be excavated using the “room and pillar”, “cut and fill” and “sub-level stoping” methods.

Mining activities are on-going in the Gchine salt plug near Bandar-Abbas. This is an open-pit mine, and mining operations have been on-going since 2006. Its ore is being transported to Iran’s only operating uranium production centre (the BUP), which is capable of treating 48 tonnes of uranium ore per day. It has a production capacity of 21 tonnes of uranium per year. Iran’s second production facility lies near Ardakan, has a production capacity of 50 tonnes of uranium per year, and is scheduled to go on-stream later in 2009. Iran’s reasonably assured resources of uranium is very low, some 591 tonnes of uranium, and its inferred resources are not much higher, about 1,356 tonnes, most of it in metasomatite rock.

If the OECD’s figures are correct, it is possible to calculate how much ore would be left in the Gchine salt mine by the end of 2010 if the BUP operates as declared. This calculation is visualized in figure 2.

Figure 2: Estimated exploitation of the Gchine Mine

Consequently, by the end of 2010, about 60 per cent of the deposits at Gchine would be exploited. The mine would be more or less drained by 2014.

It is also possible to estimate the stockpile of domestically produced yellowcake, again if the BUP operates as declared and if it uses the acid leach solvent extraction process.

Figure 3: Estimated BUP U3O8 balance

By the beginning of 2009, the stockpile would be some 42 metric tonnes of yellowcake. Probability statistics show that the actual stockpile in 2009 is somewhere between 9.2 and 33.8 metric tonnes (obviously the absence of data leads to an enormous uncertainty – and this is again assuming that the OECD has provided accurate information).

As indicated above, with only the comprehensive safeguards agreement in place, it is virtually impossible to keep track of this stockpile.

In order to be enriched, the yellowcake would obviously need to be processed further. And here is the catch if Iran would want to cheat. Safeguards at uranium conversion facilities are generally quite effective, especially if the throughput is low, and this more or less excludes using the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan for processing the yellowcake. Once it gets on the Agency’s books, the material is tracked downstream, and diversion becomes risky business.

Therefore, a state determined to cheat on its non-proliferation obligations would need not only to construct a clandestine uranium enrichment plant, but also a clandestine conversion facility. This facility would not need to be large; a capacity of 10 metric tonnes of uranium per year would be more than sufficient. However, it is an additional investment and it carries with it a risk of overhead or ground detection. The centrifuge facility could be minimal.

About 1,300 IR-1 centrifuges would be able to produce enough highly enriched material for one weapon per year. The cascade hall would require about 520 square meters of space (that’s 23 by 23 meters) so the entire operation could be comfortably hidden in a factory building somewhere (amusingly, old clock factories seem to be the preferred choice). It would not require more electricity than an average workshop, so it cannot be detected by a passive infrared survey.

If Gchine is operational, there is enough unsafeguarded yellowcake for 1-5 weapons stored somewhere in Iran. The potential of this material being used in a parallel fuel cycle is the real cause for concern and not a diversion or break-out scenario using declared and safeguarded facilities.

The importance of the additional protocol
This is why it is critically important that Iran reapplies the additional protocol. This instrument allows the Agency to ask for and receive information on Iran’s mines (as well as several other activities – such as the assembly of centrifuge rotors). This information can be followed up upon by means of complementary access. The scope of the Additional Protocol is best illustrated by figure 4, which I have borrowed from a friend’s presentation.

Figure 4: safeguards coverage under INFCIRC/153 and 540

It is only through the additional protocol that the Agency can provide some assurance of the absence of undeclared nuclear activities on Iran’s territory. It can do so since it will be able to analyze a much broader array of information. Using this information, they can see whether the flows match up, if only approximately.

The application of the additional protocol will not by itself be able to answer many of the question-marks currently plaguing the Iranian file. For this, transparency measures going beyond the requirement of the additional protocol will be necessary. This is not something the Iranian government seems willing to implement at the moment.

This is unfortunate since for as long as this kind of transparency is not given, the file will never close.

Tracking UF6 cylinders

I’ve written a little bit about efforts by the Agency to safeguard enrichment plants (‘A new safeguards approach for enrichment plants’, 22 November 2007). What's prompted the development of new approaches is the construction of commercial scale gas centrifuge enrichment plants outside Europe. The present safeguards methodology dates back almost 30 years.

