Thomas W. Wood

THE ECONOMICS OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE FOR IRAN

Iran has pursued an ambitious nuclear program with the declared goal of long-term energy independence. While this is a worthwhile and generally accepted national planning objective, it is clear that Irans nuclear program as now structured will not achieve this goal, and in fact may delay it by diverting capital and other resources from projects that would address pressing current energy sector problems and contribute to ultimate energy independence for Iran.

Establishing confident accounting for Russian weapons plutonium

Thomas W. Wood is a Senior Program Manager in the Environmental Technology Division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Manager of Hanford Site Planning and Integration Services. Bruce Reid is a Program Manager at PNNL in nonproliferation technologies and international reactor safety initiatives. John Smoot is a Program Manager at PNNL for activities under the Warhead Safety and Security Exchange Agreement between the United States and Russia. James L. Fuller is the Director of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs at PNNL.

The Future of Nuclear Archaeology: Reducing Legacy Risks of Weapons Fissile Material

This report describes the value proposition for a “nuclear archaeological” technical capability and applications program, targeted at resolving uncertainties regarding weapons fissile materials production and use. Central to this proposition is the notion that one can never be sure that all fissile material is adequately secure without a clear idea of what “all” means, and that uncertainty in this matter carries risk. We argue that this proposition is as valid today, under emerging state and possible non-state nuclear threats, as it was in an immediate post-Cold-War context, and describe how nuclear archaeological methods can be used to verify fissile materials declarations, or estimate and characterize historical fissile materials production independent of declarations. Methods for accurately estimating plutonium production from graphite reactors have been demonstrated and could be extended to other reactor types. Proposed techniques for estimating HEU production have shown promise and are under development.

Market-based policies for nuclear nonproliferation

ABSTRACT Access to weapon-useable fissile material—highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium—is the primary technical barrier to nuclear-weapon development. Nuclear-nonproliferation policy is largely concerned with the secure distribution and use of these materials and the technologies that produce them. To the extent that both materials and technologies are traded in markets, the problem may be viewed as one of influencing markets to give an acceptable set of allocative outcomes. While governments long ago rejected a laissez-faire approach to these markets, most current policy is based on prescribed or proscribed behavior rather than market incentives. “Market-based” nonproliferation policies would act through incentives in the markets for nuclear materials and technology rather than by prescribing outcomes or behavior. Possible polices of this sort include subsidized enrichment services, credits to impute value to spent nuclear fuel, and new markets for scarce nuclear materials. While market-based policies will not replace command-and-control policies entirely, they could lead to efficient regulation that suffices to guide the choices of most market participants, reserving special, more forceful measures for the few difficult cases.

Supply Security in Future Nuclear Fuel Markets

Previous PNNL work has shown the existing nuclear fuel markets to provide a high degree of supply security, including the ability to respond to supply disruptions that occur for technical and non-technical reasons. It is in the context of new reactor designs – that is, reactors likely to be licensed and market ready over the next several decades – that fuel supply security is most relevant. Whereas the fuel design and fabrication technology for existing reactors are well known, the construction of a new set of reactors could stress the ability of the existing market to provide adequate supply redundancy. This study shows this is unlikely to occur for at least thirty years, as most reactors likely to be built in the next three decades will be evolutions of current designs, with similar fuel designs to existing reactors.

Evaluation of a Business Case for Safeguards by Design in Nuclear Power Reactors

Safeguards by Design (SbD) is a well-known paradigm for consideration and incorporation of safeguards approaches and associated design features early in the nuclear facility development process. This paradigm has been developed as part of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI), and has been accepted as beneficial in many discussions and papers on NGSI or specific technologies under development within NGSI. The Office of Nuclear Safeguards and Security funded the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to examine the business case justification of SbD for nuclear power reactors. Ultimately, the implementation of SbD will rely on the designers of nuclear facilities. Therefore, it is important to assess the incentives which will lead designers to adopt SbD as a standard practice for nuclear facility design. This report details the extent to which designers will have compelling economic incentives to adopt SbD.

Long-Term Nuclear Industry Outlook - 2004

The nuclear industry has become increasingly efficient and global in nature, but may now be poised at a crossroads between graceful decline and profound growth as a viable provider of electrical energy. Predicted population and energy-demand growth, an increased interest in global climate change, the desire to reduce the international dependence on oil as an energy source, the potential for hydrogen co-generation using nuclear power reactors, and the improved performance in the nuclear power industry have raised the prospect of a “nuclear renaissance” in which nuclear power would play an increasingly more important role in both domestic and international energy market. This report provides an assessment of the role nuclear-generated power will plan in the global energy future and explores the impact of that role on export controls.