Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Sharing the Atom, a special podcast from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Argonne National Laboratory, takes you on a journey from the discovery of nuclear fission to the development of global commitments and systems to also use that discovery for good.
Sharing the Atom tells the story of how world leaders came together to develop a political and legal framework that enables the pursuit of nuclear technologies for peaceful use and how that framework is needed more than ever today.
At the center of this story is an international treaty: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Though seen by some as primarily a measure to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to hasten nuclear disarmament, the treaty also created the economic and security conditions for countries to access nuclear technologies for use in agriculture, energy, industry, and, of course, medicine. As demand for various peaceful uses of nuclear technology increases in response to numerous global challenges, the NPT is as relevant as ever in supporting a peaceful and prosperous world.
Voices included in the series: Ghanaian Ambassador Kwaku Aning, Canadian Ambassador John Barrett, Former Canadian official Jim Casterton, Dutch Ambassador Piet de Klerk, Brazilian Ambassador Sérgio Duarte, Doctor Guiseppe Esposito, NNSA Associate Deputy Administrator Rich Goorevich, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, Former U.S. official Lisa Hilliard, NNSA Assistant Deputy Administrator Corey Hinderstein, U.S. Ambassador Laura Holgate, Former President of Urenco USA, Inc.; current NNSA Assistant Associate Deputy Administrator Melissa Mann, ABACC Secretary General Marco Marzo, Former Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz, Nigerian Ambassador Charles Oko, Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, Author Richard Rhodes, NNSA Deputy Administrator Frank Rose, Former IAEA official Laura Rockwood, Economist Geoffrey Rothwell, Scholar Scott Sagan, U.S. Ambassador Adam Scheinman, Economist Tom Wood
COREY: I don't want to live in a world without the NPT. The NPT is not perfect, but I don't want to live in a world without the NPT.
Corey Hinderstein is Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
It provides the foundation for everything from the nonproliferation and verification that we take for granted every day, to the foundation for the expansion of peaceful uses of nuclear energy that actually contributes to making people's lives better every day, whether it's nuclear energy or health, agriculture, and other sectors. So to me, the NPT itself is an encapsulation of this melding between technical and policy outcomes.
Welcome to Sharing the Atom, a special podcast from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Argonne National Laboratory, that takes you on a journey from the discovery of nuclear fission, to the development of global commitments to use that discovery for good
Sharing the Atom tells the story of how world leaders came together to develop a political and legal framework that enables the pursuit of nuclear technologies for peaceful use and how that framework is needed more than ever today.
At the center of this story is an international treaty: The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT. Though seen by many as primarily a measure to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to further the goal of nuclear disarmament, the treaty also provides access to nuclear technologies for use in agriculture, energy, industry, and medicine.
But before we consider the beneficial uses of nuclear technology enabled by the NPT and why the treaty is necessary to support continued peaceful use, we have to cover a little historical ground around the discovery of nuclear fission.
December 1938. Two scientists, Lisa Meitner and Otto Frisch, discover this new source of energy. And in those early days, the feeling was one of awe. Scientists had discovered something that has the potential to benefit humanity, that can energize the world unlike anything else.
But perceptions shifted after this new source of energy was used to develop nuclear weapons. After that, the question turned to what governments and scientists can do so that the constructive, beneficial promise of nuclear energy could be realized.
Jim Casterton, a former Canadian government official who has worked on nonproliferation policy for more than 40 years.
JIM CASTERTON: I think that after the war, there was a concerted effort to demonstrate that the same energy source could be used for good. So I think that there was a shift, I should say, from the focus on the destructive use of atomic energy, to one which is more constructive by pursuing peaceful applications in nuclear science and technology, as I said, in fields such as health, human health, agriculture, power generation. But since it was introduced to the world that way, the world was attuned to the need to ensure that nuclear energy used for peaceful purposes did not lead to non-peaceful purposes, whether it's nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.
Throughout his career, Rich Goorevich, the associate deputy administrator in the Office of Nonproliferation and Arms Control at the National Nuclear Security Administration, has focused on nuclear energy.
