See comment on question 6.
8. WHAT SAFEGUARDS ARE NECESSARY TO PREVENT CLANDESTINE PRODUCTION OF
TRITIUM? WOULD AN INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT FLATLY PROHIBITING PRODUCTION
IN QUANTITY BE DESIRABLE?
U-235 and plutonium may be used either in weapons or as fuels for
peacetime reactors. Here is the reason most frequently cited for
requiring that international control include not only inspection but
also such further guaranties as United Nations ownership, operation, and
management of “dangerous” plants. The potentiality, both for good and
evil, that characterizes fissionables does not appear to characterize
tritium, which has no known peacetime uses except as a laboratory
research tool. Is it therefore possible that the reason for requiring
inspection plus other guaranties as regards U-235 and plutonium does not
apply to tritium and that inspection alone would answer?
If quantity production of tritium were altogether forbidden—as having no
peacetime purpose—the mere act of preparing lithium (the tritium raw
material) for irradiation and the mere act of inserting it in a nuclear
reactor might be considered a violation. Would such action be impossible
to conceal from managers and inspectors stationed at each reactor
permitted under the control agreement? Would an illegal reactor itself
be impossible to conceal from inspectors enjoying freedom of movement?
A few private commentators have argued that the UN plan fundamentally
errs in assuming industrial power to be around the corner. They estimate
that this goal is actually a decade or two away and that meanwhile the
control problem would be simplified if all high-powered reactors were
dismantled. Does the role of reactor-produced tritium in H-bomb
production strengthen such an argument?
The UN plan distinguishes between atomic facilities which are
sufficiently “dangerous” to require UN management and facilities which
may be operated by national governments and merely require international
inspection. Since all reactors produce neutrons and hence might be
useful in some degree—however small—in manufacturing tritium, is it now
necessary to regard certain reactors formerly considered to be
“non-dangerous” as now being in the “dangerous” category?
Are there other methods, apart from reactors, for producing tritium? If
so, how can they be controlled? Would the right of the international
control agency to own, operate, and manage “dangerous” plants and to own
and regulate both fissionable materials and “fusionable materials” meet
such a situation?