Plutonium End Game

Press Release

Table of Contents

Preface

Summary and Recommendations

Chapter One: Nature of the problem of commercial plutonium

Chapter Two: A Brief History of Commercial Plutonium

Chapter Three: Assessment of the current situation

Chapter Four: Disposition of US-Russian Surplus Military Plutonium

Chapter Five: Alternative Disposition Options

References

The commercial plutonium business is in deep trouble. The underlying cause is the economic and technical failure of the breeder reactor strategy as the basis for a plutonium economy. The interim strategy of keeping the plutonium separation business going by using MOX fuel in existing commercial power reactors has also run into grave difficulties due to a combination of structural factors:

• the high costs of MOX fuel (including reprocessing) relative to LEU fuel
• low uranium prices
• a stagnant or declining nuclear power business mainly due to continued relative lack of competitiveness of nuclear-generated electricity
• an increasingly competitive market for electricity
• improvements in wind power³⁵ that have made wind energy far more economical than plutonium fuel
• widespread public concerns regarding the safety of nuclear power, intensified by the 1986 Chernobyl accident
• potential adverse proliferation consequences of nuclear power, and particularly of a plutonium-based nuclear power sector
• dramatic improvements in the efficiency of combined cycle natural gas fired electricity generation plants.

These structural factors have been accompanied by recent events, all but one of which are highly unfavorable to continued commercial reprocessing and MOX fuel use:

1. After the election of the Social Democratic-Green coalition government in late 1998, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power. This phase-out schedule, as it stands at the present time, will be relatively slow, corresponding approximately to the lifetime of the existing power plants. But the phase-out necessarily includes a stoppage of reprocessing German spent fuel. This will make it even more difficult to rationalize continued operation of UP2 in France (dedicated to foreign spent fuel reprocessing) and BNFL's THORP plant in Britain, also commissioned to serve foreign customers.
2. The German phase-out decision is causing reverberations in France and elsewhere, where the topic of a phase-out of nuclear power is no longer as politically difficult as before.
3. The Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Lords concluded in 1999 that commercial plutonium was a waste.³⁶ This was a severe blow to the prospects for plutonium fuel use in Britain.
4. The sodium-fire accident at the Monju breeder reactor in Japan in 1995 and the criticality accident at the Tokaimura plant in September 1999 have increased opposition to Japan's MOX fuel use plans. The entire future of nuclear power in Japan is now far more open to question than seemed possible before the Tokai accident.
5. The revelation that some BNFL MOX fuel quality control data were fabricated, including those relating to some of the fuel shipped to Japan. This has thrown the British MOX program into disarray. BNFL made and exported the fuel to Japan and Germany. Other batches of fuel, including some sent to Germany, were also suspect. The data fabrication scandal has considerably delayed Japan's plans to use MOX fuel and also has caused Japan to suspend further orders of MOX from BNFL. Germany and Switzerland have suspended their MOX contracts with BNFL. Even British Energy, the private company that operates British nuclear power plants, and which is expanding internationally, has stated that it would not use MOX fuel fabricated by BNFL in its reactors. British Energy has also stated that it prefers to store its spent fuel rather than have BNFL reprocess it.³⁷ BNFL has suffered $500 million in losses in the accounting year 1999-2000, most of it due to the data fabrication scandal.³⁸ These developments have thrown British reprocessing and MOX plans into disarray.
6. Minatom, the nuclear energy agency with the strongest attachment to a plutonium economy, has been and continues to be strapped for funds and cannot pursue an ambitious breeder reactor program on its own. Russia also lacks a commercial-scale MOX fuel fabrication plant.
7. The sole recent factor favoring MOX fuel use comes from the military sector. The 1 September 2000 US-Russian agreement would fill this gap in its nuclear infrastructure, if it is fully funded by the West and proceeds as envisioned (see below). This agreement is aimed at putting military stocks of plutonium that have been declared surplus by the two countries into non-weapons usable form, mainly by using it as MOX fuel in light water reactors. Russia also wants the MOX fuel fabrication plant to be capable of making MOX fuel for breeder reactors. However, Russia and the United States have not been able arrive at an agreement about who would bear the liability for the program, including in case of an accident. The agreement leaves that question open for further negotiations (see Chapter 4).³⁹

