23 NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION
(30525)
8182/09
COM(09) 143
| Commission Communication: Nuclear non-proliferation
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| Legal base | —
|
| Department | Foreign and Commonwealth Office
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| Basis of consideration |
Minister's letter of 21 July 2009 |
| Previous Committee Report |
HC 19-xv (2008-09), chapter 2 (29 April 2009); also see (29718) 10049/08: HC 16-xxvi (2007-08), chapter 3 (2 July 2008)
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| To be discussed in Council
| To be determined |
| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Cleared
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Background
23.1 The Commission notes that, given the political context in
recent years, with a growing number of countries looking into
possibilities to engage a civil nuclear energy programme, there
is an even clearer need to strengthen international guarantees
of non-proliferation.
23.2 The Commission recalls that:
—
the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)[93]
sets out the general framework to address the non-proliferation
challenge and entrusts the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to play a key role in this area; and which acknowledges
the right of all NPT Parties to develop and use nuclear energy
for peaceful purposes;
— the UN Security Council acts as authority
of last resort to address the cases of major breaches to non-proliferation
commitments;
— the European Union, the Community and
their Member States act "within their respective competences,
in multiple ways in this area, comprising actions in the framework
of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) as well as those
founded on the Community Treaties." In this way, the Commission
says, "the EU can provide a considerable contribution to
addressing the non-proliferation challenge also at global level,
based on its extensive experience in dealing with nuclear power
and the range of instruments at its disposal."
23.3 The Commission also recalls that, in its Communication
10049/08 on "Addressing the international challenge of nuclear
safety and security",[94]
it announced that it would address to the Council and the Parliament
a specific Communication on the various EU instruments available
in the field of nuclear non-proliferation, in particular under
the Euratom Treaty.
The Commission Communication
23.4 The Commission says that the purpose of this
Communication is therefore:
"to set out the global context highlighting
the need for strengthened international guarantees of non-proliferation
(Section 2), to present the main available EU instruments in this
field, in particular those under the Euratom Treaty, (Section
3), and the possible ways these instruments could be used to develop
— in close coordination with the IAEA — stronger international
guarantees of non-proliferation (Section 4)."
23.5 It notes that the proliferation risk from the
use of nuclear energy arises from two specific nuclear activities,
namely enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent nuclear
fuel — activities that "require very complex and costly
technologies which can only be economically justified if a market
demand exists from a large number of nuclear power plants"
— and that, in this context of growing interest for nuclear
energy, "the international community must do everything possible
to minimize the risks of nuclear security incidents and/or diversion
of either nuclear materials or technology to non-peaceful uses
[and] ensure that conditions continue to be met regarding nuclear
non-proliferation, including the norms of the NPT and of the IAEA.",
which it sees as the key international actor in preventing nuclear
proliferation, deriving from the NPT and the enhanced safeguards
regime based on the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements and Additional
Protocols, and the right to possess fissile nuclear materials.
23.6 Having reviewed the main EU instruments in
the non-proliferation area and the role of the Euratom
Treaty, the Communication then examines The Possible Way
Forward and focuses on three areas where it suggests that
the risk of proliferation can be mitigated:
— strengthening
support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), its safeguards
and the Additional Protocol;
— extending cooperation with key nuclear
countries through bilateral Euratom agreements;
— contributing to the development of an
international system of guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel for
countries willing to develop nuclear energy without having their
own nuclear fuel cycle facilities.
23.7 The Commission says that the EU can strengthen
the NPT, as the cornerstone of the international nuclear non-proliferation
regime, through activities including reinforced co-operation with
the IAEA in the field of international safeguards, promoting universal
adoption of the IAEA's Additional Protocol and pushing for appropriate
sanctions against countries or exporters which breach nuclear
non-proliferation obligations.
23.8 The Commission notes that Euratom cooperation
agreements in peaceful uses of nuclear energy have been concluded
to date with major suppliers (USA, Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan)
or customers (Japan). Similar agreements could be concluded with
all countries wishing to have significant nuclear trade with EU
Member States and EU industry. Euratom agreements with third countries
would guarantee a high level of nuclear security and ensure that
all countries are committed to purely peaceful use of nuclear
energy.
