Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 4: Fissile Material and Proliferation Resistance

AGA 4.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 5, 2009, 14:00–15:00, VMP 9 HS

Expanding global nuclear energy supply without increasing the risks of nuclear proliferation — •Steve Fetter — School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park, USA

To avoid potentially catastrophic changes in the Earth's climate, world energy supply must shift over the next several decades toward carbon-free sources. Nuclear energy has particular promise for rapid and large-scale expansion worldwide, if a corresponding expansion in the risks of nuclear proliferation could be avoided. In recent years, attention has focused on limiting the spread of enrichment and reprocessing through a combination of export controls, voluntary agreements and incentives, and multinational ownership or international control. Iran and North Korea have demonstrated the limitations of export controls, due both to the diffusion of knowledge and technology and the willingness of individuals to engage in illegal trade for profit. Incentives has focused on the guaranteed supply of fresh fuel, but the the guaranteed take-back of spent fuel would be a far more powerful incentive for forego enrichment and reprocessing. Multinational ownership and international control are more promising long-term solutions, if they can be made binding on all states. A promising technological approach is the development of small, sealed-core reactors with long life-time cores. Such reactors would eliminate the need for any fresh fuel manufacture or spent-fuel handling by recipient states. Because small reactors could be economically competitive only if they were mass produced by a few suppliers, they hold the potential of centralizing enrichment and reprocessing in a few states.