Reforming the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Time Is Running Out

Revelations earlier this decade about Iran's clandestine nuclear activities reignited global concerns that the spread of such sensitive fuel-cycle technology would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. In a 2003 Economist op-ed, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei proposed that the time was right to re-examine multilateral approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle.1

Similar studies had already been undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s but had not produced concrete results.2 Nonetheless, states responded with a plethora of proposals aimed at thwarting the unchecked spread of uranium-enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies, for example, …