Understanding M2M

Evaluating Nuclear Disarmament Moments: From Megatons to Megawatts

The historic Reagan and Gorbachev negotiations were the product and starting point of a season of cooperation between the United States of America and the Soviet Union (later the Russian Federation.) One of the results of this season was the sharp reduction in nuclear weapons. At its peak it was estimated that nearly 70,000 atomic bombs were available in the 1980s. It has been calculated that after 1945 “more than 130,000 nuclear weapons were built.” 1 Today the estimate is 12,500. An important part of this reduction is due not only to the political-diplomatic agreement but to the technical choices that led to the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear bombs to produce electricity through civilian nuclear power plants which permanently eliminated a significant portion of that weapons material. In the 1950s and 1960s, Eisenhower and Johnson each proposed to the Soviet Union that each should set aside agreed amounts of HEU that had been made for weapons to instead be used for their civil nuclear energy needs. But the momentum of the arms race made these proposals a dead letter. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, however, signaled an end to the Cold War. The trust established between President Bush and Gorbachev led, after the August 1991 coup attempt against Gorbachev, to remarkably rapid, reciprocal arms reduction agreements, posing the question anew how to deal with the nuclear weapons material as weapons were dismantled.

To address this emerging opportunity a proposal for conversion of HEU by diluting it for use in civil reactors (from 90-98 percent enrichment level for the weapons HEU, to 4-8 LEU for 1 Next Steps to Universal Nuclear Disarmament, UN Chronicle https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/next-steps-universal-nuclear-disarmament retrieved June 6, 2024 electricity production) was made by Edoardo Amaldi and his team. 2 A group of Italian scientists and technologists (Politecnico di Milano; Pisa, LUISS, Lincei, Ansaldo, Enel, ENEA) prepared the feasibility study that was then presented jointly by Italy and the USSR as "Edoardo Amaldi Project" at the Fourth NPT Review Conference on 31 August 1990 and at the International Atomic Energy Agency 35th General Conference of 19 September 1991. The study was relevant because the conversion process would have achieved several significant results: ● The bombs would have been completely deactivated and made unusable ● Radioactive material was being used through standard lifecycle for civil application and thus no longer dangerous ● A huge amount of electricity would be produced for civilian use with significant economic and ecological results. Meanwhile, decades of scientific exchanges between American and Soviet experts, created the conditions for new explorations making possible experiments and cooperative agreements that were previously unthinkable. Then, in late December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia under President Yeltsin tried to orchestrate a consolidation of all Soviet nuclear weapons outside Russia – in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The U.S. and the world shared the interest of having Russia be the one nuclear weapons successor state to the USSR and to have the others join the NPT and non-weapons states. But the transition and economic adjustments were not easy. Even prior to the demise of the USSR and out of concern for the decaying conditions and security of nuclear materials in its vast nuclear complex, in an October 1991 OpEd in The New York Times, Thomas Neff suggested conversion of Soviet weapons HEU as the technical component of the “Grand Uranium Bargain” by which “valuable material … can be processed for use in commercial nuclear power plants.” 3 A novel aspect of this proposal was that the U.S. purchased the HEU converted for civil use: an “HEU Deal” between former adversaries. Neff also was able to discuss his proposal with then Deputy Minister Victor Mikhailov, who was visiting the U.S., who supported the idea and who became integral to its early implementation. This program would subsequently be branded as Megatons to Megawatts. 4 By early 1992, Yeltsin supported the HEU Deal in discussions with Bush. After review, Bush in August 1992 announced that the U.S. would seek to purchase HEU from Russian weapons, with details to be worked out within a year. In February 1993, with the blessing of Clinton and 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program Retrieved June 6, 2024 3 Thomas Neff, “Grand Uranium Bargain” The New York Times October 24, 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/24/opinion/a-grand-uranium-bargain.