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

A huge and unjustifiably large sum - on the order of $100 billion worldwide - has already been spent over the past five decades on attempts to create a plutonium economy. There is no end in sight to the subsidies and there is no reasonable way to resolve the many problems that are still outstanding in the foreseeable future. By any rational economic and security criteria, the commercial plutonium fuel and breeder industries should have made a complete exit from the stage of energy choices at least a decade ago. Yet, commercial plutonium separation continues in several countries, adding to the problem. Plans for breeder reactors also remain in place in some countries. Uneconomical use of plutonium as a fuel (in the form of mixed uranium and plutonium oxide or MOX) in existing reactors grew considerably in the 1990s, creating a new set of subsidies for the plutonium industry.

The prospects for plutonium use received their latest dramatic setback in late 1999, when Japan suspended its purchases of British MOX fuel. The very first shipment sent by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) was found to contain fuel whose quality control data had been partly fabricated. This was followed by a finding by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (the British government agency that oversees nuclear safety) that BNFL suffered from systemic problems in its management and safety culture. The overall result has been a severe crisis in BNFL that has thrown into question the future of reprocessing and MOX fuel fabrication operations in Britain, the country with the world's largest commercial separated plutonium stocks. BNFL suffered a loss of $500 million in its 1999-2000 accounting year mainly as a result of the MOX fuel data fabrication scandal. The Japanese MOX fuel crisis was compounded by the criticality accident in a uranium fuel processing plant at Tokai-mura in late September 1999, which resulted in the deaths of two workers from exposure to high levels of radiation, the first such deaths in Japan since the bombing of Nagasaki.

Further, Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power, which will likely mean an end to reprocessing of German spent fuel in France in the next few years. The reverberations of the German decision in France have extended to the publication of the first official report showing that reprocessing of French spent fuel is a huge economic burden on French electricity ratepayers. In a recent interview, Roland Lagarde, Technical Advisor to the French Environment Minister, raised the possibility that France should consider the option of ending reprocessing as early as 2002.

Even if commercial plutonium separation were to stop immediately, there would still remain an immense problem of the management of separated commercial plutonium stocks, which are now beginning to approach the size of military plutonium stocks. But commercial plutonium separation continues in several countries, adding to the problem. It is therefore urgent both to stop commercial reprocessing and to create a plan to put separated commercial plutonium and surplus military plutonium into non-weapons-usable form as expeditiously as is consistent with safety, health, and environmental protection.

1. Attempting to make plutonium a mainstay of electricity supply is a very costly, failed idea.

Roughly 70 billion dollars (1999 dollars)¹ have been spent worldwide on building relatively large breeder reactors, commercial reprocessing, and subsidies for MOX fuel use. These costs do not include costs of relatively small breeder reactors, costs of research and development on reprocessing, notably the Japanese reprocessing plant at Rokkasho-mura which is under construction (with a price tag of about $20 billion), the net operating costs of breeder reactors, the costs of extended storage of separated plutonium, and decommissioning and clean-up costs. When these major costs so far are taken into account, the total cost of chasing the dream of a plutonium economy so far comes to about $100 billion. Even if further large-scale efforts to commercialize plutonium were to stop now, the final global price tag for the failed attempt to create a plutonium economy will be well over $100 billion, once future costs such as decommissioning of reprocessing plants and breeder reactors are taken into account.

2. Reprocessing of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors is uneconomical and is now, by far, the main contributor to the global build-up of weapons-usable materials

The major powers have formally stopped producing more plutonium and highly enriched uranium for military purposes. Essentially no highly enriched uranium is being produced for commercial or research applications. The operation of military reprocessing plants, supposedly for non-military fuel management purposes, adds far less to the stock of separated plutonium than the surpluses from commercial reprocessing, even after the use of commercial plutonium as MOX fuel is taken into account.

The technical and economic failure of breeder reactors overall and the high cost of reprocessing and MOX fuel for light water reactors relative to low-enriched uranium fuel are the principal reasons for a rate of plutonium use far lower than the rate of its separation from commercial spent fuel. The overall stock of separated commercial plutonium is more than 200 metric tons. The continued accumulation of global commercial plutonium stocks is only possible through continued governmental and electric ratepayer subsidies. An official report to the Prime Minister of France, the country with the largest commercial reprocessing complex and MOX fuel use, admits that the plutonium fuel program is far more expensive than uranium fuel.

Uneconomic reprocessing and MOX fuel use are resulting in huge direct costs as well as in indirect costs such as separated plutonium storage, and discharges of radioactive contaminants into the environment, notably into the Irish Sea and the English Channel, from where they have spread.

