U.S. to Convert Weapons Plutonium Into Nuclear Fuel

By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire

VIENNA — The United States today announced plans to declare 9 metric tons of plutonium in the U.S. nuclear stockpile to be excess to its defense needs and to convert the material into fuel for nuclear power plants (see GSN, Aug. 2).

The material is currently in the form of nuclear weapon pits, the basic nuclear explosive component of every U.S. nuclear weapon.  The quantity is sufficient to produce more than 1,000 nuclear weapons, said U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, but he did not specify how pits would be converted in the program over a span of decades.

Bodman disclosed the plans in a statement today to the opening session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual meeting.

“The United States is leading by example and furthering our commitment to nonproliferation and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by safely reducing the amount of weapon-usable nuclear material in the world,” he said.  “As the United States continues to reduce the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile, we will be able to dispose of even more nuclear material while increasing energy and national security.”

In the mid-1990s, the United States assessed that it had 99.5 metric tons of plutonium under the control of the Energy and Defense departments, according to fissile materials expert Matthew Bunn at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

At that time, 52.5 tons of the material was declared to be excess to the needs of the U.S. nuclear weapons program.  Today’s announcement moves that quantity to 61.5 tons, according to Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

That would leave about 38 tons in use for weapons programs, according to Bunn.

“This is an important step in the right direction, but ultimately we need to do more,” Bunn said.  “It still leaves enough plutonium in the stockpile for thousands of nuclear weapons.”

Some studies have suggested that nuclear weapons need a minimum of 4 kilograms, meaning the United States would retain enough material for 9,500 nuclear weapons.  That would be an amount well beyond the levels of strategic nuclear weapons the Bush administration has agreed to deploy under a strategic nuclear weapons agreement with Russia.  The 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty commits both nations to deploy no more than 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons by end of 2012.

In a different agreement inked in 2000, the United States and Russia agreed to remove a total of 68 tons of plutonium from their weapons arsenals, a deal that has seen slow and difficult implementation as the two sides have disagreed on whether to immobilize the material or convert it into nuclear fuel.

Both routes would require the development of new technologies, whether they are methods to store plutonium safely for generations or to build power plants capable of using so-called mixed-oxide fuel, a combination of uranium and plutonium.  The two nations, however, have committed to removing most of the material through the mixed-oxide method.

Today’s announcement means the United States intends to dispose of more plutonium than Russia has so far agreed.

“We’re hopeful our Russian partners will follow our example,” National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes told Global Security Newswire.

How much of the 9 tons will exceed the 34-ton commitment remains unclear.  The United States made that promise in 2000 without specifically identifying which material would apply to the deal.

Original plans called for immobilizing much of the plutonium through vitrification — converting it to a glass-like material that could be stored for generations without deteriorating in long-term storage.  The Bush administration, however, later reversed that policy and opted to dispose of the bulk of the plutonium by producing mixed-oxide fuel (see GSN, Jan. 23, 2002).

That decision meant that some of the material previously considered for disposal could not be used because it did not meet the standards needed for conversion into fuel, Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said today.

“Before today’s announcement, they didn’t have 34 tons to dispose of,” he said.  “They need to add material to the excess stockpile to get back to the original agreement.”

The Energy Department has done a poor job of identifying the quantities of plutonium it manages that could be used in mixed-oxide fuel, he said.

Lyman has long been critical of U.S. efforts to explore the mixed-oxide option and today urged the Energy Department to study the expansion of a planned vitrification plant to see if the facility could dispose of the entire quantity of surplus U.S. plutonium.

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