Fissile Material Stockpile Declarations and Cooperative Nuclear Archaeology

Other · Thu Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 2017

OSTI ID:1524442

Glaser, Alexander ^[1]; Göttsche, Malte ^[2]

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1. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Program on Science and Global Security; Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; University of Michigan
2. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States). Program on Science and Global Security

With the beginning of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union quickly began to produce fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium, HEU) for military purposes on an industrial scale. By the mid-1950s, both countries were already making ton-quantities of fissile material per year to supply their growing nuclear arsenals. They were soon joined by the United Kingdom (1951), France (1955), China (1964), and Israel (1965)—and later by India, Pakistan, and finally North Korea. By the time most of these production efforts ended in the early 1990s, the global stockpile of military fissile material had reached fantastic levels. While the combined global nuclear weapon inventory had peaked at about 64,000 in 1986,1 the military fissile-material stockpile ultimately reached almost 2200 tons (240 tons of plutonium and 1960 tons of highly enriched uranium), which is sufficient to make about 200,000 simple nuclear weapons.2 Since the end of the Cold War, almost 700 tons of highly enriched uranium have been down-blended and other material is now reserved for naval fuel. Overall, the military material available for weapon purposes today is sufficient for more than 150,000 weapons (Figure 1).

• Research Organization: Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development (NA-22)
• DOE Contract Number: NA0002534
• OSTI ID: 1524442
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English