When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was negotiated in the 1960, there was no effort made to restrain uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. It was apparently assumed that any country that had or would have the technical ability to enrich or reprocess either already had nuclear weapons or was totally committed to never having them. This assumption has proven to be wrong.
Any signatory of the treaty has a right to pursue the development of the nuclear fuel cycle to any level. Under the treaty, such work on nuclear fuel cycles is only supposed to be for "peaceful purposes" but there is no enforcement of this restriction. Any technologically sophisticated country can build uranium enrichment facilities for the advertised purpose of creating fuel for nuclear power reactors or nuclear research reactors. However, such enrichment facilities can also produce weapons-grade materials.
Iran has been developing enrichment facilities and the possibility that it could produce nuclear weapons has sent shockwave through the international community. This has led to the negotiation of the recent agreement with Iran to limit its enrichment capabilities.
The international community has come to the realization that one way to reduce the dangers of enrichment proliferation is to find a way to reassure countries pursuing peaceful nuclear power that they will have secure access to fuel in the future without the need to enrich it themselves. Nuclear power plants are an enormous investment and countries without enrichment capabilities are justifiably concerned about their ability to obtain nuclear fuel on the international marked for the life of their power plants.
There have been attempts to address this problem. Russia in association with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) maintains a reserve of low-enriched uranium (LEU) suitable for nuclear fuel at an international center in Angarsk. However, in view of the fact that Russia has withheld fossil fuels from customers over political disputes, nuclear fuel customers are justifiably reluctant to rely on Russia for a external source of fuel.
Now Kazakhstan is officially launching an international nuclear fuel bank on August 27 which it will operate on behalf of the IAEA. The Kazakhstan fuel bank will being actual operations in 2017. It will store up to ninety tons of LEU sufficient to supply three typical light water power reactors. The LEU will be officially owned and operated by the IAEA. It will be made available to non-nuclear weapon states if they cannot secure nuclear fuel on the commercial nuclear fuel market. The applying state must be in compliance with a comprehensive non-proliferation agreement with the IAEA. After satisfying these conditions, the state would be given the LEU which it could then transfer to a fuel fabricator.
The Kazakhstan bank was funded with voluntary contributions. The Nuclear Threat Initiative is U.S. based NGO which donated fifty million dollars. The U.S. government donated forty nine million. Twenty five million came from the European Union. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates each gave ten million. Five million came from Norway. The establishment of the Kazakhstan nuclear fuel bank is a worthwhile project to reduce nuclear weapons proliferation.
Kazakhstan nuclear fuel bank:
