The limited national security implications of civilian nuclear decline

The scope of the problem

An official US decision to exit the commercial nuclear energy business could have many implications, possibly affecting price stability in resource markets and therefore economic growth rates in key countries; these ramifications have potential repercussions for national security. In recent talks with the Japanese government about its decision to abandon nuclear energy, US officials have expressed concern, for example, about the impact of a Japanese nuclear exit—and a larger Japanese demand for oil and gas imports—on fossil fuel markets (Japan Times, 2012). But even after Fukushima, there has been little political or public support for a general nuclear exit by the United States.

There is another kind of nuclear exit, however, that seems at least reasonably likely: a slow slide into irrelevance. In such a situation, a gradual nuclear decline motivated by economics becomes the starting point. Utilities decide to retire some plants early, rather than implement costly post-Fukushima safety regulations, and the number of new nuclear power plants built in the next two decades fails to offset early and scheduled retirements. Demand for new nuclear plants falters overseas, and the scramble for fewer foreign orders increases competition. Other countries sweeten their nuclear construction bids with government subsidies that the US government will not match, leading to further decline in the US nuclear industry.

In considering the national security implications of this kind of US nuclear exit, it is helpful to separate what happens to nuclear electricity generation from what might happen to the US nuclear manufacturing and design industry. These are the questions plaguing Japan at the moment: Will Japan keep its fuel cycle capabilities (i.e., uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing) and export potential if its power plants don’t spring back to life? In September 2012, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano suggested that Japan would push ahead with nuclear export plans even if Japanese domestic nuclear power is in question (Wall Street Journal, 2012). Separating domestic electricity generation from the industry’s future is important. Leaving aside climate change for the moment, choosing to generate US electricity via fission, wind, photons, coal, or gas has few national security implications (assuming reasonably priced domestic resources). However, loss of a domestic manufacturing or exporting capability in the nuclear sector does have some national and international security ramifications.

Direct impact on US military programs

The Defense Department has never defined nuclear energy as a strategic industry but is keenly interested in its links to energy security. A 2008 Defense Science Board task force report on Defense Department energy strategy, “More Fight—Less Fuel,” identified the fragile commercial electricity grid as one of two key energy problems. US military installations rely on commercial electricity for 99 percent of their supply, a fact that prompted the task force to call for an assessment of options including “greater efficiency, islanding, renewable resources, distributed generation, and higher commercial grid reliability where necessary” (Defense Science Board, 2008: 10). In some circles, this has been interpreted as a call for the Defense Department to build small modular reactors to provide facilities with their own sources of electricity. This is not a new idea. In the early decades of nuclear electricity, the military experimented with such applications. For example, a small reactor provided electricity from 1962 to 1968 to the 731st Radar Squadron of the North American Air Defense Command in Wyoming, and the Navy used a small reactor for electricity and heat for its facility on McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. The Army’s nuclear program also experimented with small reactors at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and Fort Greeley in Alaska during the early decades of nuclear power. Today, additional objectives—enhancing electrical supply reliability, helping the Defense Department reduce reliance on fossil fuels for electricity, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and providing a test bed for small modular reactor development—are also on the agenda (King et al., 2011).

Of course, a US nuclear exit might limit the small reactor designs from which the Defense Department could choose. Ironically, a civilian nuclear exit that prompted Defense to fund small modular reactors could enhance the department’s energy security. But given the Defense Department’s overwhelming energy bill (it purchases about $18 billion annually in fuel), it is likely to focus on options that provide bigger energy security advantages, like enhancing fuel efficiency (Defense Logistics Agency, 2011). And a slow nuclear decline that resulted in a shift toward more distributed generation could improve grid reliability, regardless of whether the military decided to build small reactors.

For Defense nuclear programs in particular, the real nuclear-exit security issue is not reactors but uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing capabilities, both of which could potentially survive despite an abandonment of nuclear-generated electricity. ² (For reasons discussed below, the US retention of these capabilities could actually have negative repercussions for the global nonproliferation regime.) By and large, however, the disappearance of commercial nuclear power plants in the United States would have little impact on either the US nuclear weapons or naval nuclear propulsion programs, with one exception: the production of tritium for weapons.

Tritium is a key ingredient in US nuclear weapons as they are currently designed, and it must be replaced as it decays. (It has a half-life of 12.3 years.) Before 1988, the United States produced tritium for weapons at its government reactors at the Savannah River Site. For several years after the shutdown of that program, the United States recycled tritium from dismantled weapons. Today, the United States produces tritium in civilian nuclear power plants. Observers debate just how much tritium is needed, given further reductions in the active US nuclear weapons stockpile, but in late 2011, the Energy Department moved to increase tritium production. ³ It is now considering whether to expand tritium production beyond the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar reactor, which has been irradiating lithium to produce tritium since 2004, to include the Sequoyah 1 and 2 reactors. ⁴ Without these commercial nuclear power reactors, the US government would have to find an alternative tritium supply, a costly but not insurmountable problem.