The net result of the historical and current trends and events is that there is now a large policy issue of what should be done with the huge but uneconomical stock of commercial plutonium that is growing rapidly. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the plutonium stock and facilities are run by institutions that have a declining command of public confidence and respect, not least because of the data fabrication, safety, and environmental scandals that afflict BNFL. These factors have compounded the underlying problems arising from poor economic decision-making by governments and plutonium-related corporations.

The attachment of other states and bureaucracies to plutonium fuel subsidies is also a large obstacle. Prominent in this regard are the Japanese, British, and French nuclear reprocessing and plutonium establishments. However, the BNFL data fabrication scandal⁴⁰ has had widespread repercussions and added to the growing doubts about the wisdom about continuing with MOX fuel programs. In Japan the fabrication of MOX fuel quality control data by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) was revealed just at about the same time that the first MOX fuel shipment from BNFL was arriving in Japan. This scandal came on the heels of the immense international controversy about the safety and environmental appropriateness (or lack thereof) of the shipments. The criticality accident in the uranium fuel fabrication facility at Tokaimura has resulted in the deaths of two workers from high radiation exposure, severe injuries or exposures to other workers, substantial doses of radiation to dozens of people, and the evacuation of over 160 people from their homes. Schools were closed within a 10-kilometer radius of the plant, ⁴¹ and about 300,000 people were advised to stay indoors.⁴² The accident and data fabrication scandal of 1999 came after the 1997 fire and explosion at a waste bituminization facility in the plutonium processing part of Tokaimura had already resulted in the shut down of the reprocessing plant at that site.⁴³

These episodes have given rise to serious doubts about the future of nuclear power in Japan and dealt another blow to its hopes for a plutonium economy. BNFL's Japanese customers have asked that the fuel with faked quality control data be taken back by BNFL, which it appears set to do at considerable cost. The faked MOX quality control data could therefore set the stage for potential non-fuel disposition strategy to be considered seriously in Japan for the first time.

Britain has no current plans for MOX fuel use. The output of its B205 reprocessing plant, which reprocesses metal spent fuel from its gas-cooled, graphite moderated Magnox reactors is being stored. The reprocessing is being continued only because Britain has not developed dry storage for this fuel and prolonged wet storage of Magnox fuel is undesirable from an environmental and safety standpoint. The THORP reprocessing plant processes foreign fuels and British Energy's advanced gas reactor spent fuel. The plutonium from THORP was to be fabricated to MOX on an industrial scale and shipped to foreign customers, chief among them being Germany and Japan.

The data fabrication scandal has seriously jeopardized these plans, which were already marginal at best as a result of the combined effects of high MOX costs, electric power deregulation, the German nuclear power phase-out decision, the BNFL MOX data fabrication scandal, and the Tokaimura criticality accident. Export of plutonium in the form of MOX fuel to other countries had been considered a possibility, but this will be far more unrealistic now, in light of the global crisis of confidence in BNFL.

In this context, the 1999 recommendation of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords that British plutonium be considered a waste raised the insistent question about the fate of separated plutonium stored in Britain.⁴⁴ Earlier, in 1998, the Royal Society noted that Britain did not have a strategy for dealing with the accumulating stocks of commercial plutonium and recommended that an independent comprehensive review of the matter be undertaken.⁴⁵

BNFL was to be given a lift as a corporation by a partial privatization. But the privatization has been put off until at least 2002 as a result of multiple factors. These include, the data fabrication scandal (and the $300 million cost directly attributable t it), the distinctly poor prospects of reprocessing, and the loss of a major US clean-up contract (the multi-billion dollar project to vitrify military high-level liquid wastes at the DOE's Hanford, Washington site). Rising US business was to have been a major new source of profits for BNFL. That claim is now viewed with far more skepticism.

