Back in 2003, David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund had estimated after careful analysis that China had produced at its two plutonium production sites, Jinquan and Guangyuan, between 2 and 5 tons of plutonium for weapons, leaving China currently an inventory of “4 tons or less.”
Very recently, the IPFM group arrived at a more circumscribed estimate for how much plutonium from military production is in China’s stockpile: 1.8 tons plus or minus 0.5 tons.
David told me on the phone this week it would appear that in large part the lower numbers cranked out by IPFM derived from a lower estimate for the thermal rating of the Guangyuan reactor.
The size of China’s plutonium stocks could have implications for future expansion of its nuclear arsenal, either as part of its modernization plans or in response to a US deployment of a ballistic missile defense system. For example, if China were to increase the number of warheads on long range missiles from the current level of roughly 20 to a level of 75 to 100, as suggested by the December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), that could require 0.2 to 0.4 tonnes of plutonium, assuming these warheads contained 3 to 5 kilograms of plutonium each. A buildup to 200 warheads on long-range missiles—a number reportedly suggested by the 2000 NIE—would require 0.6 to 0.9 tonnes of plutonium.
Thus, unless China dismantled some existing warheads on shorter range systems and reused the plutonium, limits on its plutonium stocks might place a bound on how much it could expand its long-range arsenal without restarting plutonium production. This may be an important consideration for China if it wants to keep open the option of expanding its strategic nuclear forces in response to possible US ballistic missile defense deployments. Indeed, while Chinese officials stated in the mid-1990s that China was no longer producing fissile material for weapons and had no plans to resume, China has resisted efforts to negotiate a formalized fissile material cut off treaty.
Since this paper was published, China has stated that it favors negotiation of an FMCT, but China is widely believed to be standing behind Pakistan, which is blocking the negotiation in the CD in Geneva.
Unlike the rest of the P-5, China also won’t declare a formal moratorium on weapons fissile material production. I had argued in November that China should declare such a moratorium if it wanted to build confidence and alleviate foreign concerns about potential for proliferation from their future fuel cycle cooperation with CNNC.
In the course of preparing that article over nine months, on two occasions PLA officers expressed to me the view that China might at some future time resume defense fissile material production, especially should China and the US not resolve serious strategic issues including redeployment of US strategic forces in Asia and ballistic missile defense. Since publication of the Carnegie article, another Chinese official aimed to somewhat qualify these statements, interpreting the PLA’s position on future restart of nuclear material production as a “policy of complete ambiguity.”