RICH GOOREVICH: What really started to fascinate me was the questions around [well how do you] nuclear versus other energy sources versus other technologies and the regulatory requirements, the safeguards requirements, all these requirements to keep it safe.
But I saw it from a historical point of view. I didn't really look at it from, "Okay, what happened afterwards?"
And that really led to a fascination on my part of looking into the NPT and saying, "Okay, wait a minute. You're telling me that after the Second World War, almost every country in the world came together and said at some point in time during the height of the Cold War, 'We really got to get a handle on this. '"
The question came into my mind, well, did the framers and the drafters of the NPT when they sat down to look at this also, while promulgating this idea of safeguards and non-proliferation that are part and parcel and the grand bargain that is in the NPT and the idea of disarmament and all these things, did they also have in mind that there was a model for how civil nuclear cooperation and civil nuclear power was supposed to develop? And did they actually knowingly or unknowingly create that framework that now we have all adopted as the basis of our national regulations and legislations to enable the cooperation that has taken place to have taken place and for the cooperation that we want to see go forward, go forward? And did they know that? Did they think about that?
JIM CASTERTON: So there was an interest immediately after the war to try to promote the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and to do so recognizing that it had a non-peaceful purpose, there was recognition that one had to have assurances that any country that was going to pursue a nuclear energy for peaceful purposes did in fact do so.
Those assurances could be political assurances, commitments made politically. They could be assurances that are provided by verification mechanisms. But the early efforts did have that requirement for some kind of commitment and verification of peaceful use.
Early forays into sharing nuclear technology were limited at first, since an entirely new energy source was being controlled and regulated for the first time. As Dutch Amb. Piet De Klerk, who has been involved in nuclear policy development for decades notes, it was only with the Atoms for Peace speech in 1953 that international civil nuclear cooperation really took hold:
Before '53, there was hardly any international cooperation, because the US had prohibited international cooperation under legislation, and that was binding for the British and the Canadians as well. So it was only indeed when Eisenhower announced [00:20:00] Atoms for Peace, that international cooperation got a boost. And there you see already in the cooperation that then evolved, you see already the beginnings, in a refined, formalized way see in the NPT that the US was willing to share in its nuclear technology [00:20:30] and make materials and knowledge available in return for pledges of peaceful use and normally also of bilateral inspections. So you see that in 30, 40 countries beginning experimentation and technology development with American input and American [00:21:00] high enriched uranium, in particular, in small experimental reactors on the condition of some sort of peaceful use guarantee.
And that was also the policy followed by others like the British and the Canadians. Not always with the
Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace address–for example, through the provision of research reactors–there were also efforts to encourage broader international cooperation.
And then around the same time, two years later, there was a rather large conference that was held in Geneva. It was called the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. That conference brought many states from around the world, brought them together, but it didn't bring the politicians together or the regulators together. It brought together the scientists and technicians who were familiar with the use of nuclear energy and were speculating on how it could be used for peaceful purposes.
The increased interest in promoting the use of nuclear energy internationally gave rise to additional efforts to ensure that such use would only be for peaceful purposes. This led to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, a concept drawn from President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace speech at the United Nations, which was a watershed moment in the international discussion about nuclear technology development. The IAEA was initially meant to facilitate the sharing of nuclear material and technology, with the understanding that participating countries committed to using them only for peaceful purposes.
JIM CASTERTON: The statute of the IAEA, it directs the institution to promote the use of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world. As I mentioned, a focus is on the needs of the underdeveloped areas of the world, and it does that through what it's called their technical cooperation program. That technical cooperation program covers a wide range of projects, big and small, to facilitate the transfer of nuclear technology to developing countries in all kinds of fields. Not so much in the nuclear power field, but in the other peaceful uses of nuclear energy such as health, medicine, agriculture, industry. The other area of the IAEA that it's known for is it provides the verification system. They're called safeguards, whereby the IAEA inspectors independently verify that nuclear material and items that have been supplied by the IAEA, this is in the beginning of its work, were used continuously for peaceful purposes and not diverted for non-peaceful purposes.