The case for an abandonment of reprocessing and MOX and a conversion of BNFL to a decommissioning and plutonium management corporation is now stronger than ever, as is being increasing recognized. For instance, a rising number of parliamentarians have called for an evaluation of immobilization as an option for plutonium disposition.⁴⁶

Germany

Spent fuel from German nuclear reactors is reprocessed at La Hague and at Sellafield. Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power also will mean the phase-out reprocessing of its spent fuel and a phase-out of MOX fuel use there. Prior to the BNFL MOX data fabrication scandal, there was some potential that the plutonium separated from Germany spent fuel might be used as MOX fuel in German reactors as part of the disposition process. However, doubts about the quality control and hence safety of the MOX fuel have meant that this option is likely to be ruled out. Germany is suspending its MOX fuel fabrication in Britain.

Issues regarding German spent fuel and its shipment to France are complicated by the fact that French law allows for importation of spent fuel for providing reprocessing services but prohibits the storage of foreign nuclear waste. Hence Germany has the option of continuing to ship spent fuel to France for reprocessing, which generates plutonium that must then dispositioned, or storing the spent fuel in Germany, for which there is not enough room at present, since German nuclear power plans were based on export of spent fuel. Germany's current decision is to phase out shipments of spent fuel and reprocessing in the next few years, and nuclear power over the longer term.

Of all the major economies, France is the most reliant on nuclear power. Between 75 and 80 percent of its electricity is generated in nuclear power plants. France is also the center of the world's reprocessing industry, with two large commercial processing plants operating at full capacity at La Hague.⁴⁷ It fabricates most of the MOX fuel that is used in the world. France uses more MOX fuel in its nuclear reactors than any other country. With the deep troubles of BNFL due to the MOX fuel data scandal, the position of France in the commercial plutonium business has become even more central, raising the possibility of even more business in the short-term. These conflicting trends between British and French plutonium industries mask common elements. Cogéma is primarily a government owned corporation (19 percent is privately owned); BNFL is wholly government owned. Both companies have run afoul of their own countries laws or regulations. In the case of Cogéma, it is being investigated for storing foreign waste in contravention of French waste storage law.⁴⁸ Both BNFL and Cogéma are shielded by the secrecy laws of their home countries. Both have discharged and continue to discharge large quantities of liquid radioactive waste into the seas and are under pressure from the European Union to eliminate these discharges. And both la Hague and Sellafield have had elevated levels of childhood leukemia in the vicinity of their reprocessing operations, though both have denied that their facilities are connected to the elevated incidence.

In both countries, utilities face the reality of electricity deregulation, which is creating competitive pressures reduce or eliminate reprocessing and MOX fuel use. In a few years, German phase out of reprocessing and MOX will affect France even more than Britain, since most German reprocessing is done at La Hague. The pressures in Japan, France's other main foreign customer and BNFL's main foreign customer, to wake up from costly commercial plutonium dreams are now stronger than ever before. In this context, Roland Lagarde, Technical Advisor to the French Environment Minister, raised the idea of France ending reprocessing as early as 2002 by stating that it "is regrettable that the report [to the French Prime Minister] does not examine the possibility of stopping reprocessing in 2002. This will have to be considered one day."⁴⁹

Underlying all these issues is the fact that MOX fuel is uneconomical and that there is no realistic prospect that uranium prices will rise enough to make MOX a competitive fuel. Even the French government now recognizes this reality, as was discussed in Chapter Two.

Given that even France now acknowledges that plutonium fuel is not now economical and is not likely to be for decades, the time is clearly ripe for consideration of non-fuel approaches to both commercial and military plutonium disposition. However, the overall decisions on commercial plutonium will be affected by the approach taken by the United States and Russia for disposition of surplus military plutonium. We will discuss this issue before analyzing plutonium disposition alternatives.

Next: Chapter Four: Disposition of US-Russian Surplus Military Plutonium