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Next Generation Nuclear Security Summit - April 12-13, 2010
Proliferation Resistant Uranium Enrichment, Thomas B. Cochran and Christopher E. Paine

Thomas B. Cochran, Ph. D., is a senior scientist and holds the Wade Greene Chair for Nuclear Policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Christopher E. Paine is the director of the Nuclear Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., Washington, D.C. Their working paper contends that current International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards are incapable of ensuring timely warning of a diversion of materials or technology from civil uranium enrichment plants. To begin addressing directly the international security concerns that accompany continued national acquisition of sensitive nuclear fuel cycle facilities, the authors propose a major supplement to current IAEA safeguards on enrichment plants. 

Credible technical and political concerns persist regarding whether current IAEA safeguards meet the fundamental standard of ensuring “timely warning” of the diversion from uranium enrichment plants of nuclear materials for military purposes. Timely warning requires that the interval between the diversion of safeguarded material and its detection by the IAEA be sufficiently brief, such that appropriate measures can be taken to prevent the government or organization concerned from further enriching the material and converting it into a nuclear explosive device.

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