ABSTRACT
No nuclear weapon can be made without kilogram quantities of fissile material such as highly enriched uranium (HEU). Both arms control and non-proliferation policy must deal with problems of safeguarding fissile materials, controlling additional production and securing disposition of materials made excess by nuclear disarmament in nuclear energy policy. Only an international 'Atomic Development Authority' would be authorized to work with directly weapons-usable fissile materials. This chapter provides an overview of three major aspects of fissile material control, the challenge of fissile material abundance, the need to end production of fissile materials and the use of fissile material reductions as a tool for arms reductions. The challenges to fissile material controls on nuclear weapons that are of greatest concern are, the spread of centrifuge uranium-enrichment technology, the huge quantities of civilian but weapons-usable plutonium being separated from spent power-reactor fuel and the huge stockpiles of fissile materials extracted from nuclear weapons made excess by the end of the Cold War.