3. The huge and growing stock of separated commercial plutonium has created a large new proliferation problem.

Plutonium from commercial power plants can be used to make nuclear weapons. Such plutonium is not likely to be used to make nuclear weapons in nuclear weapons states, since they have weapon-grade plutonium, which has a higher plutonium-239 content. But non-weapons states that do not now have nuclear-weapons-usable materials and terrorist groups would not hesitate to use it for such a purpose should they have access to the material and the desire to build nuclear weapons. It takes about 7 or 8 kilograms of reactor grade plutonium to make a relatively crude nuclear weapon. On this basis, the current separated commercial plutonium stock is equivalent to over 25,000 nuclear bombs.

4. Converting surplus military weapon-grade plutonium into a fuel and using it in commercial power reactors raises troubling safety concerns.
   

The vast majority of commercial reactors were designed for uranium, not mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, in which plutonium isotopes provide the fissile material. Modifications to these reactors to accommodate more control elements may be needed. Weapon-grade plutonium has never been used as a commercial fuel in reactors, though plutonium derived from commercial spent fuel is now being used in commercial power reactors in France, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. The computer codes that would be used to evaluate the safety of MOX made from weapon-grade plutonium would be those developed for and tested for reactor-grade plutonium. How safety concerns arising from the different plutonium composition of weapon-grade plutonium and reactor-grade plutonium and the different patterns of loading MOX fuel will be resolved remains unclear.

The consequences of an accident in a reactor with MOX fuel would be more severe than one with uranium fuel. The regulatory infrastructure in Russia is relatively weak, leading to questions as to how safety concerns would be brought up or resolved. Moreover, new proliferation risks will also be created, since fresh MOX fuel would be transported on highways and stored at commercial nuclear power plants that do not now have military levels of security.

5. Corporations that participate in the US-Russian program to use surplus weapons plutonium as a fuel in light water reactors face serious unresolved liability questions that could have severe adverse financial implications for them in case of a reactor accident on the scale of Chernobyl.

   Despite years of negotiations, the United States and Russia have been unable to arrive at an agreement on who would bear the liability for the MOX fuel program. Russian light water reactors are acknowledged in the West not to be up to Western safety standards. Moreover, there is no realistic prospect that the serious liabilities arising from the program, notably compensation in case of a severe accident, can be realistically resolved. Even though Russia and the United States have signed an agreement on MOX fuel use as a method of plutonium disposition, they have been unable to agree on liability provisions. MOX use in LWRs, as a method of plutonium disposition, is being pursued at Western, rather than Russian, insistence. Hence, Western corporations and governments participating in the program could face substantial liabilities in case of a severe accident.

6. Russia sees the joint US-Russian weapons disposition program, agreed to in September 2000, as a way to establish a plutonium-fuel economy based on MOX fuel use in breeder reactors. Unresolved liability issues are particularly troubling in this regard.

   Minatom has explicitly stated that that US-Russian weapons plutonium disposition program "must be seen as the first step in developing a technology for a future closed nuclear fuel cycle..." This would involve "the use of mixed uranium-plutonium fuel of fast reactors," also known as breeder reactors. The United States has agreed to such a system in Russia in the context of weapons plutonium, even though it was rejected in the United States in the 1970s as too proliferation prone. Moreover, Minatom does not appear to care whether MOX fuel use in thermal light water reactors is carried out abroad or in Russia, so long as the West is the responsible party for the program. "The disposition of a limited amount of weapons plutonium in thermal reactors, if this requires political approval, can be carried out under the financial and technological cooperation of the world community."² The lack of a liability agreement for the U.S.-Russian disposition program is particularly troubling in this context.

7. France, the country with the largest plutonium infrastructure, has spent a total of almost $20 billion so far on its plutonium program since about 1960, not including several important cost elements or future liabilities from the past program. It continues to spend on the order of $1 billion per year on its MOX fuel program.

   France has built the largest single breeder reactor, it has the largest capacity for reprocessing commercial spent fuel, has reprocessed more commercial spent fuel (its own plus that of other countries) than any other country, and overall, has the largest plutonium infrastructure. The net costs of the French plutonium program so far amount to about $20 billion. These costs do not include R&D costs for breeder reactors, the net operating costs of breeder reactors, and the costs of modification of light water reactors to use MOX fuel. Future costs, including future reprocessing and decommissioning costs of existing reprocessing plants and breeder reactors will also add to this total. France continues to spend on the order of $1 billion per year (net) on its plutonium program, not including many research and infrastructure costs. These are net cost estimates, which take into account the fact that MOX fuel use reduces the uranium fuel needed to operate nuclear power plants.

