IPFM International Panel on Fissile Materials

[This entry is drawn from Chapter One of the 2009 Global Fissile Material Report: "Nuclear Weapon and Fissile Material Stockpiles and Production." The printed version includes endnotes and, in some cases, additional figures. Entries are updated to reflect current data.]

Nuclear Weapon and Fissile Material Stocks and Production

In mid-2009, the global stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) was 1600 ± 300 tons, enough for more than 60,000 nuclear weapons. The large uncertainty is due to Russia not declaring how much HEU it produced before it ended production in the late 1980s. The United States, which ended production in 1992, and has the second largest HEU stockpile, has made public the history of its HEU production and utilization.   

The nuclear-weapon states as a whole accounted for over 99 percent of the global HEU inventory. The HEU held by non-weapon states, only ten tons today—but still enough to make hundreds of nuclear weapons—is falling because of an international effort to return the HEU to the United States or Russia as civilian research reactors shut down or are converted to LEU fuel. So far, sixty-eight reactors have been converted, with 40 more planned for conversion in the next five years.   

There are currently uranium enrichment plants operating, under construction or planned in twelve states. Pakistan and India, however, are today the only states that continue to produce HEU for weapons and naval fuel, respectively. The enrichment plants in other countries are producing low-enriched uranium for power-reactor fuel.  The global stockpile of HEU is being reduced because Russia and the United States are down-blending HEU at a greater rate than Pakistan and India are producing to make low enriched fuel for nuclear power reactors. Most of the down-blending is taking place in Russia of HEU from excess Cold War weapons.   

In 2009, the global stockpile of separated plutonium was about 500 ± 25 tons, roughly half produced for weapons and half produced in civilian nuclear power programs. Thus, there is about one third as much plutonium as there is HEU. Since the critical mass of plutonium is about one third that of HEU, however, the global stockpile of plutonium also is sufficient for more than 60,000 first-generation nuclear weapons.   

Russia and the United States together hold most of the weapons plutonium. The main uncertainty here also is because Russia has not declared its plutonium stockpile. Only ten other countries hold stocks of separated plutonium, three of them non-weapon states. The four largest stockpiles of civilian plutonium are held by three weapon states (the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and Japan.   

North Korea announced in April 2009 that it had ended the suspension of its plutonium production that it had agreed to in 2007 and had resumed reprocessing. India and Pakistan continue to produce plutonium for weapons and Israel may be producing as well. Pakistan is building two new plutonium production reactors in addition to the one that it currently has in operation and has been expanding its reprocessing capacity to be able to recover the plutonium from their fuel.  

On the civilian side, China began testing a new pilot-scale reprocessing plant in 2009, but civilian plutonium programs in Japan and the UK encountered problems. Japan delayed startup of its Rokkasho commercial reprocessing plant and does not expect commercial operations to begin till late 2010 at the earliest. In June 2009, the UK’s troubled THORP reprocessing plant was shut down by equipment problems again till at least the end of the year.  

The goal of nuclear disarmament was given renewed prominence in 2009 by the incoming Obama administration in the United States. The United States and Russia agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a reduction to 1500–1675 deployed strategic warheads each, and to discuss still further cuts thereafter. They currently have total stockpiles, including warheads awaiting dismantlement, of about 10,000 warheads each. Whether the fissile material in the weapons to be withdrawn from the Russian and U.S. arsenals will be added to that material previously declared excess has not been announced. Britain and France, which have also announced cuts in arsenals in recent years, have not revealed whether they plan to declare excess the fissile materials in the weapons they have taken out of service.   

Two new nuclear-weapon-free zones came into force in 2009, covering Central Asia and Africa, and including a total of 57 countries. All of the countries in the southern hemisphere are now in nuclear-weapon-free zones.   

The following provides more detail on the changes in the world’s nuclear-warhead and fissile material stocks.  

Nuclear Weapon Stocks

Nine states currently have nuclear weapons. These are, in historical order: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Estimates of their current nuclear-weapon stockpiles are shown in Table 1.1.


