Overview
We are pleased and thankful that our 1997 book on plutonium and highly enriched uranium inventories and policies is available on the SIPRI website. Link to the book: https://www.sipri.org/publications/1997/plutonium-and-highly-enriched-uranium-1996-world-inventories-capabilities-and-policies
Link to Pdf: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/files/books/SIPRI97AlBeWa/SIPRI97AlBeWa.pdf
When it appeared in 1997, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996 World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies filled a gap in knowledge about how much plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) existed in the world and how to control these materials. Both materials are critical to the construction of nuclear weapons and have played roles in the generation of nuclear electricity. This book detailed the situation then: the quantity and location of plutonium and HEU, the use of them, and their forms and controls. Since then, much work in these areas has been accomplished. However, this book provides an important look into the origins of this effort, in essence an early effort to create transparency over stocks of plutonium and highly enriched uranium and less misuse of them, an effort which continues to this day.
Reprinted from the Preface by Adam Daniel Rotfeld, Then Director of SIPRI, December 1996
Extending greater control over plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the fissile materials used in nuclear weapons, has always been a fundamental objective of nuclear non-proliferation policy. Its importance has been increased by the arms reductions undertaken by the nuclear weapon states in recent years and will increase still further if progress is to be made towards the ultimate goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
Control must begin with understanding and with transparency. In 1993, SIPRI published World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1992, by David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker, with the intention of contributing in a modest way to the realization of these objectives. The book provided the first authoritative survey of the quantities of fissile material produced for nuclear weapons and in the civilian fuel cycle.
Almost as soon as the book was published, we realized that there would be benefit in preparing a new edition. Fresh information was becoming available and various developments—such as the progress being made by the USA and Russia in nuclear arms reduction and weapon dismantlement, the denuclearization of Belarus, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine, the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear weapon programme and the expansion of civil reprocessing—had implications for assessments of and policies towards plutonium and highly enriched uranium. When David Albright, Frans Berkhout and William Walker began the task of preparing the new edition, they believed that it would involve a few months’ work and be a relatively simple undertaking. They were mistaken. Nearly every part of the book ended up being completely rewritten, so that what lies before us is a totally new work. Readers will appreciate that it has required a formidable effort by the authors.
I am pleased that this book also contains a more extensive assessment of the policy agenda than was attempted in the previous edition. It is recognized that the control of fissile materials and their associated technologies must be the core of any nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament regime. Although the authors acknowledge that many difficulties—technical, political and economic—will have to be overcome if a fully effective material control regime is to be established, they have demonstrated its feasibility in identifying the main steps that need to be taken for its realization. I was particularly struck by the observation in the concluding chapter that today’s need for stringent control of nuclear materials and technologies is little different from that which would be required for total nuclear disarmament, implying that policies should be fashioned as if this were about to occur, irrespective of its feasibility or desirability. For once, realism and idealism lead to the same recommendations. My hope is that this book will therefore be regarded as a significant contribution to policy debates as well as a compendium of information on nuclear material inventories and capabilities.