23.9 In relation to the nuclear fuel cycle,
the Commission notes that every country could develop its own
fuel cycle; or, through a multinational approach, every country
could be guaranteed that it will have the fuel it needs —
which has the distinct advantage of minimising the risk of proliferation.
23.10 With regard to the last of these, the Commission
draws attention to the 8 December 2008 decision by the Council
in principle to support the establishment of a nuclear fuel
bank under the control of the IAEA, to which the European
Union could contribute up to €25 million, once the conditions
and modalities for the bank have been defined and approved by
the IAEA Board of Governors. The Commission says that "at
the same time, the Council welcomed the readiness of the Commission
to contribute to this project through relevant Community instruments",
and suggests that "in order to speed up the decision making
process, a mandate could be given to the Commission to contribute
to the definition of the conditions and modalities for establishing
the fuel bank." It sees "one of the main advantages
of a multilateral approach" as being "to encourage new
market entrants to voluntarily abstain from making complex and
costly investments which are disproportionate to their needs,
while bringing additional guarantees to fuel supply security."
By "actively contributing to the development of such an initiative",
the EU could "make full use of available Euratom
and other Community instruments such as the
Instrument for Stability and the Instrument for Nuclear Safety
and should take into account both the provisions of international
agreements, the Euratom Treaty and the good functioning of the
European nuclear market". With "the security of supply
for nuclear fuels" being "essential for guaranteeing
non-proliferation, in particular to prevent the spread of sensitive
technologies, such as enrichment," the Commission says that
the Euratom Supply Agency "should become a key actor in this
process."
23.11 In his Explanatory Memorandum of 21 April 2009,
the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Bill
Rammell) said that the UK supported such a multilateral approach
to the fuel cycle; and that, with regard to the idea of a fuel
bank to be administered by the IAEA, resources to initiate that
bank had now been committed and, in the coming months, a framework
would be taken to the IAEA Board of Governors to outline how this
might work (the EU had committed in principle to contribute up
to €25 million); and that the IAEA would have physical custody
of low enriched uranium available to all those member states that
needed fuel on the basis of criteria agreed in advance.
23.12 But he also made clear that the proposals in
the Communication were somewhat of a work-in-progress, and that
he was not entirely content with all of them, noting that the
Communication would be discussed by the nuclear counter-proliferation
group CONOP and the Atomic Questions Group (AQG) in April. He
drew attention to the need for a structured approach to determine
which states were "key" when it came to extending Euratom
cooperation, and for any agreements to be consistent with existing
obligations. He also suggested that there were a number of ideas
in play about how best to persuade non-nuclear states who wanted
to use nuclear power not to develop their own enrichment facilities,
and seemed not to be entirely clear as to whether the UK's favoured
concept — the Nuclear Fuel Assurance, or NFA, formerly called
the Enrichment Bond — and the Commission's proposal for
a nuclear fuel bank were complementary or not.
23.13 He also did not comment on the Commission's
proposal that "in order to speed up the decision-making process,
a mandate could be given to the Commission to contribute to the
definition of the conditions and modalities for establishing the
fuel bank", or that the Euratom Supply Agency "should
become a key actor" in the process of preventing the spread
of sensitive technologies, such as enrichment . Nor did the Minister
explain what the "Nuclear Threat Initiative" was; what
the efforts made by "our partners" to further the Multilateral
Nuclear Approaches agenda consisted of; who those partners were;
what the Multilateral Nuclear Approaches agenda was; what "the
proposals" were; or in what ways they remain incomplete.