That was done on the basis of an agreement between the recipient state and the IAEA for the application of safeguards, or verification procedures, measures, to the supplied items. Interestingly enough, when the IAEA was first constituted, safeguard agreements were considered to be voluntary. You had to enter into a safeguards agreement if you wanted assistance from the IAEA, but there was no legal requirement to enter into safeguards agreements to get assistance from anybody else.
De Klerk: So it was a budding international cooperation in that period based on mostly bilateral inspections. And some of that already in the course of the sixties were handed over to the IAEA. But the role of the IAEA in verification in the early sixties were still very limited. I think that the first safeguards agreements came in '61 or '62 and only pertained to small experimental reactors or research reactors.
The IAEA fostered the concept of sharing scientific and technical information on the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, however, some nuclear technology holders remained hesitant to share their nuclear technology with global partners, instead preferring to maintain bilateral arrangements partly to ensure that their own national safeguards requirements for transfers would be fulfilled. An international framework that included as many countries as possible and built more universal standards for safeguards nuclear activities was needed.
Developing such an international agreement, and aligning competing international priorities, is not an easy process. Lisa Hilliard, a former U.S. government official who worked for years at the U.S. mission in Vienna.
LISA HILLIARD: It can be very challenging and it takes a hell of a lot of time and effort, especially when you work by consensus, which is the important underpinning principle of all of it. That way, everyone is part of the decision and so then it's in their interest to find a solution that everyone can agree to. But it does take a lot of time. It'd be really easy if one country just wanted to walk in and say, "This is the way we're going to do it and everybody's supposed to follow." But it's not enforceable. You want everyone to be a part of it, you want things to be decided by consensus and then it makes it so much easier to know that everyone will be playing by the same rules and trading, and like I said already, not undercutting each other for commercial gain.
Melissa Mann is a former nuclear industry executive.
MELISSA MANN : It's what I call the building blocks. It's that fundamental deal almost, which is, we all acknowledge that this is something powerful and dangerous and useful, and it needs to be controlled and that you can go good ways with it and you can go bad ways with it. So we have to protect against those bad ways and we have to, or we may need to, facilitate the good ways. So what are those rules of the road and what are the commitments that we're making to each other as countries in order to make that happen?
Essential to this process of establishing an international framework was recognizing the legitimacy of the different points of view on nuclear risks and access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The creation of the NPT could not have happened without a commitment to cooperation. When that cooperation must happen amongst countries, internationally, with varying interests, it becomes all the more challenging, and all the more remarkable that it was achieved. Kwaku Aning is a Ghanaian diplomat and the former head of Technical Cooperation at the IAEA. He has the following approach to coming to agreement in international negotiations.
You should listen more, let them tell you their position. And then you can provide them with information, which is not your opinion, but information that goes with the issue and then leave it to them to decide what they want, how they want to handle it. But it's also important to let them know if there are specific problems, general issues with the subjects on the discussion. So that also helps them rethink or reposition themselves.
A good listener and a good dose of humility that you don't know everything. You know something, but they are the ones who are being impacted by whatever decision is taken. So I cannot be and say that I can stand in his shoes, but at least I know what the issues are and the facts are, and you have to understand everything.
Scott Sagan is a Stanford professor and scholar of nuclear nonproliferation.
SCOTT SAGAN: The Non-Proliferation Treaty is a treaty that has been signed by both five nuclear weapons states and many ... I think it's in the 180-some ... Non-nuclear weapons states today. And it is like many large arms control agreements, multilateral arms control agreements, it has many different aspects to it. You should consider it to be a set of trade-offs that different countries agreed to one part of the treaty because that was in their interests, and they resisted other parts. But in overall perspective they said, "I will accept this in order to get that other thing that I really, really want."
So it's always been a treaty that has been somewhat controversial, because some states wanted to interpret it in one way. Others wanted to interpret it in a different way, and there were fights constantly over what's the appropriate interpretation? But from my perspective, the best thing to think about is that this was a treaty that no one got everything they wanted, but that major states and smaller states got something that was important, and important enough that they signed and ratified it.
Again, Rich Goorevich.
RICH GOOREVICH : So really, when you think about it from a historical standpoint, the fact that the NPT came about at the time that it did is really unique in and of itself because it's one of the few things that at the time what east and the west could agree on was non-proliferation and the treaties as a historical artifact of a unique set of circumstances that really I think in some ways brought the world together at a point when it really needed to be brought together. It showed that we could work together, east and west.
