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THE U.S. HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM DECLARATION: TRANSPARENCY DEFERRED BUT NOT DENIED

In February 2006, the Department of Energy (DOE) released its historical account of U.S. production and disposition of highly enriched uranium (HEU) through 1996. The report was unclassified and had been completed in 2001, but it required five years of petitions and appeals under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) before the Bush administration was forced to release it. According to the report, in 1996 the United States had a stockpile of 741 metric tons (MT) of HEU with an average enrichment of 84 percent. Of that stockpile, 178 MT of HEU with an average enrichment of 62 percent had been declared excess for military purposes. In 2005 and 2006, an additional 70 MT was declared excess and 138 MT was put into a reserve for future use as naval reactor fuel. An estimated 5 MT of HEU was lost due to “normal operating losses,” and there was a residual discrepancy of about 3 MT between the number obtained by subtracting cumulative disposition from cumulative production and the actual 1996 stockpile. This article discusses the value of this information and provides insights about the feasibility of declaring additional U.S. weapons HEU excess and the ultimate limits of nuclear disarmament verification.