As automatic
sequestration budget cuts loom, the Department of Energy has managed to keep a $5 billion plutonium plant alive - just
barely. According to an Office of Budget and Management proposed budget, funding for the
controversial Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel program would be cut 75% with no
justification for not pursuing an outright cancellation.
With the collapse of the
Soviet Union ending the Cold War in 1990, the United States was faced with the dilemma of discarding a stockpile of dismantled nuclear warheads containing tons
of lethal plutonium, leftovers from a frenzied arms-race with Russia that
fabricated thousands of unnecessary budget-busting nuclear weapons, warheads
and bombs since the end of WW II.
Amidst Administration
concerns about nuclear proliferation with Iran’s potential entry into the world
of nuclear weapons and as the North Koreans conduct a ‘miniaturized’
nuclear device, the MOX fuel plant under construction since 2007 at the DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina
sounds, on the surface, like a conscientious effort to limit the spread of
weapons-grade plutonium.
The beleaguered MOX
plant, designed to convert plutonium from obsolete nuclear warheads to
ultimately fuel commercial nuclear reactors has been plagued by out-of-control
cost overruns and is significantly behind its 2007 startup date, has been
targeted for total elimination by environmentalists, safe energy, peace and
taxpayer groups.
Keeping the project on
the books with a $2 billion life-line is of dubious legislative wisdom since
the MOX facility may never function as originally designed or be reconfigured
for any other purpose. Even as the DOE
has failed to find one commercial utility willing to utilize MOX, it is unclear
what would be accomplished by maintaining an empty building with no purpose. In
the marbled halls of Congress, it is frequently a clever ploy to ‘deep six’ a
controversial, indefensible project and then quietly slip it back in when the
opponents are engaged elsewhere – but the reality is that the 75% cut should
not be considered a ‘done deal.’ Committed Congressional friends of the project
can be expected to find a way, during all the hustle-bustle of the
sequestration debate, to restore full MOX funding.
In recognition of the
proliferation risks from surplus irradiated plutonium, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) signed a contract in
1999 with a consortium of
corporate partners including Duke Energy to design and operate a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility. By 2000, the US and Russia, which had also accumulated
tons of excess plutonium, entered into a Management and Disposition of Plutonium Agreement PMDA. with each country accepting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring and committing to convert no less than 34 metric tons of
plutonium, also known as nuclear fodder for terrorists. The US had estimated 50 tons of surplus plutonium in
its possession with 38 tons considered ‘weapons grade’
According to the 2000 Agreement,
two options were identified for preventing plutonium from any future use: one
option called for immobilization
of plutonium in a ‘glass or ceramic matrix using a can-in-canister system of
chemically stable ceramic discs suitable for geologic disposal.’ In 2001,
President Bush cut project funds as he halted construction of an immobilization plant considered by Ed Lyman, Senior Scientist with the Union of Concerned
Scientists, to be worth exploring as an alternative.
Instead Bush gave the green light for development of a full-scale MOX program.
Upon scrutiny, the MOX fuel option is an untested nuclear boondoggle with the potential for
accomplishing the opposite of the Agreement’s stated goal: prohibiting the
proliferation of weapons-grade
plutonium. The more experimental
MOX process is considerably more hazardous and complicated with numerous
opportunities for plutonium diversion - beginning with the removal of a
plutonium “pit” (about the size of a grapefruit) from a defunct nuclear
warhead. The ‘pit’ is to be converted into an oxide powder mixed with depleted uranium to form the Mixed Oxide (MOX)
fuel. Of special concern to
Lyman is the increased handling by personnel and multiple transportation risks
of one of the “world’s most dangerous substance and a usable nuclear weapon material
traveling in unmarked trucks with weaken security safeguards than would otherwise be required for comparable toxic material.”
Of no less importance is
the status of the bilateral Agreement (amended in 2011) with its
Russian partner. Lyman and Tom Clements, nuclear weapons expert with Friends of the Earth, share the concern of the U .S. sanctioning
Russia’s use of a fast neutron reactor and the reprocessing of some of its spent fuel
to produce additional plutonium, thereby undermining the original intent of the
Agreement to decrease plutonium stockpiles.
Clements added that the
promise of the Agreement is no longer being pursued as Russia has abandoned the
use of MOX in light-water reactors and has instead been building a new
plutonium BN800 "breeder" reactor which poses significant nuclear
proliferation risks as the reactor using MOX fuel can produce weapons-grade
plutonium. "It is a blow to international nuclear non-proliferation
policies that the US has helped enable Russia to build the BN800 breeder
reactor," said Clements.
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