Consistency Tests for the Declarations of U.S. Fissile-Material Production

Frank N. von Hippel, "Consistency Tests for the Declarations of U.S. Fissile-Material Production," Science & Global Security, 19, no. 1, (2011): 1-14.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the United States Government released data on the history of its purchases of natural uranium, the amount of separative work done by U.S. uranium enrichment plants, and the fission energy released by U.S. production reactors. These data provided the basis of nongovernmental estimates in the 1980s of U.S. production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. In 1996 and 2006, the United States published reports on its historical production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium respectively. This article presents a first rough analysis of the two sets of data and finds that they are reasonably consistent.

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