If the United States begins reprocessing nuclear reactor fuel, it will create an abundant new supply of plutonium that terrorists could use to build nuclear weapons. Why would anyone want to take such a risk?
by Edwin Lyman and Lisbeth Gronlund
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, concern has grown that al Qaeda or another terrorist group might seek to build a nuclear weapon and detonate it in an American city. This scenario, which once seemed the stuff of science fiction, is a realistic threat; it would only take about 15 pounds of plutonium for terrorists to construct a devastating weapon.
Plutonium is produced as a by-product in U.S. nuclear power reactors. The used (or "spent") fuel stored at these reactors contains hundreds of tons of plutonium, but it cannot currently be stolen by terrorists because it is bound up in large, heavy, and highly radioactive assemblies of fuel rods that could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to someone standing a few feet away in less than an hour. Yet the Department of Energy (DOE) is planning a radical shift in how the United States handles this spent fuel—a plan that would actually make plutonium easier to steal.
Instead of disposing of highly radioactive spent fuel deep underground, where it would remain isolated from the environment for tens of thousands of years, DOE officials want to "reprocess" it, using a series of chemical processes to extract plutonium that could then be used to make new reactor fuel. Because plutonium is not highly radioactive it can be handled without serious harm, making it an attractive target for terrorists.
The United States began reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power reactors in the 1960s. However, Presidents Ford and Carter put the brakes on these initiatives after India's 1974 test of a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. The plutonium was produced with reprocessing equipment the country imported under claims of "peaceful use." Ford and Carter argued that the spread of commercial reprocessing facilities could result in the international proliferation of nuclear weapons. This policy was successful in stopping countries such as South Korea and Taiwan from reprocessing.
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| More of a Bad Thing. Under current U.S. policy, spent reactor fuel will eventually be stored in an underground repository. If the waste is reprocessed instead, multiple new waste streams will be created. Click here to see a larger version of this image. |
History Repeating Itself
The Bush administration acknowledges the proliferation risks of reprocessing; Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman recently stated, "The stores of plutonium that have built up [in other countries] as a consequence of conventional reprocessing technologies pose a growing proliferation risk that requires vigilant attention." Global stocks of civil plutonium exceed 240 metric tons—enough for more than 40,000 nuclear weapons.
In order to justify its new reprocessing plans, therefore, the DOE plans to pursue only "proliferation-resistant" technologies, which would leave the plutonium blended with other elements that would purportedly make it unattractive to terrorists. Unfortunately, none of these technologies would live up to their billing.
As the DOE's own scientists have found, the blended elements would only increase radioactivity an insignificant amount, leaving the mixture as easy to handle as pure plutonium. And terrorists that could build a nuclear weapon would have the technological capability to separate the plutonium from this mixture. The only truly effective approach is keeping plutonium mixed with the highly radioactive elements found in spent fuel.
If any plutonium were stolen, the theft could go undetected for an alarmingly long period of time. Commercial reprocessing plants handle so much material that it is essentially impossible to confirm in a timely manner that a bomb's worth of plutonium has gone missing. In fact, several foreign reprocessing plants have lost track of enough plutonium to make 10 or more nuclear weapons, and needed months or even years to detect and then account for the shortfall.
A Flawed Argument
Despite these risks, reprocessing plays a major role in the DOE's new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership that President Bush has recently praised. The DOE has requested $250 million in fiscal 2007 for initial funding of the program, which the agency estimates will ultimately cost between $20 billion and $40 billion.
Representative David Hobson (R-OH) and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), both powerful members of congressional appropriations committees, also want to resume reprocessing, and allocated $50 million in fiscal 2006 for the DOE to begin scouting locations for as many as four reprocessing facilities around the country. They argue that the plutonium in spent fuel is a valuable energy resource that should not be thrown away, that reprocessing would greatly reduce the quantity of waste requiring disposal in underground repositories, and that reprocessing would also reduce the time the waste must be isolated from the environment (from hundreds of thousands of years to thousands of years).
