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Fri - Jun 18th, 2010
NEW IPFM REPORT: Reducing and Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to Nuclear Disarmament
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Wed - Feb 17th, 2010
NEW IPFM RESEARCH REPORT: Unsuccessful "Fast Breeder" is no solution for long-term reactor waste disposal issues.
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Thu - Oct 29th, 2009
JUST RELEASED: Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament
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Wed - Sep 9th, 2009
September 2009 draft of the IPFM Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty (including an article-by-article discussion)
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Thu - May 28th, 2009
IPFM Research Report #7: Consolidating Fissile Materials in Russia's Nuclear Complex, by Pavel Podvig
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Thu - Feb 19th, 2009
IPFM Research Report #6: The Safeguards at Reprocessing Plants under a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty, by Shirley Johnson
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Fri - Feb 13th, 2009
IPFM Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty
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Fri - Feb 13th, 2009
IPFM Releases Draft International Treaty to Ban Production of Fissile Materials For Use in Nuclear Weapons: Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty
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Sat - Oct 11th, 2008
Global Fissile Material Report 2008, Scope and Verification of a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty
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Wed - Oct 1st, 2008
Available for download: the IPFM briefing on Global Fissile Material Report 2008:
Scope and Verification of a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty, 52nd IAEA General Conference, Vienna, Austria
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Tue - Jul 8th, 2008
IPFM Research Report #5: The Legacy of Reprocessing in the United Kingdom, by Martin Forwood
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Thu - May 8th, 2008
IPFM Research Report #4: Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing in France, by Mycle Schneider and Yves Marignac
download (PDF, 2,7 MB)

Mon - May 5th, 2008
Available for download: the IPFM briefing on A Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty and Its Verification, United Nations Office at Geneva, Palais des Nations, 2008 NPT Preparatory Committee Meeting
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IPFM presents "A Path to Nuclear Disarmament" at the United Nations
posted by Alexander Glaser on Oct 29th, 2009 [15:14h]
under: disarmament, gfmr
last edited on Oct 29th, 2009 [16:08h]



On Wednesday, 28 October, the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), presented Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament at the United Nations General Assembly’s First Committee, which is responsible for international peace and security.

Global Fissile Material Report 2009 charts some of the key technical and policy steps for securing verifiable world-wide nuclear disarmament and eliminating the world’s huge stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the key materials for making nuclear weapons.

Nuclear disarmament has returned to the center of international debate following President Barack Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague, in which he pledged “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” In September 2009, the United Nations Security Council, which includes the five major nuclear weapon states, unanimously agreed “to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Global Fissile Material Report 2009 discusses how nuclear-armed states could declare their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, plutonium and highly enriched uranium, and how these declarations might be verified using the methods and tools being developed for what is now called ‘nuclear archaeology.’

The report includes IPFM’s annual assessment of worldwide stocks, production, and disposition of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, and current efforts to eliminate these materials. There are nine nuclear-armed states and over 20,000 nuclear weapons today. The report includes for the first time an estimate of the number and locations of nuclear weapons sites worldwide, listed by country.

The IPFM estimates that the current global stockpile of highly enriched uranium is about 1600 metric tons. There are about 500 tons of separated plutonium, divided almost equally between weapon and civilian stocks, but it is all weapon-usable. The global stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium together are sufficient for over one hundred thousand nuclear weapons. The report lists the location, size and safeguards status of operating, under construction and planned fissile material production facilities around the world.

The report considers options for monitoring nuclear warhead dismantlement and the disposition of the fissile materials they contain as well as other stockpiles of fissile materials; verifiably ending the production of fissile materials for weapons, through a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (a topic treated in detail in Global Fissile Material Report 2008); the potential roles of nuclear fuel-cycle facilities in enabling nuclear breakout in a disarmed world; and the potential contributions of societal or citizen verification to making it impossible to conceal illicit nuclear-weapon-related activities.

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