Country	Nuclear Warheads
United States	9400, of which 4200 are awaiting dismantlement
Russia	10,000, with a large fraction awaiting dismantlement
France	fewer than 300
United Kingdom	185
China	about 240
Israel	100-200
Pakistan	70-90
India	60-70
North Korea	fewer than 5

Table 1.1 Estimated total nuclear-weapon stockpiles, 2009. Source: FAS/NRDC

United States. In July 2009, the U.S. Department of States declared that, “as of May 2009, the United States had cut its number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 2126, which meets the limits set by the [2002 Moscow] Treaty for 2012.” In addition, the United States currently has an estimated 500 non-strategic weapons and more than 6500 inactive weapons in reserve or awaiting dismantlement, bringing the total U.S. inventory to about 9400 warheads.   

Russia. Russia continues to reduce the number of its nuclear warheads to meet its Moscow Treaty obligations. It is estimated to have less than 2800 operationally deployed strategic warheads. The large uncertainty in the total number of Russia’s warheads is due to a lack of information on the number of its tactical nuclear weapons and the number of excess warheads that still await dismantlement.   

Russia and the United States. In July 2009, Russia and the United States agreed to negotiate by the end of the year a follow-on to the 2004 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which will expire in 2009. They have announced that the objective is to agree before the end of 2009 to a reduction to 1500–1675 deployed strategic warheads each, with the cuts to be completed by 2016. Beginning in 2010, there may be negotiations on further reductions—perhaps including non-deployed and non-strategic warheads.  

The United States is estimated to be dismantling about 350 warheads per year. The current net dismantlement rate in Russia is estimated as perhaps 200–300 warheads a year. At these rates, it would take decades for the United States and Russia to dismantle to about 1000 total warheads each, approximately the total possessed by all the other nuclear-weapon states. Both countries achieved much higher dismantlement rates in the 1990s when the United States was dismantling warheads at an average rate of about 1300 per year and Russia was estimated to be dismantling about 2000 per year.  

United Kingdom. In March 2009, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that “Britain has cut the number of its nuclear warheads by 50% since 1997” and noted further that “our operationally available warheads now number fewer than 160.” The United Kingdom has 50 U.S.-supplied Trident missiles, currently deployed with up to three warheads each. There may be a relatively small number of reserve warheads. The United Kingdom has declared as excess less than ten percent of its weapon-grade plutonium. Its weapon-grade uranium is apparently kept in reserve for future use as nuclear-submarine fuel.  

The United Kingdom is currently debating a decision to replace the four nuclear submarines that carry the Trident missiles, which are the country’s only remaining nuclear-weapon delivery system.  

France. France is reducing the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal to meet the target set by President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008, who announced that, after the planned reduction, “our arsenal will include fewer than 300 nuclear warheads.” At the same occasion, President Sarkozy also revealed that France “has no other weapons beside those in its operational stockpile.” France has not indicated its plans for the disposition of the fissile materials contained in the roughly 300 warheads it has removed from service.   

China. Over the past year, there appear to have been no significant changes in China’s nuclear arsenal or major announcements of policy. The 2009 edition of the U.S. Department of Defense report Military Power of the People’s Republic of China suggests a continuing effort to move towards more mobile and survivable delivery systems, including transitioning from liquid-fuel to solid-fuel road-mobile missiles and to submarine launched ballistic missiles. 

Nuclear weapon and component sites

Nuclear weapons can be found at a large number of sites around the world. It is estimated there may be a total of 111 nuclear warhead storage sites, with 105 of these sites in nuclear weapon states. The United States currently maintains six sites in non-weapon states– with one site each in Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and Turkey and two sites in Italy. In the past, the United States stationed nuclear weapons in as many as 23 foreign countries. Table 1.2 gives the total number of warhead and nuclear-component storage sites currently estimated in each country. Appendix 1A gives a preliminary listing of these sites for each country.


