Ending Production of Fissile Materials for Weapons
Ending Production of Fissile Materials for Weapons
To cap nuclear arsenals and make nuclear weapon reductions irreversible, it will be necessary to end the production of unsafeguarded highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium. To achieve this goal, in 1993, the UN General Assembly instructed the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to begin negotiating a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). This chapter explores the possible scope and verification challenges for an FMCT. These challenges include monitoring of operating and shutdown enrichment and reprocessing plants and ruling out potential clandestine production including at military nuclear facilities and in naval nuclear fuel programs in the nuclear weapon states. The latter two goals will pose some additional challenges beyond those of verifying the Non-proliferation Treaty in non-weapon states. Many non-weapon states also would like to see the nuclear weapon states place their pre-existing stocks of civilian and excess weapons material under international safeguards.
Keywords: Fissile materials, Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), Conference on Disarmament, Nuclear weapon states, Non-weapon states
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