On 5-7 November 1980 a meeting was held in Marlow, England. Represented around the table were the Agency, Euratom, Australia, Japan, the United States and URENCO (Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). They decided to establish the Hexapartite Safeguards Project (HSP) comprising separate working groups that were tasked to figure out in detail how safeguarding could be done.

The result was an agreed paper with the rather long title Inspection Activities Associated with Limited Frequency Unannounced Access Model Applied to Gas Centrifuge Type Enrichment Plants (February 1983). This paper introduced the Limited Frequency Unannounced Access (LFUA) scheme, which includes managed inspector walkthroughs of the cascade area.

Weaknesses of the HSP scheme
The agreed approach contained a number of weak spots. In particular:

• The project participants did not find it necessary to provide for the monitoring of UF6 flows inside the cascades and associated piping. This was simply not seen as relevant.
• Participants felt that there was no need to agree to LFUAs at research and development facilities, simply because the throughput is generally very low.
• Participants also felt that there was no need to monitor the cascade perimeter as a closed boundary (to seal it off completely). The introduction of the LFUA inspector scheme was seen as a sufficient deterrent, and perimeter containment and surveillance therefore completely unnecessary.
• There are no provisions for detecting undeclared throughput. The project concluded that material accountancy and item verification outside the cascade hall, together with LFUAs inside the hall, were a sufficient deterrent for the plant operator. At least as long as the total plant capacity did not exceed 2,000,000 kg/SWU/year. If that logic would hold water today, the enrichment facility in Natanz would need to grow 170 times before the HSP safeguards would not serve as a deterrent.

In 2005, the IAEA met to consider ways to shore up the old HSP approach. Three working groups had been working on the problem, and the following is their main recommendations in respect to excess production and clandestine HEU production.

Addressing excess production

• Employ a resident inspector at the facility to verify flow changes in near real time;
• Put in place a mailbox system that will provide inspectors with real-time process inventory listings;
• Think about options for remote and/or unattended monitoring of UF6 cylinders;
• Sharing of operator load cell and mass spectrometer information on a continuous basis; and
• Additional containment and surveillance measures in states were unannounced inspections are not possible (since the presence of inspectors are telegraphed to the operator long before they actually show up at the gate).

Addressing clandestine HEU production

• Beef up LFUAs by including visual observation, environmental sampling, non-destructive assay measurements and destructive assay sampling from the cascades themselves;
• Installing enrichment process monitors on the cascade header product piping;
• Containment and surveillance within the cascade hall;
• Routine Design Information Verification;
• Interim inspections; and
• Precise weighing using the inspector’s load cells, non-destructive assay measurements, destructive-assay sampling and environmental sampling as appropriate.

Tracking the cylinders
The task of accounting for and controlling the UF6 cylinders that move through the facility is critically important for safeguards purposes. Once the content of cylinders are emptied into the cascade, the cylinder is disconnected and moved to a cooling down area for a while. It may thereafter be hooked up to the cascade again to, say, collect the tails. Some of the weight is lost when volatile gases and some UF6 is boiled off before the cylinder is attached to the process. This may amount to 80 per cent of the facility’s total material unaccounted for.

The current nuclear material accounting and control procedures for tracking UF6 cylinders typically involve manually entering cylinder data into logbooks or computer databases. In a small facility, this is seldom a problem. But as the facility grows, and more cylinders are shuffled around in it, there might be human errors in the data entry process. The IAEA uses conventional seals and weight checks to establish cylinder content so that it has continuity of knowledge, but this may become labour intensive. The Agency spends a considerable time on verifying inventories, shipments, and receipts of UF6 cylinders.

To make things more effective, a number of proposals have been worked up, including the use of RF tags to remotely monitor individual cylinders. Tagging cylinders this way would make it easier to detect when an undeclared cylinder is placed in the feed autoclave.

Diverting material into the MUF
This does not stop an operator from trying to divert materials into material unaccounted for. If the plant is small, this is a pretty hopeless endeavor. If, for instance, a facility is being fed with 48 metric tonnes of uranium hexafluoride gas per year, and this gas is transported in one tonne drums, the total measurement uncertainty in the feed would be about 100 grams. The measurement uncertainty in the low enriched product, shipped of in five one tonne drums, would be about 16 grams. And the measurement uncertainty in the tails, shipped off in 43 containers, would be about 92 grams.

All calculations assumes that the data in the International Target Values 2000 is correct, and I'm working with the relative combined standard uncertainty of the measurement. The figures would be even lower if ten ton cylinders were used, like the 48X cylinders apparently being used by Iran. Look at this video if you are interested in knowing what the UF6 looks like inside the cylinder. And this video if you want to know more about the UF6 phases.

