Nuclear Energy and the Non-Proliferation Treaty: A Retrospective Examination

ABSTRACT

This commentary looks at how nuclear power has evolved in the last five decades since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 1970. Using data on numbers of reactors constructed around the world, we show that the early expectations of a rapid growth of nuclear power plants around the world has not materialized. We also outline the trends in safeguards at nuclear facilities, namely the measures undertaken to prevent the diversion of fissile materials for use in nuclear weapons, and highlight the potential risks due to the rapid growth in the amount of material that could potentially be diverted.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear energy
• NPT
• safeguards
• proliferation

Introduction¹

On 19 December 1967, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 2346 A (XXII) that requested the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament, which had been set up six years earlier, to submit a report on the negotiations on a non-proliferation treaty (United Nations General Assembly 1967). That report was to evolve into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1970.

The NPT is inextricably tied to nuclear energy. On the one hand, Article IV of the treaty recognizes “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination”. On the other hand, the previous article, i.e., III, recognizes the inherent conflict with the larger aim of the treaty to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons by requiring every “non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty … to accept safeguards … with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”.

In the last five decades, however, the economic realities of, and the prospects for, nuclear energy have changed significantly. This commentary article briefly summarizes this history. As we demonstrate by looking at the actual spread of nuclear power among members of the NPT, the treaty’s “Third Pillar”, the promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear technology, did not appeal to most countries, particularly in the developing world. A second trend has been a sharp decline in building more plants even in countries already operating nuclear plants. As a result, the share of nuclear power in the commercial electricity mix in the world has declined from a maximum of 17.5% in 1996 to 9.8% in 2021.² Renewable sources of energy, excluding large hydropower plants, have been growing rapidly, contributing 12.8% in 2021.

The second part of this article surveys the parallel history of safeguarding nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). After outlining the motivations for undertaking such measures in the first place, we describe the changing nature of procedures used, the growth in the number of facilities being safeguarded by the IAEA, and the even sharper growth in the amount of material to be safeguarded. We contrast the last two trends with the IAEA’s budget for this work.

History of Nuclear Power Deployment

Scientists and engineers have envisioned a nuclear-powered future ever since the atomic age began. Nuclear reactors started supplying electricity to national grids ever since June 1954, when the Obninsk reactor in the Soviet Union started operating. Barely six months earlier, President Eisenhower in his famous “Atoms for Peace” speech at the UN General assembly had termed atomic power “this greatest of destructive forces” but went on to prophesizing that it “can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind”. He added for emphasis: “Who can doubt, if the entire body of the world’s scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage?” (Eisenhower 1953).

Eisenhower also emphasized that a “special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world”. Such promises underlie the Article IV obligation to “further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world”.

But, the last seven decades have demonstrated the expensive nature of nuclear energy. Most developing countries do not view nuclear power as helping them develop and grow economically. As a result, the hopes about universal usage expressed by Eisenhower never materialized. Only a minority of countries in the world have ever built nuclear reactors to supply power.

This was not what international agencies foresaw in the 1970s, shortly after the NPT came into force. In 1974, the IAEA predicted that 3,600 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity would “most likely” be installed by 2000, possibly up to 5,300 GW. The OECD, too, published similar, optimistic, forecasts. Both international organizations were erroneous. The operating nuclear capacity in 2000 was a mere 350 GW (see Figure 1). That number has pretty much stayed put over the past two decades; operating nuclear plants at the end of 2022 could generate at most 369 GW.

Figure 1. Operating nuclear capacity projections by US and international organizations. Early projections covered time frames until 2000.

Sources: Gufler (2013).

Nuclear Reactor Construction

Even among countries that have built nuclear reactors, the rate of construction has not been uniform. The reactors operating currently were built before the 1990s. A plot of the number of reactors that started being built in a given year shows a noticeable maximum in 1976 (see Figure 2).³ During no year since then has the number of reactor construction starts approached anywhere near that maximum value of 44 reactors.

Figure 2. Construction starts of commercial nuclear reactors in the world 1951–2022.

Sources: World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023, with International Atomic Energy Agency Power Reactor Information System.

There has even been one year, since 1952, when no country began building a nuclear reactor. This was in 1995, the year of the NPT Review and Extension Conference.

