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Uranium Constraints in Pakistan:How Many Nuclear Weapons Does Pakistan Have?


Affiliations
1 National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISc Campus, Bengaluru 560 012, India
2 Center for Science, Technology and Policy, Bengaluru 560 094, India
 

It is generally accepted that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme relies on domestic supplies of uranium. Although constraints on uranium supply in Pakistan are recognized, this is often not taken into account when estimating the amount of fissile material that Pakistan may have produced. In simple words, most assessments of Pakistan’s fissile materials and arsenal size fail to look at the supply and demand situations in Pakistan in an integrated way. This paper attempts to rectify this lacuna by taking a combined look at the supply and demand situations for uranium in Pakistan. It specifically addresses issues of how shortages in supply or increases in demand will affect the allocation of available uranium resources for meeting various military and civilian needs.

Keywords

Fissile Materials, Highly Enriched Uranium, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Weapons Grade Plutonium.
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  • Zia Mian, A., Nayyar, H. and Rajaraman, R., Exploring uranium resource constraints on fissile material production in Pakistan. Sci. Global Secur., 2009, 17(2–3), 77–108.

  • Pakistan does not report its Uranium production figures to IAEA or to any other International Agency. The OECD Red Book provides their estimates of the Uranium production in Pakistan.

  • Pakistan, IAEA Country Nuclear Profile; https://cnpp.iaea.org/ countryprofiles/Pakistan/Pakistan.htm.

  • Fuel Cycle Calculations, Appendix Chapter 4, in The Future of Nuclear Power, MIT Press, 2003, pp. 118–119.

  • https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx? current=427

  • The Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) data is published by the IAEA that provides data on the nuclear power reactors of the world.

  • Krass, A. S., Boskma, P., Elzen, B. and Smit, W. A., Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation. In Chapter 5, SIPRI, 1983; http://books.sipri.org/files/books/SIPRI83Krass/SIPRI83 Krass.pdf

  • Global Fissile Material Report 2010, International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2010; http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr10.pdf

  • For computational purposes we have taken the annual yellowcake production to be 54 tonnes.

  • Uranium deposits potentially amenable to uranium extraction by in situ leaching (ISL) technique were identified in the Siwalik sandstone near the village of Qabul Khel in the north-west frontier province of Pakistan. The production capacity of this ISL mine is estimated to be 2 tonnes annually. See in situ leach uranium mining: an overview of operations’, International Atomic Energy Agency, November 2016; http://wwwpub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/P1741_web.pdf. Pakistan is also reported to have started in-situ leaching at Nanganai in 1996 and Taunsa in 2004. Production capacity of 1 T yellowcake per year is reported for each of these facilities. See TRS425, IAEA Document, p. 20.

  • This period also saw a lot of rivalry between the A. Q. Khan led Khan Research Laboratories and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). This would have also possibly contributed to a more equitable distribution of Uranium resources.

  • Recovery efficiency of plutonium is quoted as more than 95% in most literature; this however, refers to only the solvent extraction stage. Losses in the recovery during the stages prior to the solvent extraction and the later stages when taken into account would put the recovery efficiency closer to 70%.

  • Kristensen, H. M. and Norris, R. S., Pakistani nuclear forces. Bull. Atom. Sci., 2016, 72(6), 368–376.

  • A quick estimate of Pakistan’s weapon arsenal can be got by noting that 3363 kg of YC is required for one HEU weapon assuming 15 kg of HEU per weapon. Similarly, 7600 kg of yellowcake is required per plutonium weapon assuming 5 kg per Plutonium weapon. If Pakistan were to convert all the available yellowcake (780 tonnes) to HEU weapons, it will have 232 HEU weapons. Alternatively, if all the yellowcake were to be converted to Pu weapons, it would have 103 Pu weapons.

  • Feiveson, H. A., Glaser, A., Zia Mian, A. H. and Von Hippel, F. N., Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation, MIT Press, 2014.

  • Global Fissile Material Report 2008, International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2008; http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr08.pdf.


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  • Uranium Constraints in Pakistan:How Many Nuclear Weapons Does Pakistan Have?

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Authors

Lalitha Sundaresan
National Institute of Advanced Studies, IISc Campus, Bengaluru 560 012, India
Kaveri Ashok
Center for Science, Technology and Policy, Bengaluru 560 094, India

Abstract


It is generally accepted that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme relies on domestic supplies of uranium. Although constraints on uranium supply in Pakistan are recognized, this is often not taken into account when estimating the amount of fissile material that Pakistan may have produced. In simple words, most assessments of Pakistan’s fissile materials and arsenal size fail to look at the supply and demand situations in Pakistan in an integrated way. This paper attempts to rectify this lacuna by taking a combined look at the supply and demand situations for uranium in Pakistan. It specifically addresses issues of how shortages in supply or increases in demand will affect the allocation of available uranium resources for meeting various military and civilian needs.

Keywords


Fissile Materials, Highly Enriched Uranium, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Weapons Grade Plutonium.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv115%2Fi6%2F1042-1048