Country	Warhead storage sites
China	14
France	7
India	5
Israel	4
Pakistan	8
Russia	48
United Kingdom	4
United States (domestic)	15
United States (in five foreign countries)	6
Total	111

Table 1.2 Estimated number of nuclear warhead storage sites by country. There are currently an estimated 111 warhead storage sites worldwide, in at least 13 countries, not including North Korea. In some cases sites are counted twice, when there are warheads deployed on missiles and space warheads at nearby storage areas. Source: Hans Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, FAS/NRDC.

Russia accounts for almost half of all the nuclear warhead storage sites worldwide. This is in part due to Russia’s large number of tactical nuclear warheads, which are ordinarily at a small number of national-level storage sites but for which storage areas are held ready at a much larger number of air and naval bases. The United States has withdrawn all but 500 tactical weapons from operational service and has dismantled the retired weapons.   

Nuclear Weapon Free Zones. In March 2009, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan established the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone. It is the first nuclear-weapon free zone in the Northern Hemisphere and breaks new ground by requiring its parties to accept an Additional Protocol agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to become parties of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.  

In July 2009, the African Nuclear‐Weapon‐Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Pelindaba), signed by 52 countries, came into force after it was ratified by Burundi, meeting the requirement for 28 parties to do so. Among its novel provisions, the treaty prohibits attacks on nuclear facilities in the zone. The new treaties join those of Tlateloco, Rarotonga, Bangkok, and Antarctica. All countries in the southern hemisphere are now in nuclear-weapon free zones.  

Figure 1.1

Highly Enriched Uranium Stocks

Figure 1.2 shows that more than 99 percent of the global stock of highly enriched uranium is in the nuclear-weapon states. Only the United Kingdom and the United States have made public the total sizes of their stocks of HEU. Estimates of the remaining national holdings are generally quite uncertain. According to these estimates, despite the elimination of almost 500 tons of Russian and U.S. HEU by down-blending to low-enriched uranium, the global inventory still totals 1610 ± 300 tons.   

The main uncertainty in estimating the global total is due to a lack of information on Russia’s stockpile, which may have been as large as 1500 tons in the 1990s. A 20% uncertainty is assumed in the figures for total stocks in China and Pakistan, and for the military stockpile in France, and 50% for India.  

Russia. Our central estimate of Russia’s stockpile continues to be based on a statement in 1993 by then Minister of Atomic Energy Viktor Mikhailov that “the 500 metric tons of HEU that is up for sale represents somewhere around 40 percent of all reserves that we [Russia] possess.” This implies a 1993 total stockpile of about 1250 tons of HEU, which is somewhat higher than what U.S. government and non-government experts had previously assumed, but consistent with publicly available information on Russia’s fissile material production complex. As of June 2009, Russia had eliminated 367 out of 500 tons of weapon-grade HEU as part of its 1993 HEU deal with the United States, which is to be completed in 2013.

Figure 1.2

United States. As of mid-2009, the United States had down-blended cumulatively about 124 tons of highly enriched uranium —mostly less than weapon-grade. Based on the declared total inventory of 741 tons from September 1996, this leaves 109 tons of excess HEU (mostly for blend-down), about 30 tons of civilian HEU (fresh and irradiated), about 100 tons of HEU in spent naval reactor fuel, which is to be disposed of as radioactive waste and about 380 tons of unirradiated HEU in the military stockpile. This military total includes about 250 tons available for weapons and 128 tons of fresh HEU reserved for naval propulsion.  

Pakistan. Pakistan may be the only country producing HEU for weapons today. It is believed to have first achieved the capacity to produce a significant quantity of HEU in the early 1980s and to have built up its enrichment capacity using P-2 centrifuges and later more advanced P-3 and P-4 designs. There have been claims that, along with its Kahuta enrichment facility, Pakistan may have an enrichment plant at Gadwal. Reportedly near Wah, about 30 kilometers from Islamabad, Gadwal was described recently as a facility where already enriched uranium (presumably from Kahuta) is enriched further to weapon-grade.  