As a rule of thumb, any deviation of more than three times the measurement uncertainty (also known as three 'sigma-MUFs') would have a 95 per cent detection probability, assuming a five per cent false alarm rate. In other words, a difference of 0.05 kilograms between the measured amount of UF6 and the declared amount would raise alarm bells with the Agency, and would warrant further investigation.

A small facility trying to divert material this way could squirrel off about one gram worth of weapons grade uranium per year. That is not a lot by any measure.

The Iranian breakout scenario

Lately, there has been considerable discussion about the risk of an Iranian breakout. The argument is that Iran could use its stockpile of 1.1 metric tonnes of low enriched uranium hexafluoride gas as feedstock for an effort bringing the enrichment up to about 93 per cent. Some readers may have noted my comment in GSN where I said that: "at the moment, I'm not very concerned".

My reasoning is very simple. A break-out at this stage would be very risky for the Iranian government. The amassed low-enriched material is about right for one uranium-based weapon, but in order to get that processed into weapons-grade, Iran would need to reconfigure the cascade and run the material through the facility again. Then, the weapons grade material would need to be converted into uranium metal, which is then shaped into a metal pit. This pit has to be put into a physics package, which then has to be inserted into a suitable delivery vehicle.

How long will that process take? Well, estimates vary, but the reconfiguration and processing phase is likely to last a minimum of two months. Add another four to five months to convert the material, shape the pit, and construct the physics package, and we're up to half a year. Even if the Iranians have done their weaponization homework, they'll have to move from theory to practice for the first time. There will be material production losses, and they might have project delays. After all, they only have enough material for one weapon. It is literally a one-shot deal.

Now, if you put yourself into the mind of an Iranian leader getting briefed by his technicians on this, would you give the go-ahead? Six months is a long time in international politics, and the West's response is likely to be swift and possibly violent. Would you not want a comfortable margin before you kick out inspectors? I would, so I crunched the numbers on what the situation might look like by this time next year.

Even if the Iranians are only converting imported U3O8, they have a large stockpile of natural uranium hexafluoride gas. By this time next year, they could have a stockpile of 420.02 metric tonnes of gas. If there is no input of domestically produced U3O8 (as implied by an ISIS report) this would have completely depleted their stocks of imported South African U3O8.

Out of the stockpile, 35.06 metric tonnes would be transferred to Natanz for processing (leaving a sizable stockpile of 384.97 metric tonnes of natural uranium hexafluoride gas in the balance). This figure is based on the assumption that unit A26 will operate with 984 centrifuges for two months, 2,460 centrifuges for four months, and 2,592 centrifuges for six months. I assume no further progress on the other cascades. In addition, I assume that the Iranians hook up new centrifuges instantly. I do admit that there are clear limitations in my assumptions, which makes this somewhat of a "worst case scenario".

Over the year, the 35.06 tonne shipment would be enriched to 3.49 per cent U235. If the cascades are running at 100 per cent, and operating around the clock, unit A24 would have produced 2,140 kilograms of low-enriched gas by 31 January 2010. By comparison, unit A26 would lag somewhat, but will still be able to produce about 1,880 kilograms, bringing the total stockpile of LEUF6 up to about 5,030 kilograms.

The situation becomes interesting if the centrifuges were reconfigured in January 2010. The two cascades could produce a maximum of 168.4 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride gas enriched to 93 per cent U235 by late september 2010. This translates into a production of roughly 21.5 kilograms of weapons grade material per month. The total quantity could be machined into at least 6 nuclear weapons.

The cascades would need to be substantially reconfigured, as follows:

Unit A24 and A26 reconfiguration

As indicated by the figure, the new cascade would comprise 177 stages. Stages 1 to 47 would be stripping stages, and stages 48 to 177 would be enriching stages. This is, of course, a radically different configuration than if the cascade were enriching low-enriched uranium.

Recall that this is a worst case scenario, which assumes that Iran stops under-feeding its centrifuges and moves to maximum production. And note that even in early 2010, Iran would still need several months to complete its breakout, during which it may well be intensively bombed. So this is by no means an easy task.

If Iran really wants to acquire a nuclear weapon, the best strategy would be to bypass safeguards altogether and to build a clandestine enrichment facility. This would likely require the construction of a clandestine conversion facility as well, but that is a subject for another post.