Thursday, 7 December, 2006

by Nadia Watson
Sydney Morning Herald

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties report on uranium sales to China was tabled in Parliament yester-day, advocating an expansion of the uranium export industry.

Australia ’s uranium industry and the Federal Government frequently claim there is no risk of Australian uranium finding its way into nuclear weapons.

However, the international nuclear safeguards system is flawed and it cannot provide such assurances.

Australia is reliant on the safeguards inspection system of the International Atomic Energy Agency to prevent military misuse of its uranium exports. The agency ’s director-general, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, is remarkably blunt about the limitations of safeguards. He has stated in articles and speeches in recent years that the safeguards system suffers from "vulnerabilities", that the agency ’s basic inspection rights are "fairly limited", that efforts to improve the system have been "half-hearted", and that the safeguards system operates on a "shoestring budget".

Agency safeguards involve periodic inspections of nuclear facilities and nuclear materials accounting to determine whether the amount of nuclear material going through the fuel cycle matches the country ’s records. In theory, the system is simple; in practice, it is complicated and weakened by political and commercial imperatives.

One of the most challenging problems involves "material unaccounted for" discrepancies between the "book stock~ ’ (the expected measured amount) and the "physical stock" (the actual measured amount) of nuclear materials at a safeguarded location. Such discrepancies are frequent because of the difficulty of precisely measuring amounts of nuclear material, yet they provide an obvious loophole for a would-be proliferator.

In a large plant, even a tiny proportion of the nuclear material handled each year might be enough to build one or more weapons without the threat of detection. For example, the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in Japan will have the capacity to separate about eight tonnes of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel each year. Diverting just 1 per cent of that amount of plutonium would be very difficult for the JARA to detect against the background of routine accounting discrepancies, yet it would be enough to build at least one nuclear weapon a month.

Another problem is that the agency does not inspect all "safeguarded" nuclear facilities because of resource constraints and political and commercial sensitivities. For example, it emerged during hearings of the joint standing committee that of the 10 Chinese facilities potentially subject to agency safeguards last year, only three were inspected.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented a number of standoffs whereby discrepancies have remained unresolved for years. Iran and North Korea provide two contemporary examples of protracted disputes and, of course, North Korea has built and tested a nuclear weapon while the international negotiations over its nuclear program continue.

Prompted by the limitations of traditional safeguards, the JARA initiated efforts to strengthen the system. The model Additional Protocol, introduced in 1997, meant the agency was theoretically able to develop a more inclusive "cradle-to-grave" picture of states ’ nuclear activities.

The improvements include requiring substantially more information on nuclear facilities and activities; increased use of environmental sampling; and allowing agency inspectors extended access, which includes entry to undeclared nuclear sites. As of October this year, 78 countries had negotiated and ratified an Additional Protocol, but more than 100 had not done so.

While strengthened safeguards arc welcome, serious problems remain.

One is that the development of the full suite of nuclear fuel cycle facilities -including "dual-use" enrichment and reprocessing facilities is enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a~ an "inalienable right" of all countrie5 which have ratified the treaty.

As ElBaradei noted in December last year "If a country with a full nucleai fuel cycle decides to break away from its non-proliferation commitments, a nuclear weapon could be only months away. In such cases, we are only as secure as the outbreak of the next major crisis. In today ’s environment, this margin of security is simply untenable." Clearly there is a sharp divergence between the reality of nuclear safeguards, as acknowledged by the nuclear watchdog, and the false claims made by the Australian Government and uranium industry.

Of course, it is possible that safeguards could be improved, and it is possible that Australia could play a leading role in improving safeguards. However, as Professor Richard Broinowski details in his 2003 book Fact or Fission? The Truth About Australia ’s Nuclear Ambitions, safeguards pertaining to Australian uranium have been gradually weakened over the years.

The reason for this weakening of safeguards was identified by Mike Rann then a young Labor Party researcher and now the pro-uranium Premier of South Australia in his 1982 booklet Uranium: Play It Safe.

"Again and again," Rann wrote, "it has been demonstrated here and overseas that when problems over safeguards prove difficult, commercial considerations will come first." A genuine nuclear debate in Australia would include a reassessment of the uranium export industry given the risks of diversion and proliferation identified in this article.

Nadia Watson recently completed her studies in international relations at Lalrobe University and has spent the past six months studying the international nuclear safeguards regime.