Pakistan’s annual HEU production capacity is constrained by its limited domestic production of natural uranium and the need also to fuel its Khushab-I plutonium production reactor. To address this problem, Pakistan may have started to use reprocessed uranium recovered from Khushab spent fuel as feed for its uranium-enrichment program. We estimate Pakistan’s enrichment capacity to be on the order of 30,000 Separative Work Units (SWU) per year today, which is equivalent to a production rate of 150 kg of weapon-grade HEU per year. By the end of 2008, Pakistan’s total cumulative production of HEU would have been about 2.4 tons, but 200–400 kg may have been consumed in the 1998 nuclear weapons tests. Our central estimate for Pakistan’s current stockpile of HEU is about 2.1 tons.  

India. India produces HEU for its naval propulsion program. It began testing a land-based prototype naval reactor in 2000–2001 and in July 2009 launched its first nuclear submarine for sea trials. The submarine is described as being powered by an 85 megawatt (thermal) (MWt) reactor. Two more submarines are under construction, with their hull sections already having been built. Completion of the submarines will take at least another five years. There is some uncertainty about the level of enrichment of the fuel, with suggestions that it is be enriched to 30–45% uranium-235.   

Estimates of India’s HEU production depend on assumptions about its uranium enrichment capacity and whether it also produces HEU for weapons. In order to produce enough HEU by the end of 1999 to fabricate fuel for the land-based prototype submarine reactor core India, would have to have had a total enrichment capacity of at least 3000 SWU/yr by then, A 2007 estimate, citing Indian purchases of a large number of centrifuge components, suggested that India could have an enrichment capacity of about 20,000 to 30,000 SWU/yr. This capacity would be sufficient to produce 200–300 kg per year of HEU at 45% enrichment, or half this amount of 90% enriched HEU per year. This would give India enough separative capacity to produce HEU for four submarine cores by 2010.  

North Korea. In early September 2009, Korea News Service reported that the permanent representative of the DPRK to the United Nations had submitted a letter to the president of the UN Security Council in late August 2009, noting that—among other things—“experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase.”  

Israel. We continue to assign to Israel an inventory of 100 kg of HEU, which may have been acquired covertly from the United States before 1966. Israel also may have produced enriched uranium with laser or centrifuge technology, but information on this program is very limited and it may have ended.  

South Africa. South Africa has a legacy stockpile of 400–450 kg of HEU that was part of its weapons program and is currently under IAEA safeguards. This is what remains from an original stock of over 800 kg of HEU with an average enrichment of about 80%. Since its research reactor has been converted to low-enriched uranium fuel, South Africa only uses HEU for a target material to produce molybdenum-99 for medical-isotope use. This use too could be converted to low-enriched uranium. 

Civilian Use of HEU. Since 1978, an international effort has been directed at converting HEU-fueled reactors to low-enriched fuel in the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor (RERTR) program. Almost all new reactors designed since that time use LEU fuel. By 30 September 2009, the RERTR program intended to have converted or partially 68 research reactors and plans to convert another 40 reactors by 2014. There are many reactors whose conversion has not been seriously discussed, however – notably in Russia, which has yet to begin shutdown or conversion of almost 70 of its own HEU-fueled research reactors, most of them little used. There are also reactors in the West that may resist conversion. The world’s remaining research reactors consume about 800 kilograms of HEU per year—a significant reduction from more than 1400 kg that were used annually in the early 1980s. We continue to assign about 70 tons of HEU to the civilian research reactor fuel cycle, which includes about 10 tons (6.7 tons of 235U in HEU) that are under IAEA safeguards in NPT non-weapon states and at least 1.3 tons under voluntary offer agreements in weapon states.  

Civilian uranium enrichment plants. There are currently civilian uranium enrichment plants operating, under construction or planned in ten states. These enrichment plants are intended to produce LEU for nuclear power reactor fuel, but could in principle quickly be turned to producing HEU for weapons. Table 1.3 lists civilian enrichment plants and whether they are under or have been offered for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. About half are under safeguards. There are in addition enrichment plants in India and Pakistan that are producing HEU for military use.  