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&refe rringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb Retrived June 6, 2024 2 The promotion of the initiative from the beginning in 1989 started by Eng. Rotunno with Prof. Edoardo Amaldi of the Roman School of Physics and collaborator of Enrico Fermi in 1934, Prof. Elio Sgreccia President of STES (Scientists and Technologists for Development Ethics), Prof. Mario Silvestri of the Polytechnic of Milan and Ambassador Vincenzo Tornetta, who initiated the indispensable international diplomatic contacts. Yeltsin, Mikhailov and a U.S counterpart signed the agreement that the U.S. would purchase 500 metric tons of HEU derived from Russian weapons, over 20 years, that would be converted for use in civil reactors. The commercial contract to implement the agreement was signed in January 1994 between the U.S. and Russian executive agents (USEC and Tenex), with first shipments from Russia to the U.S. of diluted HEU to LEU beginning in 1995. When the Megatons to Megawatts Deal was completed in December 2013, some 500 metric tons of HEU – equivalent to some 20,000 Hiroshima weapons -- verified as from Russian nuclear weapons, had been transformed into civil nuclear fuel, producing roughly 10 percent of U.S. electricity for 20 years. The Deal also netted Russia about $17 billion through the commercial market, which proved vital to helping stabilize and secure their nuclear complex and materials during severe economic instability in Russia in the 1990s. While a variety of crises challenged the implementation of the Deal over these decades, and added complexity, the shared interests of the U.S. and Russia, and the commercial uranium companies, proved sufficient to sustain it. The Deal, by helping increase security and reduce the amount of especially attractive weapons material in Russia helped prevent proliferation of nuclear materials or know-how through illicit markets. By almost any standard, this sword to plowshares deal was an enormous success though it remains little known or studied. Building on the confidential peacemaking work of the Community of Sant’Egidio 5 and the extensive experience of the Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium and Cooperation Conflict and Complexity (AC4), an Informal Exploratory Working Group - IEWG has been created to study the Megatons to Megawatts case further , especially in four areas: - Political diplomatic dynamics - Scientific and technical solutions - Economic impact - Environmental significance While aware that the trend since the New START Treaty was signed in 2010 is towards re-armament and , the constructive engagement approach of the evaluation stresses that motivations towards nuclear disarmament can be strengthened by deeper knowledge of cases of demonstrated success and of the necessary conditions.. The IEWG work will be based on open non-classified sources and will include a preliminary overview of the literature available. Among the already relevant contributions is Jeffrey Hughes’ monograph on the deal. 6 The original Megatons to Megawatts - M2M program, by enabling the dismantling of thousands of Russian nuclear weapons, has been a significant moment in the disarmament trajectory. M2M demonstrated that nuclear weapons HEU can be irreversibly destroyed while producing 6 Jeff Hughes - “The Biggest Single Step: The Deal Eliminating Over 20,000 Atomic Bombs of Fuel,” (unpublished draft, undergoing revision). 5 https://www.santegidio.org/pageID/30056/langID/en/Peace.html beneficial results. 7 It invited the exploration of practical proposals and conditions necessary for reducing the nuclear danger, the relevance of mutually attractive strategies for actors involved (security, technical, economic and environmental), and the contribution of technological advances and civilian use of nuclear energy. The worrying recent trend in re-armament comes at a moment in human history where our planet’s life-sustaining climate system is increasingly compromised by rising global temperatures. There is an urgent need to rapidly decarbonize the global economy to limit climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 presented unprecedented, and potentially dire threats to world security, it also enabled the implementation of imaginative initiatives like the M2M agreement; so too may the growing recognition of extreme weather, sea rise and polar melting, drought and hurricanes, and the resulting economic, social and political dislocations, create new opportunities for urgent collaborative action that were not previously considered realistic. However, unless designed with justice and social vulnerability in mind, efforts in an energy transition may present disproportionate risks for already marginalized populations around the world. After a decline in nuclear power as an energy source, the scientific community is once again examining its potential as a tool for decarbonization. 8 In this context, the IEWG’s work will also explore whether there are environmental peacebuilding and decarbonization dividends that the Megatons to Megawatts program could impart. The issues of de-armament, de-escalation, peacebuilding through non-proliferation, and climate action span local to global scales and must be pursued collaboratively. Toward that end, the research undertaken by the IEWG will involve international researchers and institutions, while also leveraging the experience and expertise of climate scientists at Columbia University.

Want to learn more?

See how mathematical modelling frames this research:

In physical science, mathematical models can be used to determine how micro-scale individual interactions between parts of a system produce the macro-scale system properties of the entire system.  Based in the project’s causal loop diagram, an interactive mathematical model was created whereby interactions of all the peace factors can be computed together at once. Decisionmakers can then use the interface to explore the system‐wide effects resulting from different interventions. In this way, different hypothetical scenarios can be tried, evaluated, and judged against one another.

.