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Scientists, Federal Studies Question U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Program
Nuclear scientists and some federal studies indicate that the Bush administration’s plan to spread nuclear power around the world puts nuclear fuel supplies at risk of diversion by terrorists, the Christian Science Monitor reported today (see GSN, March 15). The United States has promoted the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership as a way to reduce the amount of nuclear waste from reactors and stop weapons proliferation by using a new fuel technology called UREX-Plus. Officials said this technology could end the three-decade U.S. moratorium on reprocessing spent fuel, a process that produces plutonium. “The goal of GNEP is recovery of the energy in a way that doesn't promote weapons,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said last month. However, critics and Energy Department studies have indicated that UREX-Plus is not difficult to weaponize. A 2004 Energy Department study reported that the substance was only a bit more “proliferation resistant” than the PUREX process used by other nations. PUREX has been criticized by the United States as being vulnerable to proliferation. “The bottom line is that UREX-Plus is not much more proliferation resistant — by their own estimates,” said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Proliferation-resistant material is so radioactive that to handle it would cause death, is easily detected and is difficult to turn into weapons fuel. Federal studies have indicated that UREX does not meet these criteria. For example, an Energy Department report found that UREX emits less than 1 rad per hour, while the National Academy of Sciences says the “spent fuel standard” should be 1,000 rads per hour, or enough to kill a person in 30 minutes. UREX also does not meet International Atomic Energy Agency standards for self-protection, according to the Monitor. The UREX technologies “would still produce a material that is not radioactive enough to deter theft and could still be used to make nuclear weapons,” said Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “UREX-Plus is just PUREX with lipstick,” said Frank von Hippel, former assistant director of national security in the White House Science and Technology Office. Government scientists have contested these claims. “There's only one step where this material has low self-protection, not up to the max, and then it’s heavily guarded,” said Phillip Finck, deputy associate laboratory director at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. “This process, UREX-Plus, is much more proliferation resistant than things developed in the past.” The 2004 Energy Department study that found small differences between UREX-Plus and PUREX “should be performed again in view of the real technological changes since then,” he said. Finck last week proposed adding a radioactive element to the UREX-Plus that would increase the self-protection of the fuel but also add billions of dollars to the price tag of the project, the Monitor reported. Government researchers have also contended that unlike PUREX, which can easily be converted in weapon-usable materials, UREX “is not attractive or useable as weapons material,” Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said last month. However, some Energy Department scientists have refuted this claim, arguing that plutonium with impurities can still be used in nuclear weapons. A “subnational group using designs and technologies no more sophisticated than those used in first-generation nuclear weapons could build a nuclear weapon from reactor-grade plutonium,” a 1997 Energy Department study found. The explosion would be the size of the blast at Nagasaki and even a “fizzled explosion” would destroy the center of a major U.S. city (Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor, March 16). Meanwhile, Energy Secretary Bodman yesterday asked Russia to invest technological and financial resources into the nuclear energy partnership, the Moscow Times reported. The program will be a “multibillion-dollar, multiyear, if not multidecade, initiative,” Bodman said. Bodman, during a meeting with Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko, asked Russia to join the program. “The hope is, by gathering the resources of our potential partners we can reduce the costs and time,” Bodman said, adding that Russia’s expertise in fast neutron reactor technology could playa large part in the partnership (Yuriy Humber, Moscow Times, March 16).
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