The two new enrichment plants to begin initial testing and operation in 2009 were Areva’s George Besse II centrifuge enrichment plant, located at the Tricastin Site in France, and Urenco’s Eunice plant in the United States. Two additional new large-scale centrifuge enrichment plants are at various stages of development in the United States and could be completed over the next decade. Also, in July 2009, Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) filed a U.S. license application for a large laser-enrichment plant to begin commercial operation in 2012. There were significant capacity increases at the Urenco enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, which together delivered an additional 1300 tSWU in 2008 compared to 2007. Russia also has been increasing the capacity at its domestic enrichment plants, as well as at the centrifuge plant it supplied to China. In March 2009, Russia announced plans with Toshiba to build an enrichment plant in Japan. 

Separated Plutonium

Since 1944, more than 60 dedicated reactors have been used by the nine weapon states to produce plutonium for weapons purposes (Appendix 1B). As of 2009, nearly all of these reactors have been closed-down or dismantled and only India, Pakistan and perhaps Israel continue to produce plutonium for weapons. In addition, six countries reprocess their commercial spent fuel today: France, India, Japan, and Russia are deeply committed to reprocessing; China is testing a pilot reprocessing plant and is contemplating commercial reprocessing; and the United Kingdom is on the verge of abandoning reprocessing.  

The global stockpile of separated plutonium is about 500 tons. It is divided almost equally between civilian and military stocks—the latter including material declared excess but not yet disposed (Figure 1.3). Separated plutonium exists mostly in nuclear-weapon states, but Japan and Germany also have significant stocks. The buildup of civilian stockpiles has slowed down with a dozen countries not renewing their contracts to have their spent fuel reprocessed by France, Russia and/or the UK and both the United Kingdom and Japan having to shut down their reprocessing plants because of equipment problems.  

Weapons plutonium. Russia and the United States possess by far the largest stocks of military plutonium: 120–170 and 92 tons, respectively. Russia has declared 34 tons of its weapon-grade plutonium excess for military purposes. The United States has declared excess 54 tons of separated government-owned plutonium, which includes 9 additional tons of weapon-grade plutonium added in September 2007. In 1998, the United Kingdom declared excess 0.3 tons of its 3.5-ton stockpile of weapon-grade plutonium.   

India. India continues to produce weapons plutonium in its two production reactors, Cirus and Dhruva, at a combined rate of about 30 kilograms per year. We estimate India’s stockpile of weapons plutonium produced in these two reactors to about 700 kg. It separates much more plutonium from the spent fuel of its unsafeguarded pressurized heavy water power reactors (PHWRs), eight of which will remain outside IAEA safeguards under the US-India deal.   

Israel. Assuming that its power is approximately 70 MWt, the Dimona reactor could produce plutonium at a rate of up to 15–18 kg/yr. The reactor may have operated at this power level since the mid-1980s, when it was reportedly uprated from its initial 26 MWt. On this basis, Israel could have produced 600–740 kg of weapon-grade plutonium by 2009 or enough for more than 100 nuclear warheads. Even if the Dimona reactor is used today only for tritium production, Israel could still be separating plutonium from its spent fuel.  

Figure 1.3

Pakistan. Pakistan continues to produce 10–12 kg per year of plutonium for weapons at its Khushab-I production reactor, which has been in operation since 1998 (Figure 1.4 right) and produced about 100 kg of plutonium since then. Pakistan also is building two new production reactors at the same site (Figure 1.4, left). The construction of Khushab-II appears from satellite imagery to have started in 2001–2002, while work on Khushab-III started in 2005 or 2006. Imagery from September 2008 has been interpreted as suggesting that the Khushab-II reactor may be completed late in 2009. The two new reactor buildings appear to be identical to each other but different from Khushab-I (Figure 1.4, right), which is reported to be a heavy-water-moderated natural-uranium-fueled reactor with a capacity of about 50 MWt. U.S. government sources have indicated that “the emerging reactor appeared to be roughly the same size as the small one Pakistan currently uses to make plutonium for its nuclear program.”