8. Achieving the spent fuel standard is not as crucial as creating sufficient barriers to theft and re-extraction by non-nuclear weapons states and non-state groups.

   The choice of the "spent fuel standard" for plutonium disposition has restricted disposition policy greatly without corresponding benefit in non-proliferation. (The standard requires that the difficulty of stealing and re-extracting plutonium after it has been processed for disposition should be equivalent to that for light water reactor spent fuel.) This is because neither the United States nor Russia is likely to re-extract plutonium that is immobilized or in spent reactor fuel for weapons purposes. Both countries already have large surpluses of separated weapon-grade plutonium that would be faster and cheaper to use to make more weapons, should they decide to so. Further, Russia plans to re-extract the plutonium from MOX spent fuel in the next few decades. It also plans to use fast neutron reactors for plutonium disposition, which adds to the proliferation potential of the U.S.-Russian disposition plan. Both reprocessing and fast reactor use by Russia make an insistence on the spent fuel standard even less meaningful. This is because separated plutonium is weapons-usable and hence the farthest one can get from the spent fuel standard. Interestingly, the DOE, in its recent request to the National Academy of Sciences to examine the spent-fuel did not ask the NAS to consider the implications of the Russian fast reactor plan for this standard.³

9. Immobilization of commercial plutonium in one of several ways would be a safer, faster, and cheaper way to put separated plutonium into non-weapons-usable form.

   The use of plutonium as a fuel will not be economical in the foreseeable future. In other words, its management must be seen mainly with a view to ensuring that safety, non-proliferation, and environmental goals are met both in the short- and long-term. Immobilization represents a far safer, faster, and more economical approach to the management of separated plutonium than its use as MOX fuel.

10. Corporations, such as Cogéma of France, with an expertise in reprocessing, radioactive waste management, and MOX fuel fabrication could apply their expertise and experience in plutonium immobilization instead.

    Plutonium immobilization technologies have a great deal in common with MOX fuel fabrication and vitrification technologies. The processing steps needed for immobilization are, in some cases, close to those needed for MOX fuel fabrication. The ideological commitment to a plutonium economy of corporations, such as Cogéma and British Nuclear Fuels, as well as nuclear ministries, such as Russia's Minatom, is hindering recognition of the non-proliferation, environmental and economic realities, all of which point to plutonium immobilization. Workers' fears of job losses have been a major factor in preventing a halt to reprocessing. However, this problem would be considerably alleviated or possibly eliminated by the construction and operation of plutonium immobilization facilities for all commercial separated plutonium as well as surplus military plutonium and by implementation of better clean-up plans for contaminated sites.

Our main overall recommendation is that all direct and indirect attempts to create a plutonium fuel economy or an infrastructure for that economy should be halted. Existing plutonium stocks should be managed in ways that minimize proliferation, environmental, and health risks.

Our specific recommendations are as follows:

1. All commercial reprocessing should be halted.

It is crucial that commercial reprocessing be halted for non-proliferation, cost, and environmental reasons. It is necessary to put an end to the build-up of separated commercial plutonium that will cost further large sums of money to store, safeguard, and put again into non-weapons usable form.

2. The use of separated commercial plutonium as a reactor fuel should be halted. The proposed use of surplus Russian and U.S. military plutonium as MOX fuel should not be pursued.

MOX fuel use is the economic fig leaf that rationalizes continued commercial reprocessing. Halting MOX fuel use will provide the needed impetus to stop reprocessing. Such a step is economically justified since there is a huge economic penalty to reprocessing spent reactor fuel and fabricating the plutonium into MOX fuel, relative to using low-enriched uranium fuel.

France, the country that provides the inspiration to advocates of plutonium fuel, is using MOX fuel in 20 power reactors despite the 1989 opinion of its nationalized electric utility, Eléctricité de France (EDF), that MOX fuel would cost an extra 2.3 billion francs (discounted to 1990 francs) compared to uranium fuel over a decade. EDF went along with its use because it had already signed the contracts to use MOX, to keep long-term economic options open, and because renouncing MOX would have "detrimental consequences for the nuclear option as a whole."⁴

MOX fuel use for the purpose of military plutonium disposition is being justified as the way to convince Russia to put some of its military plutonium into non-weapons usable form (MOX spent fuel). However, Russia has made it clear that it will use the plutonium disposition program to further its aims for creating a commercial plutonium infrastructure, defeating the stated aim of putting surplus weapons plutonium into non-weapons usable form. Hence both commercial MOX fuel use and plans for MOX fuel use for military plutonium disposition should be abandoned.