The US nuclear weapons and naval reactor programs have depended on highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium produced in the government’s nuclear complex, not in the civilian industry. The United States stopped producing highly enriched uranium for weapons in 1964 and for naval propulsion in the 1990s; it halted plutonium separation for weapons late in the 1980s. Since 1995, when the United States declared it had stopped producing fissile material for nuclear weapons, it has urged other nuclear weapon states to do the same. Russia, the United Kingdom, and France now participate voluntarily in a fissile material moratorium for use in nuclear weapons, and China reportedly has halted production for weapons but has been unwilling to declare this publicly. Given the deadlocked Conference on Disarmament, the moratorium helps demonstrate progress toward disarmament and helps lay a foundation for a treaty to halt fissile material production for weapons, a US objective for decades.

There is absolutely no foreseeable need for new production. In fact, the United States has identified 174 tons of HEU as excess to defense needs; after 129 tons of HEU are set aside for the Navy and 20 tons are allocated to space and research reactors, the remainder will be blended down into low-enriched uranium. Given that the United States is estimated to have already fabricated 100 tons of HEU into naval fuel, and its average consumption is about 2 tons per year, the Navy is unlikely to need fresh supplies of HEU for several decades, if ever. The case of plutonium is similar: With an inventory of 99.5 tons, the United States declared 53.9 tons of separated plutonium as excess to defense needs. ⁵

For those concerned about maintaining a capability to produce HEU for weapons or naval fuel, the United States Enrichment Corporation, with its planned American Centrifuge Plant, is the preferred fallback option. The licensing for the plant inexplicably allows for enrichment up to 98 percent uranium 235, far beyond the level needed for commercial nuclear fuel. The 1992 Energy Policy Act, which created the Enrichment Corporation, included a provision allowing it to meet national security objectives. Two decades ago, this national security hedge may have made some sense, but in the context of a US nuclear exit, such a hedge becomes difficult to justify. Of course, one should not assume that US enrichment would wither away with US power reactors (just as the Urenco enrichment plant in Gronau, Germany, will keep producing, even though Germany is moving to zero nuclear power plants). But supporting continued US enrichment on the basis of national security, rather than on meeting demand, is a step onto a slippery slope; it could lead toward spending money on unneeded facilities.

The naval nuclear propulsion program could be affected on the margins by a US nuclear exit. The program has developed on a trajectory independent of the civilian nuclear industry, with different standards and regulations. It relies on research and development and engineering from two government-owned labs (the Bettis and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratories) and on dedicated contractor support from the Bechtel Corp.; it has its own schools and training. The naval reactors program does depend on private suppliers for design and fabrication of major propulsion plant components, however, and a decline in the number or quality of those suppliers is where a nuclear exit might potentially affect this key program. The fact that many of these manufacturers have been supplying the program for years when US civilian nuclear orders were nonexistent, however, suggests that they will likely continue to be viable.

Broader national security implications

Energy security and nonproliferation are two reasons often cited for bolstering both the domestic nuclear electricity industry and the capacity of US firms to export nuclear technology. Nuclear energy is depicted frequently as a “homegrown” alternative to dependence on foreign resources, particularly oil, but this characterization is misleading. First, most nuclear programs are quite dependent on foreign entities—for uranium ore, conversion services, uranium enrichment, and fuel fabrication—and the United States is no exception to this general rule. Although the United States has uranium deposits (about 11 percent of the global recoverable resources), US utilities import most of the uranium they use for fuel from 12 countries, and send about half of that to foreign conversion facilities before it is shipped to foreign enrichment providers that, together, provide US utilities with six times more enrichment services than do domestic providers (Energy Information Administration, 2012).

Also, energy security is more complicated than freedom from dependence on foreign resources. A nuclear exit could actually mean less dependence on foreign energy sources if the United States shifted its electricity generation to coal or US natural gas. Better yet, replacing nuclear with renewables could increase the domestic component of the US energy mix and provide better greenhouse gas emission results. For the next few decades, cheap shale oil and gas should provide reliable, low-cost energy, but in the long term, policy makers should explore whether the United States can decouple economic growth from energy consumption. The case of Germany has challenged the conventional wisdom that energy usage climbs with GDP growth; in fact, Germany has increased its gross domestic product even as it has reduced its energy supply and carbon dioxide emissions (Mez, 2012).

The argument for US involvement in civilian nuclear energy to strengthen nonproliferation efforts has two strands: The United States can influence countries’ nuclear energy decisions to help support nonproliferation objectives only if it is demonstrating leadership (e.g., innovation) in the civilian nuclear sector. And US exports help maintain American pre-eminence in shaping the nonproliferation regime itself.

