Military Fissile Material Production and Stocks in France
نویسنده
چکیده
France ended fissile material production for military purposes in the 1990s and has started to decommission and dismantle its production facilities at Marcoule and Pierrelatte. This paper provides an overview of the French production complex and presents new estimates of historic fissile-material production, which include neutronics calculations for the production reactors at Marcoule. The analysis suggests that France’s military inventories of plutonium and highly enriched uranium significantly exceed the requirements for its current nuclear arsenal. France has made public details about the total number of its nuclear weapons, but has so far been reluctant to make a similar declaration about its military fissile-material stockpiles. This paper proposes a series of steps that France could take towards greater transparency that take advantage of the dismantlement activities at Marcoule and Pierrelatte to demonstrate new verification technologies and approaches and that would facilitate progress towards nuclear disarmament.
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