Six years after the end of the Cold War and a half-century beyond the dropping of the atomic bombs, the world is entering a new, more dangerous era.

The immediate threat of mutual nuclear annihilation may now be behind us, but before us is a brave new nuclear world whose awesome dimensions are only now being realized. The year 2000 will mark a turning point in human history, when more atom-bomb material begins circulating in civilian commerce than exists in nuclear weapons.

The material is weapons-usable plutonium, created in civilian reactors that generate electricity for cities, rather than in military reactors that produce material for bombs. The problem is that although the intended use of these two kinds of reactors is different, the byproduct is the same---plutonium, an essential ingredient of nuclear weapons. Civilian electrical power reactors are typically much larger than military production reactors and therefore produce many times more plutonium.

The nuclear industry is well on its way to introducing this civilian plutonium on the world market as a commercial fuel, as it does uranium. The uranium now used in power reactors is a low grade that cannot be used in weapons. But the plutonium can be used either for fuel or for bombs.

Plutonium becomes a concentrated nuclear-explosive material once it is separated from the highly radioactive wastes (so-called "spent fuel") of a reactor. If then mixed with uranium, the plutonium can be used to fuel reactors. This is the industry's plan.

A further problem is the continuing use of bomb-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU) in research reactors on university campuses and in research institutes, where security is typically relaxed. International trade in HEU was started with little foresight in the 1950s, under the Atoms for Peace program. Over the next three decades, the United States exported dozens of nuclear research reactors and tens of tons of HEU---the same material used in the Hiroshima bomb. If stolen or diverted, a tiny fraction of this material---less than 25 kilograms ---would be sufficient to build a nuclear weapon. Commerce in such material is especially dangerous because of the relative ease with which it can be made into nuclear weapons. A number of nations, including Belgium, France, Germany and South Africa, are refusing to fully cooperate in an international program to convert existing reactors and build new reactors to use low enriched uranium that cannot be made into bombs.

At the same time, plutonium separation in so-called "reprocessing plants," once the exclusive domain of bombmakers, is now getting underway in earnest in the commercial sector. Fortunately, it is still confined to a relatively small group of countries---Britain, France, India, Japan and Russia. The question is, can separation and use of plutonium be stopped before it spreads further?

The United States does not reprocess spent fuel of power reactors at home for both economic and non-proliferation reasons. But the U.S. has not been prepared to press either case on European and Japanese allies or to enforce U.S. non-proliferation laws to restrain their plutonium programs. Seventy-five per cent of the plutonium being extracted today in Europe and Japan is from U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel.

The U.S. has given political interests with allies clear precedence over its obvious security interest in making sure that U.S. exports of non-weapons-usable nuclear fuel do not end up as weapons-usable plutonium in world commerce. The result: U.S.-origin plutonium is now beginning to enter world commerce in frightening amounts.

The brave new world ahead is actually a crossroads. One path leads to widespread use of plutonium as a commercial fuel on the premise that it is being adequately protected against misuse for bombs by nations or by groups. The other path leads to a ban on civilian plutonium because 100% protection and permanent peaceful use cannot be guaranteed.

Both paths are still open. Plutonium is an essential weapons material, but it is not an essential reactor fuel. Ample reserves of inexpensive uranium have been found to keep power reactors operating. Low-grade uranium fuel for power reactors is four to eight times cheaper than mixed plutonium-uranium fuel. The plutonium industry, originally established to offset an anticipated uranium shortage, is no longer needed. But the factories it has built in the meantime to extract plutonium and fabricate it into fuel are beginning to start up nonetheless.

The world can live without civilian plutonium. The question is, can the world live with it? If present plans proceed, many hundreds of tons of separated plutonium will have to be protected in the decades ahead against the loss of the few pounds needed for a bomb. As one humorist dryly observed, "Only one atomic bomb can ruin your entire day." Since plutonium's shelf life is thousands of years, industrial decisions being made today could imperil human society indefinitely.

Should plutonium be used as fuel or disposed of as waste? The answer hangs on the capability to secure that material against use in weapons. The international inspection regime established to verify that peaceful nuclear programs are not misused for military purposes is not adequate to the task. Iraq and North Korea have both shown how military nuclear programs can be developed under the guise of peaceful ones without detection by international inspectors. Compounding this danger is the inability of the inspectors promptly to detect losses of weapons quantities of plutonium from large commercial facilities that operate "legitimately."

It is well understood in the industry, but not acknowledged publicly, that there are "systematic diversion schemes" capable of defeating the plutonium measurement and security systems being operated by international inspectors and national authorities. These schemes could be used by the state operating a large plant, or by individual employees working in collusion with outside states or groups, to divert enough plutonium for several weapons. In addition, prompt conversion of peaceful plutonium or bomb-grade uranium stockpiles into nuclear weapons by governments in response to regional or global crises is also possible and may pose the ultimate danger. This is what Iraq undertook in 1990, until the Gulf War interrupted its crash bomb program.

By the turn of the century, 1,400 metric tons of plutonium will have been produced in the spent fuel of nuclear power reactors, and some 300 tons of it will have been separated into weapons-usable form. Less than 18 pounds (8 kilograms) is needed to build a Nagasaki-type bomb. The amounts will continue to grow rapidly. By 2010, there will be 550 tons of separated plutonium in commerce, more than twice the amount now contained in the world's nuclear arsenals.

By that time, Japan will have acquired an amount of plutonium equivalent to the present U.S. military stockpile. The nuclear-weapons option inherent in the Japanese plutonium program is causing uneasiness among Japan's neighbors and stimulating their interest in acquiring plutonium themselves. Assuming that the technology and materials suitable for making nuclear weapons continue to spread as legitimate articles of commerce, nuclear proliferation and the closely connected threat of nuclear terrorism will become a principal danger of our time.

Pursuing innovative and effective ways to avoid that danger is the work of the Nuclear Control Institute.

For more details, see "The Plutonium Threat" and "The Uranium Threat."