The first strand of the argument maintains that leadership in the civilian nuclear sector is critical to nonproliferation—raising the question of what counts for leadership. Is it cutting-edge research and development, and if so, is the R&D confined to particular areas like reactor designs and safety? A wide array of entities, including reactor vendors and US government laboratories, conduct nuclear energy research and development, but electric utilities largely do not. It is plausible to assert that without a vibrant domestic nuclear energy sector, reactor vendors will find it more difficult to justify research and development spending. This was in part the justification for the Energy Department’s Nuclear Power 2010 program. US research into technologies and approaches that improve the proliferation resistance of fuel cycles will need to continue, but such research is not dependent on the operation of civilian nuclear power reactors.

Alternatively, one may argue that leadership stemming from operational experience is what will be valued by potential nuclear partners. If so, the operational expertise of utilities would be helpful. The Obama administration has hinted at this kind of leadership in the rationale behind support for peaceful nuclear energy:

As countries move increasingly to tap peaceful nuclear energy to provide power generation while advancing climate goals, the world must develop an infrastructure in the countries that seek to use nuclear energy for their energy security needs and climate goals to ensure that nuclear energy is developed in a safe manner. We will do so by promoting safety through regulatory bodies and training of operators, promoting physical security to prevent terrorist acts, and assuring safe and secure handling of fuel at the front and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle. (White House, 2010)

So, in general, the ability to lead by example would fade with a nuclear exit. This notion of leadership, however, is not universally accepted, particularly by advocates of fuel reprocessing, who believe the US example of abandoning civilian reprocessing did little to encourage other countries to follow suit. Skeptics of leadership by example maintain that countries will pursue their own nuclear decisions, regardless of what the United States does or recommends.

Nonetheless, a nuclear exit that left the United States with fuel-cycle capabilities and no power plants could have a negative impact on the nonproliferation regime. With no domestic economic justification for enrichment capability, maintaining enrichment might be perceived as an attempt by the United States to keep civilian facilities as a hedge for future military production, undercutting US efforts to dissuade other states from acquiring just such capabilities. ⁶

Finally, the disappearance of US nuclear power plants could eliminate some options for converting defense fissile materials to civilian purposes, like providing electricity. For example, the US ability to implement programs like Megatons to Megawatts (using blended-down, Russian-origin HEU for US electricity) or the plutonium disposition program, which mixes excess military plutonium with uranium to make reactor fuel, would disappear eventually. However, the United States might profitably sell excess defense fissile material for civilian purposes (HEU blended down to LEU) to other countries that continue their nuclear power programs, extending a tradition of beating swords into ploughshares.

The second strand of the national security argument for civilian US nuclear power centers on the role of US nuclear exports in setting nonproliferation rules. The basic premise is that the United States can wield more nonproliferation influence if it remains a nuclear supplier. This is because US agreements for peaceful nuclear cooperation (so-called 123 agreements, after the relevant section in the Atomic Energy Act) contain provisions governing how material and equipment can be stored, used, processed, and transferred, mostly designed to limit proliferation risk. Also, nuclear suppliers have what many see as an effective forum for discussing how to limit proliferation risks—the 47-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

With respect to bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements, the United States can control only how US material, equipment, and technology are handled. ⁷ The more that other countries engage in nuclear cooperation among themselves, the less impact US policies have. Moreover, the record is mixed on the nonproliferation impact of those policies: Several countries engaged in nuclear cooperation with the United States have, at the same time, engaged in activities that either supported nuclear weapons programs or contributed to capabilities that would support a clandestine nuclear weapons program. These include Taiwan, South Korea, Iran under the shah, and Argentina and Brazil in the 1950s. In the cases of Taiwan and South Korea, the United States exerted extraordinary diplomatic pressure to shut down incipient nuclear weapons programs, all the while engaging in nuclear cooperation.

In nonproliferation policy and industry circles, there is an eerie nostalgia for the first two decades of commercial nuclear power, when the United States and the Soviet Union were the pre-eminent nuclear suppliers. Those days of market dominance ended roughly 35 years ago, around the time when proliferation seemed imminent and the United States instituted stricter export controls, creating the Nuclear Suppliers Group to encourage other suppliers to do the same. US nonproliferation leadership has likely achieved more in the decades of dwindling nuclear plant construction than in the decades of US dominance. This might be attributable to growing recognition of the need to curb proliferation, but the message is clear: There is greater influence when states act together, harmonizing their controls.

The extent to which US nuclear exports grease the wheels of diplomacy is unknown, but those exports probably do contribute to American influence with other suppliers. Of course, the example of the US–India deal—wherein the United States convinced the NSG to create an exception for India to full-scope safeguards for nuclear trade—may contradict the conclusion that US nuclear exports work toward nonproliferation.

