Fuel Cycle Centers Revisited: Consolidation of Fuel Cycle Activities in a Few Countries

The concept of limiting the spread of fuel cycle activities of a "sensitive" nature and surrounding those that are built by some type of international or multinational framework has been present since the earliest attempts to define a nuclear nonproliferation regime. The first serious effort, the Acheson-Lilienthal report of 1946, called for an international "Atomic Development Authority" that would own and operate all facilities regarded as "dangerous." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself, and especially its safeguards system, while lacking the concept of international operation of sensitive facilities, was nevertheless a deliberate step to place peaceful activities within an international framework. Moreover, the statute of the IAEA includes a provision yet to be implemented that authorizes the Agency to be the depository of plutonium stocks, the accumulation of which would arguably be the most sensitive of all aspects of the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. It should also be recalled that the IAEA was envisaged as a principal supplier of nuclear fuel, a function which, if fulfilled, would have given it a much more direct role in the operation of sensitive facilities.