The year 1979 saw 234 units listed as “under construction”, the highest ever, but 48 of these were never connected to the grid. Since the 1970s, over 250 reactor orders have been cancelled. At least 93 reactors – about one in eight – were abandoned at some point during construction. Some reactors were fully constructed but never operated.

Projects were abandoned for economic reasons, concerns about accidents (for example, in Germany), or because the public rejected nuclear power in a referendum (for example, in Austria). But the dominant reason, by far, was poor economics. Numerous utilities faced major financial challenges, with some even going bankrupt, because the cost of construction greatly exceeded initial estimates when the project commenced. This was especially common in the United States, which has built, or initiated building, the most nuclear plants.

Globally, nuclear power spread significantly more slowly, and resulted in fewer operating plants, than anticipated in the 1970s (see Figure 3):

Figure 3. The spread of national nuclear power programs 1954–End of 2021. Although South Korea is listed under the “Program Limitation or Phase-out” category, the current administration plans to reverse the previous government’s long-term phaseout policy. There are also four reactors being constructed.

Sources: World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2022, with International Atomic Energy Agency Power Reactor Information System.

• In 1970, when the NPT entered into force, fourteen countries had operating nuclear power plants that were connected to the electric grid.

• By 1985, when the maximum number of reactor constructions started, there were sixteen additional countries operating nuclear power plants.

• Between 1991 and 2021, five countries (China, Romania, Iran, UAE, Belarus) started up their first power reactors.

• Italy, Kazakhstan, and Lithuania shut down all their nuclear plants in 1987, 1998, and 2009 respectively.

• The majority of the countries currently operating nuclear plants (18 out of 33) are not building any new reactors; eight of these 18 countries have instituted policies calling for phasing out nuclear power, not allowing new reactor construction, or not allowing extending the lifetimes of operating reactors (some countries are reviewing these policies due to changes of government).

The number of new reactors connected to the grid has been a fraction of what it was during the peak of reactor construction. For example, seven reactors were connected to the grid in 2022, around one fifth of the peak value of 33 per year in 1984–85. During the last decade, i.e. 2013 to 2022, there were 66 new reactors connected to the grid around the world. The majority of these (39, or 59%) were in China, with the remaining 27 spread out over ten countries. Over the same period, 42 units were closed, none in China. In other words, the nuclear fleet outside of China is decreasing in size. For example, in 2022, while seven units (three in China) were commissioned, five reactors stopped operating.

As of the end of 2022, 411 reactors supplied electricity to grids. That figure is a full 27 units lower than the highest it ever was: 438 operating reactors in 2002 (Figure 4). A further 28 reactors were classified as being in Long-Term Outage (LTO) and were not supplying electricity. Most of these are in Japan (23) but there are also three LTO units in India and two in Canada. Countries classified as nuclear weapon states under the NPT operated 250 reactors, about 60% of the total.⁴

Figure 4. Operating reactors and their net operating capacity worldwide.

Sources: World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023, with International Atomic Energy Agency Power Reactor Information System.

As of the end of 2022, China had the most nuclear reactors under construction (22 units), with India in second place (8 reactors under construction). Thirteen of the 17 countries currently building new reactors, including Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey that are building their first nuclear power plants, are focused on a single site where all units are being built.⁵

Safeguards

The possible use of civilian nuclear programs, from facilities to technologies, materials and expertise to produce nuclear weapons was recognized from the beginning of the atomic age. Shortly after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when a proposal for the international control of nuclear weapons was being discussed, Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan project, argued: “We know very well what we would do if we signed such a convention: We would not make atomic weapons, at least not to start with, but we would build enormous plants, and we would design these plants in such a way that they could be converted with the maximum ease and the minimum time delay to the production of atomic weapons saying, this is just in case somebody two-times us; we would stockpile uranium; we would keep as many of our developments secret as possible; we would locate our plants, not where they would do the most good for the production of power, but where they would do the most good for protection against enemy attack” (Grodzins and Rabinowitch 1963, 55).

It is this potential connection between producing nuclear energy and acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities that has motivated the development of safeguards at nuclear facilities enshrined under Article III of the NPT.

