Military Fissile Material Production and Stocks in France

France endedssile material production for military purposes in the 1990s and has started to decommission and dismantle its production facilities at Marcoule and Pierrelatte. This paper provides an overview of the French production com- plex and presents new estimates of historicssile-material production, which in- clude neutronics calculations for the production reactors at Marcoule. The anal- ysis suggests that France's military inventories of plutonium and highly enriched uranium signicantly exceed the requirements for its current nuclear arsenal. France has made public details about the total number of its nuclear weapons, but has so far been reluctant to make a similar declaration about its militaryssile-material stockpiles. This paper proposes a series of steps that France could take towards greater transparency that take advantage of the dismantlement ac- tivities at Marcoule and Pierrelatte to demonstrate new verication technologies and approaches and that would facilitate progress towards nuclear disarmament