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U.S. Converts 50 Tons of Weapon-Grade Uranium By Jon Fox WASHINGTON — U.S. Energy Department officials announced yesterday that it has converted 50 metric tons of uranium from U.S. weapons stocks to low-enriched reactor fuel (see GSN, June 29). The uranium, enough material for roughly 800 nuclear warheads, was part of 174 tons the United States committed to downblending in a 1998 agreement with Russia. For its part, Russia pledged to convert 500 tons of highly enriched uranium to a form posing no proliferation risk. The reactor fuel created from the U.S. material is enough to run a single reactor “for about a third of a century” or “enough to provide 22 percent of household electric needs to the whole country for about a year,” according to Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Most of the remaining U.S. highly enriched uranium has been allocated to various projects for disposal, but officials advanced no timeframes for those initiatives. The blending down of the 50 tons of at least 90-percent enriched, bomb-grade uranium to a 3 to 5 percent enrichment level took about seven years Shipments of the uranium began arriving at a Virginia facility operated by the firm BWX Technologies in 1999, and the last of the highly enriched material was converted to reactor fuel in June. As of 2005, more than half of the 500 tons of Russian highly enriched uranium had been blended down, Brooks said. Twenty percent of electricity produced in the United States flows from nuclear reactors, and of that half is fueled by downblended highly enriched material, he said. “One in 10 light bulbs in the United States is being powered by Cold War-era atom bombs.” The next portion of the 174 tons earmarked for conversion from weapon-grade material is 17 tons of uranium that would create a fuel bank of “last resort” for other nations. Countries would enjoy the “benefits of nuclear energy without being hostage to any particular source,” Brooks said. The details of that program have not yet been hashed out and there is little sense of urgency, he said. “Remember, we’re making decisions about material, some of which is still in weapons being disassembled.” At least some of the 50 tons recently converted came from the Energy Department’s Pantex facility in Amarillo, Tex., the nation’s only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility (see GSN, May 4). An additional 20 to 50 tons of material is to be downblended as part of a decision to withdraw 200 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from the U.S. weapons program, Brooks said (see GSN, Nov.8, 2005). Again, he attached no schedule to the initiative. The bulk of that material pulled from the weapons program would be set aside for use in naval vessels propelled by nuclear reactors, he said. By reallocating that store of highly enriched material, the United States would have no need to enrich uranium above 5 percent for decades, Brooks said. Addressing a separate fissile material disposal agreement, Brooks said he expects construction to begin this fall on a U.S. facility to convert plutonium to a mixed-oxide fuel for nuclear reactors (see related GSN story, today). In 2000, Moscow and Washington pledged to each convert 34 metric tons of plutonium to fuel, but funding for the bilateral program has come under fire on Capitol Hill (see GSN, June 26). A House appropriations bill for fiscal year 2007 pulls funding for the program entirely. Expressing frustration with a lack of Russian cooperation, the Senate version of the legislation reduces funding for the program by more than $200 million. The Senate recommends stripping funding for a Russian conversion facility and redirecting it to the U.S site in South Carolina. Brooks expressed hope that the mixed-oxide funding would emerge from conference relatively unscathed. “I continue to hope that the president’s proposal will prevail,” he said. “The program is important.” The National Nuclear Security Administration also yesterday announced the completion of a two-year effort to move highly enriched uranium from a Russian research reactor to a more secure site in that country. Working with the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency, Brooks’ agency moved the material from the Krylov Shipbuilding Research Institute in St. Petersburg to a facility in Dmitrovgrad. The highly enriched uranium — the exact amount of which has not been released — is expected to be added to more than 17,000 pounds of material already secured under the Material Consolidation and Conversion Program. The program has securely stored and converted Russian highly enriched uranium from former Soviet satellites such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, the Czech Republic and Latvia.
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