Our assessment
23.14 We asked the Minister to clarify the matters
to which he had referred and we drew the Communication to the
attention of the House, and in the meantime retained the Communication
under scrutiny.[95]
The Minister's letter of 21 July 2009
23.15 In his letter of 21 July, Minister of State
at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Ivan Lewis) responds
as follows:
"MULTILATERAL NUCLEAR APPROACHES
"IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei
suggested to the Agency's General Conference in 2003 that the
wide dissemination of the most proliferation-sensitive parts of
the nuclear fuel cycle could be the 'Achilles Heel' of the nuclear
non-proliferation regime. He tasked an expert group the following
year with investigating multilateral approaches to the nuclear
fuel cycle, which would mitigate the proliferation risks through
multilateral control of the most sensitive parts of the nuclear
fuel cycle; this agenda has become universally known as MNAs or
multilateral nuclear approaches. To discourage states from developing
their own costly and complex enrichment or reprocessing facilities,
both of which can be used to produce fissile material for explosive
purposes, twelve different proposals have been put forward.
"The UK has played a leading role in this
work. As well as developing the Nuclear Fuel Assurance concept,
which we plan to take to the IAEA Board of Governors in the autumn,
we have worked with partners (in particular France, Germany and
the Netherlands) to get European Union funding of up to EUR 25m
for the Nuclear Fuel Bank. We have also been active in deepening
dialogue between supplier and customer countries. The UK co-sponsored
a conference in Berlin in April 2008 with Germany and the Netherlands,
and hosted a major conference at Lancaster House in March, attended
by over 30 countries from six continents. We will follow this
up with regional conferences, such as that just concluded in Jordan,
which we co-funded with the Netherlands.
"As stated above, twelve MNA proposals have
been put forward, including our own Nuclear Fuel Assurance (formerly
the Enrichment Bond) and Germany's Multilateral Enrichment Sanctuary
Project (MESP). These would provide assurance of supply of nuclear
fuel and enrichment services against political interference. These
are explained more fully in the United Nations Institute for Disarmament
Research paper which can be found on their website (http://www.unidir.org/audio/2009/
Fuel_Cycle_March09/Prepublication_Study_Paper.pdf ). In short
however, they fall into two main categories: physical and virtual.
The UK's Nuclear Fuel Assurance proposal is a virtual proposal
in that it does not involve construction of physical infrastructure
or a stock of nuclear fuel."
"NUCLEAR FUEL ASSURANCE (NFA) AND THE NUCLEAR
FUEL BANK
"The UK's Nuclear Fuel Assurance Initiative
and the Nuclear Fuel Bank proposal are complementary — as
are most of the other proposed multilateral approaches to the
nuclear fuel cycle put forward by partners. We believe that by
providing a menu of options to customer states we can facilitate
access to civil nuclear energy for those who want it, whilst minimising
the spread of proliferation-sensitive technology. The key is to
ensure viable and robust mechanisms under international auspices
that make it unnecessary and u unattractive for countries to develop
their own nuclear fuel cycle capacity.
"The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is
a US-based private trust, whose aim is to strengthen global security
by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons. Co-chaired by philanthropist
and CNN founder Ted Turner and former US Senator Sam Nunn, NTI's
Board comprises experts from ten countries, including Baroness
Williams of Crosby from the UK. NTI announced in 2006 that it
would donate $50m toward the creation of a Nuclear Fuel Bank under
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) auspices. The funding
was conditional on other states providing a further $100m, a figure
achieved earlier this year with pledges of funding from the European
Union, Kuwait, Norway, the United Arab Emirates and the United
States.
"The role of the Commission in the nuclear
fuel bank, and the suggestion that it be given a mandate 'to contribute
to the definition of the conditions and modalities for establishing
the fuel bank', is under discussion in relevant European working
groups. The Commission has no formal role in setting the EU's
non-proliferation agenda but, if agreed by EU Member States, may
be tasked with discrete projects working to our non-proliferation
objectives."
Conclusion
23.16 We thank the Minister for this further information,
which we are reporting to the House because of the widespread
interest in the subject.
23.17 As the Minister copied his letter to their
chairs, we are also forwarding this chapter of our Report to the
Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees.
23.18 We now clear the document.
93 Opened for signature in July 1968, the Treaty entered
into force on 5 March 1970. A total of 189 parties have joined
the Treaty, including the five nuclear-weapon States. Back
94
Which we considered on 2 July 2008; see headnote. Back
95
See headnote: HC 19-xv (2008-09), chapter 2 (29 April 2009). Back
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