Safeguards Arrangements

Safeguards arrangements with countries have changed with time. Laura Rockwood, then Section Head for Non-Proliferation and Policy Making at the IAEA, explains what happened in the early years:

The first Safeguards Document (INFCIRC/26) was developed by interested Member States and the Secretariat in 1959 and 1960 and approved by the IAEA’s Board of Governors on 31 January 1961. It contained the principles and procedures for the application of safeguards to small reactors. This document was extended to cover larger reactors by decision of the Board on 26 February 1964. In 1964 and 1965, a completely revised Safeguards Document was worked out by a group of Member State experts and approved by the Board after unanimous concurrence by the General Conference in September 1965 (INFCIRC/66). Annex I to INFCIRC/66 (published in INFCIRC/66/Rev.1), which contains provisions for reprocessing plants, was approved by the Board in 1966, and Annex II (published in INFCIRC/66/Rev.2), which contains provisions for safeguarded nuclear material in conversion and fuel fabrication plants, was approved by the Board in 1968. With its two annexes, the Safeguards Document is now referred to as INFCIRC/66/Rev.2 (Rockwood 2013, 11).

By the time these decisions were made at the IAEA, Canada had already supplied the CIRUS reactor to India, and that reactor became critical in 1960. The same year, Canadian diplomat Harry Williamson told the US State Department that “the safeguards were essentially a handshake deal: Canada and India agreed that the reactor would be used for peaceful purposes only and the Indian Atomic Energy Commission would ‘exercise self-inspection’” (Burr 2017). However, the agreement did specify that “Only plutonium produced from the Canadian fuel elements will be audited”; but this agreement was evidently unworkable. The reactor was fueled with both “Indian and Canadian fuel elements” and there was “no way of telling what plutonium comes from what elements” (Burr 2017).

Many Canadian officials did attempt to persuade India to voluntarily agree to some form of controls or safeguards on the spent fuel produced. But Indian interlocutors were adamant in their rejection of such demands (Fawcett 1994, 110–114). At the same time, Indian officials were open to safeguards at power producing nuclear reactors, as opposed to research reactors. In 1956, at a conference on the IAEA’s statute, Homi Bhabha, the founder of India’s program, explained how he wanted to use international assistance to further India’s nuclear power program, including both weapon and civilian applications. “[T]here are”, Bhabha said, “many states, technically advanced, which may undertake with Agency aid, fulfilling all the present safeguards, but in addition run their own parallel programmes independently of the Agency in which they could use the experience and know-how obtained in Agency-aided projects, without being subject in any way to the system of safeguards” (Perkovich 1999, 29).

Even when the NPT entered into force in 1970, there was no “comprehensive safeguards” system. Then, the IAEA’s “Board of Governors established a Safeguards Committee (Committee 22) to advise it on the contents of safeguards agreements to be concluded between the NNWSs party to the NPT and the IAEA” and this Committee “developed a document entitled ‘The Structure and Content of Agreements between the Agency and States Required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’” (INFCIRC/153 (Corr.)). The Board approved this document in 1972, which became the basis for negotiating safeguards agreements under the NPT. Two years later, the agency used this document as the basis to develop and publish a model agreement: GOV/INF/276, Annex A. When countries enter into safeguards agreements based on that model, they are said to have adopted “full scope” or “comprehensive” safeguards agreements” (Rockwood 2013, 12).

Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) are not required to negotiate any safeguards agreements with the IAEA. But, as Laura Rockwood points out, “INFCIRC/153 (Corr.) also provided the framework for the voluntary offer agreements (VOAs) of the five NPT NWSs” (Rockwood 2013, 12). The IAEA safeguards 272 power reactors as of 2021; 246 of these are in NPT member states, including one power reactor in China. The IAEA also safeguards reactors in non-NPT member states such as India and Pakistan. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and France have not placed any power reactors under IAEA safeguards (Table 1) (International Atomic Energy Agency 2021c, 13–20, Table A33(b); International Atomic Energy Agency (2021a), 5–6, Table 1).⁶

Table 1. Operational power reactors and power reactors under construction and their IAEA safeguards status in nuclear-armed states as of the end of 2020.

Country	Power Reactors (operating and under construction)	Under IAEA Safeguards (as of 2020)
China	63	1
France	57	0
India	29	19
Israel		0
North Korea		0
Pakistan	7	7
Russia	41	0
United Kingdom	17	0
United States	96	0

The list of operational reactors includes those classified as being in long-term outage in the World Nuclear Industry Status Reports.