While plutonium in spent fuel is indeed a potential energy source, reprocessing and manufacturing plutonium fuel is not only risky but also far more expensive than simply making fuel with fresh uranium. Plutonium fuel has also proved difficult to use in the current generation of power reactors, which explains why Japan, the United Kingdom, and other countries continue using uranium fuel while their stockpiles of separated plutonium go unused. For these reasons, the U.S. nuclear industry has shown a lukewarm response to the new reprocessing plan
Nor would reprocessing address the nation's nuclear waste problem. Contrary to proponents' claims, reprocessing does not reduce the total amount of radioactive waste (see sidebar). To significantly reduce the amount of waste requiring underground disposal, spent fuel must be reprocessed and reused many times in an advanced "burner" reactor, which has yet to be developed and faces serious technical obstacles.
This strategy therefore represents an immensely expensive and drawn-out enterprise: the DOE estimated in 1999 that it would cost more than $310 billion in 2005 dollars—and take 117 years—to repeatedly reprocess and reuse all the spent fuel existing U.S. reactors will have generated by the end of their lifetimes. This study also concluded that the federal government would "have to play the primary role in organization, management, and funding" of this effort. In other words, U.S. taxpayers would be stuck with the bill.
No Quick Fix for Nuclear Waste
Despite all these drawbacks, there is a political reason for the recent interest in reprocessing. The nation's first proposed underground waste repository (Yucca Mountain, Nevada) is in jeopardy partly because there is a lack of scientific consensus on whether the site can keep spent fuel isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. If the site fails to receive a license, the DOE would need to begin the time-consuming process of finding a new site.
Even if Yucca Mountain's license is approved, a second repository would be required in the next several decades to accommodate the waste being generated by existing reactors. The DOE argues that its burner reactor scheme would reduce the required lifetime for the Yucca Mountain repository, making it easier to license, and would reduce the amount of high-level waste requiring storage, delaying the need for a second repository.
Supporters of nuclear power worry that, unless they can offer a solution for handling the waste from existing nuclear power plants, public opposition might prevent new plants from being built. Providing large sums of money for reprocessing at least gives the appearance that something is being done to address the issue of nuclear waste. However, a reprocessing program would almost certainly undermine congressional support for geologic repositories, leaving the United States with thousands of tons of reprocessing waste that has nowhere to go.
In light of its high costs and even higher risks, reprocessing is an ill-considered strategy for addressing America's nuclear waste problem. UCS is working to stop the federal government from launching this program, and will continue working with legislators to promote cleaner energy sources and safer ways of managing nuclear waste. Storing spent fuel in large, sturdy concrete or steel containers (called dry casks) at nuclear power plants, for example, is an economically viable and secure short-term option, which would buy us at least another several decades in which to develop geologic repositories that are scientifically sound.
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What's in a Name?
Supporters of reprocessing are trying to paint the technology in a positive light by calling it a form of recycling. Don't be fooled.
Though extracting plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear reactor fuel that would otherwise be buried deep underground may sound like recycling, it does not fulfill our most basic expectation of a recycling program: protecting the environment by reducing waste. Reprocessing, in fact, creates significant hazards of its own:
1. Reprocessing makes the handling of nuclear waste more dangerous. Used fuel assemblies are reasonably stable when carefully stored. But in a reprocessing plant, the spent fuel rods are chopped up and dissolved in hot acid, releasing radioactive gases that can escape into the environment. The process also involves solvents and other volatile materials that, if not handled properly, could explode and disperse radioactive material over a wide area. For these reasons, the risk of a serious release of radiation is much greater at a reprocessing plant than a well-designed spent-fuel storage facility.
2. Reprocessing does not reduce radioactive waste; it converts the waste to different forms. Reprocessing produces highly radioactive ("high-level") wastes and long-lived plutonium-contaminated wastes that both require disposal in geologic repositories, and "low-level" wastes that must be buried a few feet underground at special waste facilities. The uranium recovered from reprocessing is so impure that it is generally not suitable for reuse and must be disposed of as low-level waste. This poses a practical dilemma since few low-level waste dumps exist in the United States, and community opposition makes building additional facilities difficult. Eventually, the reprocessing plant itself becomes contaminated and must be treated as radioactive waste after being decommissioned. |
Edwin Lyman is a senior staff scientist in the Global Security Program; Lisbeth Gronlund is director of the program.
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