A Tale of Two Fuel Cycles: Defining Enrichment and Reprocessing

• In Event: Poster Session: International Security I

Abstract

In the early 2000s, the Bush administration set out two very different policies when addressing the nuclear programs of South Korea and Iran. Though South Korea had more advanced nuclear capabilities than Iran, its nuclear program was not deemed a threat to global or regional security. Iran, on the other hand, had and continues to have a long history of enmity with the United States. Thus, Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle technology was condemned by the Bush administration and heavily scrutinized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but similar activities were endorsed by the Bush administration in South Korea. The politics behind this double standard might appear to be self-evident—South Korea is a friend and Iran is an enemy. But maintaining this double standard was premised on a complex interaction between technology and politics, and not simply on the great power politics of US nuclear policy.

This paper examines definitional differences in what constitutes “enrichment” and “reprocessing,” two sensitive nuclear technologies that can provide a direct path to separated weapons usable material. At times these technologies are defined capaciously to include the entire process, thereby all equipment that could eventually lead to weapons development. And other times they are narrow, focusing on the nuclear materials that go into and are yielded by the actual process. Contestation over how to define these activities allowed the US to maintain a very different policy towards both countries. Archival evidence reveals US Vice President Dick Cheney was persuaded by the director for engineering at Argonne National Laboratory that the technical process of pyroprocessing is proliferation resistant. Thus, redefining what is meant by “reprocessing” allowed the Bush administration to help South Korea develop its own pyroprocessing capability. And though the US did not negotiate directly with Iran during the early 2000s, much of the conflict over its nuclear program was based on how to define uranium enrichment—with the IAEA, Iran, and Western states presenting very different definitions for what it means for Iran to “suspend” uranium enrichment.

The cases of South Korea and Iran suggest the strategic manipulation of the technical processes of uranium enrichment and reprocessing. But what enables this manipulation is the interaction between technology and politics—an interaction that makes it possible for different actors to contest the meaning of technical processes. The IAEA’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements and Additional Protocol use inspection and monitoring of nuclear material in different technical processes to ensure that states abide by their commitment to use nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes. And yet, differences between South Korea and Iran suggest that technical and political solutions often clash and yet, are deeply entangled. There is no apolitical, technical solution to the problem of the spread of nuclear technology. This article explores definitional differences between states but also between international institutions, such as the IAEA, and domestic US agencies, such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. We also explore the history of these definitions and how they have changed over time. We end by considering whether technical and political definitions can in fact coincide—can technical consensus over definitions lead to political clarity? We argue that technical clarity can help at the margins but technical solutions necessitate rethinking the politics of proliferation.

Authors

• Chantell Murphy, Y-12 National Security Complex

• Sidra Hamidi, Stetson University