Pakistan is believed to reprocess spent fuel from Khushab-I at its New Labs facility near Rawalpindi. Satellite imagery suggests that Pakistan may have built a second reprocessing plant at New Labs to handle the additional spent fuel. There are also indications that between 2002 and 2006 Pakistan may have resumed work on a large reprocessing plant at Chashma (32.381 N, 71.440 E). This facility was to have been built by France in the mid-1970s to handle 100 tons of spent fuel per year, but the deal was cancelled at an early stage of construction.

Figure 1.4: Khushab-II and Khushab-III reactors under construction, as of January 2009 (top). The image at the bottom shows the Kushab-I reactor, which features a similar number of cooling towers indicating a similar power. Imagery of the new Khushab reactors (at 32.009 N, 72.172E) courtesy Digital Globe. Imagery of Khushab-I (at 32.020 N, 72.208 E) courtesy or GeoEye.

North Korea. North Korea is reported to have declared in June 2008 that they had separated 31 kg of plutonium before using 2 kg in its sub-kiloton October 2006 nuclear test. On 25 May 2009, North Korea conducted a second nuclear test apparently with a yield of a few kilotons. We assume that 5 kg of plutonium were consumed in this second test (the amount contained in the Nagasaki bomb). In June 2009, North Korea announced a resumption of reprocessing at its Yongbyon facility, ending an agreed suspension in place since February 2007. Independent analysts estimate that, operating the reprocessing plant at maximum capacity, North Korea could have reprocessed all of its remaining spent fuel and have produced another 8–12 kilograms of separated plutonium by September 2009. We estimate, therefore, a value of about 34 kg for North Korea’s current stockpile of plutonium. 

Civilian Plutonium. The production of separated plutonium for weapons—in India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan—is taking place at much a lower rate than production in civilian programs. Today, China, France, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom operate plants for commercial purposes; while the United States continues to operate a small reprocessing plant for extraction of HEU for blend-down from unstable spent fuel and other materials (Chapter 6). Table 1.4 lists all operational reprocessing plants, including type, status, and capacity. Appendix 1B lists the status of the many reprocessing plants that separated plutonium for weapons programs and are now mostly shutdown.  

China. The only new reprocessing plant to become operational over the past year is in China. A pilot reprocessing plant of 50 tHM/yr (capable of expansion to 100 t/yr) has been undergoing commissioning. “Cold” tests with uranium solutions reportedly were complete as of June 2009. “Hot” tests with spent fuel are planned. China is considering building with France’s help a commercial reprocessing plant with a capacity of 800 tHM/year by 2025.  

France. The government-owned nuclear company Areva operates France’s reprocessing plant—the world’s largest—at La Hague. Areva recently made public the amounts of separated plutonium held at the reprocessing plant as of the end of 2008 (Table 1.5). A stockpile of almost 18 tons of Japanese plutonium is the major foreign contribution to the total of 62 tons at the plant. Although all the spent fuel Japan sent to France has been reprocessed and Japan’s reprocessing contract has not been renewed, most of its separated plutonium remains in France and the United Kingdom because of delays in the licensing of Japan’s power reactors to use mixed-oxide (MOX, uranium-plutonium) spent fuel. A stockpile of about 5 tons of Italian plutonium remains at La Hague, presumably for eventual use in a French reactor, since Italy shut down all of its nuclear power plants after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The Netherlands plutonium is also recycled in French reactors. Germany stopped sending fuel for reprocessing in April 2005, and all of its spent fuel has been reprocessed and the recovered plutonium sent to the MELOX MOX fabrication plant. Belgium and Switzerland also did not renew their reprocessing contracts and their separated plutonium also all has been recycled.  


Country	Plutonium Inventory
France	37.8 tons
Germany	0.7 tons
Italy	5.3 tons
Japan	17.9 tons
Netherlands	0.3 tons
TOTAL	62.0 tons

Table 1.3. Plutonium inventory at La Hague reprocessing plant, as of 31 December 2008. Small stockpiles (less than 62 kg) belonging to Australia and Australia are not listed here. The total inventory of foreign-owned plutonium stored in France is larger because a significant fraction is held at the MOX fabrication facility (MELOX). Note that this data is more recent than the data shown in Figure 1.3.

