The U.S. group also secured agreement that the effort should use existing reactors, and that no new reactors needed to be built specifically for plutonium disposition. Had the U.S. team been pushing an immobilization-only approach, these agreements would not have been possible. While the United States believes that both the immobilization options and the reactor options offer roughly equivalent levels of irreversibility and proliferation resistance, and that isotopics are only one factor among many to consider, this view is not necessarily shared by either the Russians or the rest of the world. The French meeting chairman attempted to insert language in the meeting document that attacked immobilization on this point, and praised the reactor option, claiming that reactor-grade plutonium is unusable in weapons. The French delegates in particular clearly had instructions to attack immobilization at every opportunity.
Parallelism improves negotiability.
At the same Paris meeting, as well as in bilateral discussions with the nations that participated, it was clear that if immobilization was presented as a complement to, rather than a competitor to, the reactor options, an international consensus could be formed behind the hybrid approach. This consensus behind the hybrid approach as a reasonable way forward formed the essential basis for the agreements that were achieved at the Paris meeting. Here too, had the United States been pushing an immobilization-only approach, it is very likely that no agreements could have been reached. The Paris meeting also made clear that there are genuine opportunities to put together a cooperative international venture to finance and implement the reactor option in Russia, so that the United States and Russia can move forward in parallel to eliminate their stockpiles of excess plutonium. For example, France, Germany, and Russia jointly proposed a plan to build pilot-scale facilities in Russia to convert pits to oxide and fabricate that oxide into reactor fuel.