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (2021c, 2021a).

Most nuclear facilities are subject to agreements with the IAEA for comprehensive safeguarding arrangements, which cover 681 of the 717 facilities under safeguards – including power reactors and various fuel chain facilities (International Atomic Energy Agency 2021b, 140). India, Israel, and Pakistan have negotiated INFCIRC/66 type agreements with the IAEA for a total of 25 facilities; a further 11 facilities are safeguarded through voluntary offer agreements.

Growth in Safeguards

Although nuclear power did not grow as expected in the 1970s, the need for safeguards has nonetheless been increasing. This is because uranium has to be mined, milled, converted, enriched (in reactor designs not fueled with natural uranium), and fabricated into fuel for every operating nuclear plant till they are closed. Any irradiated fuel discharged from the reactor will also need to be safeguarded.

This increased need for safeguards can be tracked in many ways. One metric is the number of safeguarded facilities. For this metric, the increase was primarily in the 1970s; subsequently the numbers of facilities in non-nuclear weapon states stopped expanding rapidly. This metric is unlikely to change significantly in the future because of the trends in nuclear reactor construction described earlier.

In contrast, a second metric – the number of significant quantities (SQ) of material under safeguards – has continued to increase sharply. That has gone up from 271 SQs as of 31 December 1969,⁷ to 172,180 SQs as of 31 December 2010, to 221,432 SQs by the end of 2020 (International Atomic Energy Agency 2021b, 101, 139). That represents an increase by 25% just during the last decade.

What has not risen concomitantly is the amount of money the IAEA assigns for safeguards. The IAEA safeguards budget in 1990 was around US$120 million (in 2020 dollars), up from around US$12 million in 1970; since 1990s, the budget has more or less plateaued except for a 20% rise between 2000 and 2005 (Kollar and Mathews 2009, 13). There has been some increase in the past decade, from €124 million in 2008 to €172 million in 2020 (both in 2020 euros) (International Atomic Energy Agency 2009, v; International Atomic Energy Agency 2021b, 135–136).

Conclusion

Despite the expectations reflected in the NPT, nuclear power has not become a significant source of electricity generation. Among signatory countries to the NPT, just a fraction has built nuclear plants. The limited expansion of nuclear power has lowered the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. At the same time, there is reason for concern about possible proliferation because funding for safeguards has not kept pace with the growing stockpile of materials and facilities that could serve as sources of diversion.

The fundamental reasons for why nuclear energy did not expand at the rate anticipated during the early decades – namely the high costs, the possibility of severe accidents, and the difficulty of dealing with nuclear wastes – all remain valid. Indeed, the high costs of nuclear power have become even more of a drawback in the last decade because of the rapid decline in the costs of renewable energy sources. As a result, the outlook for nuclear power is bleak, its share of global commercial electricity having fallen below 10% in 2021—for the first time in four decades – and it will continue diminishing. These trends will have a positive effect on the containment of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 An earlier version of this commentary was published as part of Global Fissile Material Report 2022 (International Panel on Fissile Materials 2022). We thank Zia Mian and Moritz Kütt for their feedback and contributions.

² There are no reliable statistics about non-commercial electricity generation, e.g. from off-grid solar and wind, which has been spreading rapidly over the past decade. Therefore, the actual share of nuclear and other commercial power sources is lower than represented in the available statistics.

³ Construction start is defined as the beginning of the concreting of the base mat of the reactor building. Neither the planning and licensing procedure nor the site preparation work is included.

⁴ United States 92, France and China 56 each, Russia 37 and the United Kingdom 9 (Schneider and Froggatt 2023).

⁵ Construction of a fourth unit at the Akkuyu site in Turkey started in July 2022.

⁶ For safeguarding facilities, the IAEA sometimes counts two reactors as one facility (e.g. Doel 1 & 2 NPP in Belgium are counted as one facility). For counting reactors, the IAEA counts these facilities as multiple reactors. Here, the number of reactors is counted.

⁷ Calculated by Moritz Kütt on the basis of IAEA Annual reports and privately communicated to us. He plans to publish this soon.