Enduring nonproliferation challenges

Stepping back, it is worth considering how a US nuclear exit might affect the 2010 National Security Strategy’s four major nonproliferation efforts: to pursue a world without nuclear weapons, to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to combat the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, and to secure vulnerable nuclear material worldwide. For each objective, the loss of the civilian nuclear power sector could narrow the range of tools the United States currently employs.

As mentioned earlier, the civilian nuclear sector participates in programs that convert excess defense material for peaceful purposes, and the loss of that sector would constrain the US ability to implement such programs. More broadly, however, the US civilian nuclear sector operates largely outside the realm of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, because the NPT does not require safeguards for nuclear weapon states. Along the path to a world free of nuclear weapons, it is likely that not only will fissile material production facilities in the weapon states need to be monitored, but civilian reactors, as well. A US nuclear exit could actually simplify the verification burden under any anticipated monitoring regime.

With respect to strengthening the NPT, one enduring challenge has been to balance the treaty’s three pillars of disarmament, peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and nonproliferation. Although the peaceful uses of nuclear energy encompass more than nuclear electricity generation, a US nuclear exit that diminished the attractiveness of US nuclear exports (which is not a given) could limit the ability of the United States to achieve nonproliferation objectives through peaceful-uses trade-offs. On the other hand, one could argue that the Western emphasis on portraying the NPT bargain as nonproliferation in exchange for peaceful uses is overwhelmed by the view of a majority of states—a view emphasizing, instead, the trade-off between disarmament progress and further nonproliferation responsibilities. In these states’ formulation, more progress on disarmament would yield better nonproliferation results. At best, a US nuclear exit might make real disarmament progress easier, because it would eliminate a US rearmament capability, thus enhancing the disarmament process (in their eyes). At worst, it might have no impact at all on disarmament efforts.

On combating the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, two states with which nuclear commerce is banned, it is difficult to see how a US nuclear exit might matter. In both cases, the stakes go beyond the nuclear realm to regional and international security. In other words, the carrots and sticks to achieve desired objectives with Iran and North Korea lie outside the nuclear realm. Eventually, nuclear cooperation may lead toward normalization of relations, but is unlikely to be as influential as diplomatic, financial, and military levers. At any rate, in regard to both countries, the United States plays a leading diplomatic role that is unlikely to be affected by a US nuclear exit.

Last, a US nuclear exit could affect efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear material worldwide but probably not in a big way. US industry supports such efforts and engages in some sharing of best practices on nuclear security, but the inherent barriers to sharing nuclear security information limit the current influence of the industry in this area. The World Institute for Nuclear Security is working to overcome some of these barriers, and these efforts will continue, regardless of what happens to US nuclear power.

Non-nuclear in a sea of nuclear states?

Just as other countries continued to pursue nuclear power through the US “dark ages” when no new nuclear plants were ordered, some countries will chart their own course on nuclear energy, regardless of what happens in the United States. China and India will continue to build and possibly export nuclear power plant technology, and South Korea is likely to do the same. If nuclear power makes a slow exit in the United States, the country may face major challenges in maintaining coherence within the Nuclear Suppliers Group and among new nuclear technology suppliers in support of the nonproliferation objectives that the United States has worked so assiduously to promote. However, a “slow slide” scenario does not mean the United States would no longer be invited to the global nuclear table. For several decades into the future, the United States will likely maintain the largest civilian nuclear power fleet in the world, as well as its status as a military nuclear superpower. Even as the US commitment to civilian nuclear power gradually wanes, those two defining features of the nuclear landscape will still be worth reckoning with.

The national security implications of a nuclear exit for a country that has long relied on nuclear weapons are more limited and containable than they are generally portrayed. Nuclear energy is far down the list of options for enhancing the military’s energy security, and it is not crucial to improving overall US energy security, given the other resources available. Expertise for weapons programs isn’t dependent on the civilian nuclear power industry, and the nuclear Navy has developed a reliable supply chain in the 30 years since nuclear manufacturing began to atrophy in the United States. The US has not needed to produce fissile material for weapons in decades and is unlikely to face such a necessity in the future. Although tritium for defense purposes is now produced in civilian power reactors, this is not the only option for obtaining it.

Perhaps the murkiest area of security impacts that might flow from a US nuclear phase-out lies at the intersection of US nuclear exports and nonproliferation efforts. Few countries are as diligent in export controls as is the United States. But export controls are only one tool of many needed to curb other countries’ desires for nuclear weapons. Continued engagement in science and technology, in nuclear energy regulation, and in nonproliferation diplomacy, both through bilateral relationships and in multilateral organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be vital to achieving US nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear disarmament objectives, regardless of the eventual fate of the US nuclear power industry.