The SIPRI Update for April 2013 is out now—read it online, or subscribe to receive the SIPRI Update in your inbox each month.
In the latest SIPRI Essay, Ian Anthony and Lina Grip discuss the global market in natural uranium. They write:
Making nuclear weapons requires access to materials—highly enriched uranium or plutonium—that do not exist in nature in a weapons-usable form. To constitute a threat, natural uranium needs to go through a challenging and time-consuming process of transformation as it moves through the nuclear fuel cycle.
Their conclusion?
Restricting access to natural uranium could be an important aspect of the global efforts to obstruct the spread of nuclear weapons. The time is ripe to start thinking seriously about the design of such control measures and how responsibility can be shared across the non-proliferation regime.