This article was first published by World Politics Watch on Dec. 21, 2006.

Angarsk, a city of about 270,000 in southeastern Siberia, is the home of the Angarsk Electrolyzing and Chemical Combine, a plant created to enrich uranium for the Soviet nuclear program. Throughout its history, the plant has been a restricted area -- closed to all foreign visitors. On Nov. 28, 2006, however, the state-funded Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported that the Russian government has decided to remove the Angarsk plant from its list of restricted areas. Soon, according to the report, Angarsk will become the site of the world's first "international uranium enrichment center" (IUEC).

Enriched uranium fuel is required by almost all nuclear reactors in use around the world today. However, enriched uranium is also used in the cores of nuclear weapons. The difference between bomb fuel and reactor fuel is the level of enrichment -- building a bomb requires that the fuel must be enriched to contain at least 20 percent of the rarer uranium isotope U-235 (ideally, closer to 95 percent), while most modern nuclear power plants operate at enrichment levels well below 20 percent.

Because the technology used to enrich uranium to the levels used to fuel power plants is essentially same as the technology required to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons -- the difference lies mostly in the time required to enrich the fuel -- any technology used to enrich uranium fuel for power plants is inherently "dual-use." Since Article IV of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ensures access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology for non-nuclear weapon states, however, the technology for uranium enrichment must be permitted to all states under the current nonproliferation regime. Countries like Iran could therefore, in principle, develop their enrichment technology up to a certain point under the cloak of a "peaceful" nuclear energy program before jettisoning the peaceful-use pretense and rapidly developing nuclear weapons -- a scenario often described as a "break out."

Following India's nuclear test of 1974, concerns about such a "break-out" scenario led many states that possessed enrichment technology to band together to form the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and create stringent rules for themselves to prevent the transfer of sensitive enrichment technology. Since developing, maintaining, and operating enrichment facilities is quite expensive, for decades recipient states were mostly content to buy their fuel from NSG members. However, recent events -- including the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the revelation of A.Q. Khan's black market trade in nuclear technology, North Korea's nuclear test, and suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions -- have raised worries that a future political crisis could interrupt the steady supply of nuclear fuel. This, further, has led to concerns among NSG states that more countries will pursue enrichment technologies themselves, to ensure a continued supply of fuel.

Many hope that this clear proliferation danger can be addressed by giving states that currently forego indigenous enrichment capabilities incentives to continue doing so, by strengthening guarantees that supplier states will not cut off fuel shipments for political reasons. "Multilateralization" of certain aspects of the fuel cycle may have the potential to address this issue. The IUEC in Angarsk gives the most concrete example of such a proposal to date.

Interested states will (in theory) be able to ensure their access to nuclear fuel from the Angarsk IUEC by meeting "established non-proliferation requirements" in exchange for assured access to the fuel produced by the center. Russia envisions its IUEC will have "equal, non-discriminatory membership for all," "transparency," and "involvement of the IAEA in [the fuel center's] activities," but otherwise the details of the arrangement remain opaque. In any case, Russia will retain exclusive control of all sensitive enrichment technology, so the exact nature of "membership" remains an open question. It could mean anything from a contractual relationship to some role in physically managing the facility. It is also unclear how such a facility, situated in Russian territory, will provide any further assurance that nuclear fuel shipments will not be interrupted.

The IUEC in Angarsk is the first specific proposal resulting from Russian President Vladimir Putin's Global Nuclear Power Infrastructure (GNPI), an initiative announced on Jan. 25, 2006, that aims at establishing a network of international fuel cycle centers (it is unclear whether they will all be based in Russia). GNPI is one of two major "multilateral" fuel cycle initiatives in development today; the other is the United States' Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).

GNEP also envisions international membership, but only of countries already possessing fuel cycle technologies. This consortium would lease fuel to all interested countries that meet its nonproliferation requirements, and handle enrichment and waste management on its own. Essentially, GNEP would be a more complete sharing of technology among a very limited set of partners, while GNPI would be a very limited sharing of responsibility with any interested countries. Both, however, promise to supply nuclear fuel to all countries which agree to forego pursuit of enrichment capabilities.

GNEP attempts to address the flip side of NSG members' attempts to keep enrichment technology from spreading: fears among recipient states that such proposals are thinly veiled attempts to revoke their "inalienable right" to peaceful nuclear technology. These fears may even be spurring more countries to pursue nuclear enrichment technology, in hopes that they can achieve significant capability before any new international agreement solidifies and locks them out of the club. Tellingly, all "multilateral" fuel cycle initiatives advanced at the IAEA General Conference in 2006 were proposed by actual or potential nuclear suppliers.

Unsurprisingly for proposals pushed by current nuclear suppliers, most such initiatives aim to create backup-only supplies that will be available only in the event that the existing market for nuclear fuel fails and thus will not affect prices on the nuclear fuel market. For example, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, recently pledged $50 million to the IAEA to fund the development of an international nuclear fuel bank. Rather than producing fuel like Russia's IUEC, the fuel bank would simply store a reserve to be used in case of an emergency interruption in supplies of nuclear fuel. If the idea moves forward, the IAEA will decide how the fuel bank will operate and, presumably, who would have access to the fuel.

The fact that these most such initiatives are simply backup proposals -- combined with the questionable benefits of "multilateralization," the general indifference of countries that purchase nuclear fuel toward such proposals, and the historically rare interruptions of nuclear fuel supply -- means it is unlikely they will deter countries truly interested in pursuing their own enrichment capabilities. Upon close examination, GNEP and GNPI are not even truly multilateral initiatives -- Russia will maintain control of the nuclear technologies used under GNPI, while the United States and existing nuclear suppliers will do the same under GNEP.

That GNEP and GNPI are the most complete fuel cycle proposals to date shows how immature this debate remains, as well as how incremental any steps towards true multilateral fuel cycle management must be. They are still encouraging, however; if supply of nuclear fuel can be assured further, it may become easier for the international community to discern the intentions of countries like Iran. If Iran can get fuel easily from the international market, a domestic enrichment capability is less likely to be plausibly peaceful.

Finally, the very existence of such a debate is encouraging. The Angarsk IUEC, once operational, will be a first step toward finding out whether nuclear technology can be secured quickly enough to prevent a nuclear tragedy.

Eric Hundman has been a researcher at the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research and the Center for Defense Information. He is a recent graduate of Yale University.