Germany. The plutonium declarations made by Germany to the IAEA are only partially useful. The cover letter attached to the most recent declaration points out that data “regarding any material that has been shipped abroad, especially for reprocessing … are not available on the German side.” Germany’s remaining stockpile of separated plutonium can be determined indirectly, however, by adding foreign-owned material in Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, and subtracting the known amounts held in those countries by Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands. Using this information, we estimate a stockpile of about 12 tons stored outside the country (mostly at MELOX, France). As of January 2008, assuming that about one ton of plutonium might be in Germany at any given time in preparation of a reactor reload, Germany’s plutonium stockpile could be on the order of 13 tons. This estimate is consistent with data provided by the German utilities.  

India. As of mid-2009, we estimate that India has separated about 6.8 tons of unsafeguarded plutonium from the spent fuel of its heavy-water-moderated power reactors. India intends to use this plutonium as start-up fuel for a planned fleet of breeder reactors.   

Japan. Commercial operation of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant has been delayed for at least another year following leaks of high-level radioactive waste. It was expected to begin commercial operation in August 2009, after completing active testing. The plant was originally expected to be operating by December 1997. It may face further delays—perhaps for several years—because of problems with its vitrification process, which mixes the liquid highly radioactive reprocessing waste into glass for long-term storage. Japan’s Tokai reprocessing plant remains closed since an accident in May 2007. 

Japan plans to start construction of a 130 tons/year mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel plant in November 2009, two years behind schedule, and expects it to begin operation in 2015. Its plan to have 16–18 nuclear reactors using MOX fuel by 2010 is now delayed by at least five years. Three Japanese reactors, however, are scheduled in 2010 to begin using MOX fuel fabricated in France.

Figure 1.5

Figure 1.5 Stockpiles of separated civilian plutonium owned by Germany and Japan. Germany stopped shipping spent fuel for reprocessing (in France and the United Kingdom) in 2005. Since then, it has been able to gradually reduce its stockpile of separated plutonium from almost 20 tons to about 13 tons in 2008, and plans to consume the remaining material by the end of 2014. In contrast, if Japan's Rokkasho reprocessing plant operated at full capacity sometime, its plutonium stockpile would increase until the Rokkasho MOX fuel plant is completed. Japan's reprocessing and MOX plants are both years behind schedule, however.

United Kingdom. The UK’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP), which was built to reprocessing foreign light-water reactor fuel and UK Advance Gas Reactor fuel had resumed operation in late 2007 following a two-year shutdown after a major accident in 2005 involving a large and initially undetected leak of radioactive waste. It is now shutdown again, however, for at least seven months to carry out maintenance on one of its three high-level radioactive waste evaporators. Reprocessing of the 7000 tons of spent fuel covered by the “baseload” contracts that were used to finance the construction of THORP of fuel was to have been completed in 2003 but only a little over 5000 tons had been reprocessed as of the end of 2008.  

Breeder Reactors. The original rationale for civilian reprocessing in France, Japan and the United Kingdom was to provide startup fuel for commercial plutonium breeder reactors that were to start coming on line in the 1990s. This rationale has now faded. In March 2009, France announced the end of normal operations at the Phénix fast breeder reactor, pending its final shutdown at the end of the year. There are now no operating fast breeder reactors in Western Europe. In Japan, the experiment 140 MWt Joyo reactor continues to operate but the 280 MWe Monju reactor has been shut down since a sodium fire in 1995.   

Russia continues to operate its 600-MWe BN-600 breeder reactor, which is fueled, however, with HEU, not plutonium, and is building a BN-800. India's 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) is facing a cost overrun of over 40 percent. China expects to commission its 65 MWt Experimental Fast Reactor in 2009. Past experience with fast breeder reactors suggests the programs in Japan, Russia, India and China will continue to face further operating, safety and cost problems.  