Laura Holgate serves as U.S. Ambassador to the Vienna Office of the United Nations and to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
HOLGATE: It is somewhat miraculous that we have this treaty, and this is why we need to steward it and care for it with such attention and contribution to that cooperation vision. As with any treaty, it requires that there be enough overlap of interest that everybody can get something out of the ultimate constellation of understandings. And I think there was a recognition at the time that really there was no benefit to any of those who were originally part of the treaty negotiations to say that there should be more nuclear weapon states in the world. That was, I think, a shared understanding that there should be fewer in fact, and that's where the disarmament commitment comes from. But then that needed to happen in a context where other types of benefits were gained, and in particular, access to peaceful uses.
RICH GOOREVICH: Pick your country that was an NPT party. The US could look at it and say, "We understand that the technology will be safeguarded. It's going to be protected. We the recipient and the Soviets understand the rules of the road." Therefore there's less suspicion. There's less concern about that.
It also meant, though, that if the Soviets or us, if we were the supplier or anyone in any other supplier for whatever reason no longer played the supplier role and the program broke out on its own, there was less suspicion about what was going on with that program overall to begin with, because you have to remember prior to the NPT, we looked at nuclear and we looked at supply and nuclear a lot through Atoms for Peace.
RICH GOOREVICH: People have begun to take the NPT a little bit for granted. It is special. It is unique. In the WMD technologies there really isn't anything like it, but yet it is so foundational to what we do every day in looking at nuclear. You look at the laws that are on our books. And I know that in our partner countries around the world, their nuclear legislations are all based upon the concepts that are in the NPT.
Again, Jim Casterton.
JIM CASTERTON: The value of the NPT is that it provides that framework, it provides a multilaterally agreed framework for the pursuit of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. That takes away consideration of having nuclear suppliers compete for business on the basis of nonproliferation requirements, it's a very high bar that is set, and that high bar provides a very high level of confidence that exports for peaceful purposes are indeed used for peaceful purposes. Now, there are a few exceptions to the rule that have occurred over the years, but by and large, all of the states, most of the states, the majority of the states that have signed on to the NPT have lived up to their non-proliferation and peaceful use commitments.
And so I think it is necessary, I think it would be very difficult to undertake trade in nuclear items in a way that would be acceptable to the international community absent in NPT. I also think that the individuals may not necessarily be aware of the benefits of the NPT, may not be aware of the existence of the NPT, but I'm sure that those people that are aware of nuclear energy and its use around the world for peaceful purposes are, shall we say appreciative, of the fact that the NPT exists and provides a framework of confidence that nuclear energy is being used for peaceful purposes.
Frank Rose is the Principal Deputy Administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration.
The NPT has been critical to non-proliferation, but also it has been an enabler of peaceful cooperation on nuclear energy. And I think that's going to become even more important as we move forward, especially when dealing with climate change.
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, is a diplomat and was the president-designate of the 2020 NPT Review Conference.
Quite clearly, the NPT is the linchpin, is the element without which most of what takes place in the world in different areas when it comes to technologies, applications, or even their energy generation would not be possible. I simply consider it as the cornerstone of a system that, of course, like any other system undergoes changes, structural changes, and lateral changes. And all sorts of things happen to it, but the center of gravity of which continues to be this treaty.
As global climate change forces hard questions about energy and economic development and as the divide in global access to technology and health resources widen, the importance of the NPT in enabling peaceful civil nuclear cooperation will only increase over time, enabling progress on climate and sustainable development goals. In our next three episodes, we are going to closely look at the NPT and understand how it came about, and how it facilitated the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll also explore how the NPT can help ensure the peaceful use of nuclear energy for decades to come.
Thank you for listening. Stay informed about the NPT and peaceful nuclear cooperation, visit sharingtheatom.com, where you can also listen to other episodes. Sharing the Atom is a production of the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with SOUND MADE PUBLIC, Tania Ketenjian, Philip Wood, Sarah Conlisk, and Alesandro Santoro.