3. All commercial plutonium as well as surplus military plutonium should be put under the safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
   

Putting weapons-usable plutonium, whether of commercial or military provenance, under IAEA safeguards is an essential institutional step for reducing the likelihood of diversion for weapons purposes by third parties or by the country in which the plutonium is located. Some military plutonium is in shapes that may reveal some aspects of nuclear weapons design. Such plutonium pits should be put in storage containers that can be verified without revealing design data. Further, such plutonium should be converted into non-classified shapes expeditiously and put under IAEA safeguards.

Like many national agencies responsible for nuclear matters, the IAEA both promotes nuclear energy and serves as a non-proliferation watchdog. The safeguards function is at odds with its promotion function. This conflict of interest should be addressed by removing the promotion functions from its charter.

4. Commercial and military plutonium disposition should be planned as part of an overall immobilization and storage program.

Commercial and surplus military plutonium should be put into non-weapons-usable forms, since both can be used to make nuclear weapons and represent significant proliferation risks. The immobilization of both will greatly reduce these risks.

5. The approach to immobilization should suit the situation in the particular country within the context of overall proliferation-resistance.

There are a number of immobilization approaches to making plutonium proliferation-resistant. The specific approach chosen is likely to depend on the circumstances in any particular country, such as the size of the plutonium stock to be immobilized, the amount of liquid high-level waste available for mixing with plutonium, the existing technological infrastructure, etc. The main criteria for proliferation resistance should relate to the prevention of theft and the degree of difficulty for non-nuclear-capable states or terrorist organizations to re-extract plutonium from immobilized forms.

6. Corporations that now have reprocessing and MOX programs should put their expertise to use for plutonium immobilization instead.

A halt to reprocessing and MOX fuel use is needed to focus the attention of corporations, notably Cogéma and British Nuclear Fuels, as well as the Russian nuclear ministry, Minatom, on immobilization. Continued reprocessing and MOX reinforce the inertia and the utterly unrealistic hopes of the past half-century for plutonium fuel use.⁵

A halt to reprocessing and MOX fuel use, coupled with a program for maintaining jobs, can result in an early creation of immobilization programs at the same places that are now reprocessing centers.

7. The spent fuel standard, while desirable as a goal for disposition, should not be a primary goal; such a standard unduly restricts the choice of disposition approaches.

The main goals of disposition should be the prevention of theft and the creation of significant barriers to re-extraction by third parties that do not now possess large stocks of plutonium. The spent fuel standard biases policy in favor of MOX fuel use, especially in Russia. The irony is that Russia plans to reprocess the MOX spent fuel, a step that would defeat the goal of the spent fuel standard by recreating separated plutonium. Even though this separated plutonium would be under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it would be in a form far inferior to immobilized plutonium, so far as non-proliferation criteria are concerned. Hence, the achievement of the spent fuel standard should be regarded as a very secondary goal that should not be allowed to compromise otherwise satisfactory plutonium disposition schemes.

8. Before Japan, Canada, and wealthy European countries agree to provide funds for the US-Russian military plutonium disposition, they should initiate a detailed study and a broad public debate of its risks.

The United States and Russia intend to ask Japan, Canada, and the European member of the Group of Seven countries (France, Germany, Britain, and Italy) to fund a large portion of the costs of the Russian MOX program. These countries should not accept the US- Russian program as a fait accompli, but initiate their own assessments, including evaluations of the regional proliferation dangers that the agreement might pose as well as the financial liabilities they might incur in case of an accident, especially in a Russian light water reactor, as a result of MOX fuel use. They should make no commitments of funds until such assessments have been completed and publicly debated.

9. The West should offer to purchase all separated commercial and all surplus military plutonium from Russia for immobilization and storage under international safeguards there. The West should also pay for the immobilization. The United States should undertake a parallel commitment for immobilization of its own commercial and surplus military plutonium.

Were plutonium valued in the most generous theoretical way for its fuel value, the amount of money that would be needed to purchase Russian commercial and surplus military plutonium would amount to at most $2 billion - a pittance compared to the security benefits to be derived from such a move. An additional similar sum would be needed for immobilization of the plutonium. Existing cooperative nuclear security arrangements indicate a Russian willingness to consider programs that it would not otherwise have undertaken. Yet no Western offer to purchase Russian surplus plutonium for immobilization has officially been made to the Russian government. Such an approach deserves urgent consideration.

Next: Chapter One: Nature of the problem of commercial plutonium