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MOX from U.S. Plutonium Begins Return Trip By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — A batch of nuclear reactor fuel made in France from Cold War U.S. plutonium has begun its journey back to the United States, the French company that converted the plutonium said today (see GSN, March 4). Four mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies arrived last night at a Cogema plant in La Hague, France, according to a statement issued this morning by semigovernmental French energy firm Areva, Cogema’s parent entity. The fuel will leave the nearby port of Cherbourg “in the coming weeks” for the United States, Areva said. More than 100 kilograms of U.S weapon-grade plutonium arrived Oct. 6, 2004, in France to be converted into mixed uranium-plutonium oxide for use as fuel in power plants. The material’s arrival in France sparked intense opposition from French antinuclear groups such as Greenpeace France and umbrella group Sortir du Nucleaire, which cited security worries related to the plutonium’s presence on French roads (see GSN, Oct. 6, 2004). The MOX operation stems from a 2000 U.S.-Russian agreement under which each country is to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus Cold War plutonium. The United States does not yet have a MOX production plant, so the initial test batch of plutonium was sent to France for conversion. Once the assemblies arrive back in the United States, Duke Power is to begin testing the fuel at a South Carolina power plant. The 600-mile transport of the fuel from Areva’s southern conversion plant to La Hague spurred new activity by the activist groups, which sought to track the material’s progress in a bid to demonstrate that efforts at secrecy would be unlikely to deter a potential attacker. Greenpeace said that at 9:45 p.m. Monday, it “observed the return of this plutonium toward La Hague.” “Greenpeace activists tracked the transport as it neared La Hague to alert the public and local authorities to the safety and security risk it presents and to voice opposition to the proliferation threat posed by such trade in nuclear weapons materials,” the group said. Areva disputes the claim. A company spokesman said today by telephone that Greenpeace did not succeed in observing the material as it left the conversion plant — demonstrating, the spokesman said, that secrecy measures were more effective than activists claimed. Greenpeace spokesman Yannick Rousselet rejected that view in a telephone interview today. Rousselet said he called French journalists hours before the material entered La Hague and that reporters were waiting for the convoy when it arrived. Greenpeace also said yesterday that U.S. nuclear security expert Ronald Timm had completed a study demonstrating that the U.S-French conversion operation posed “an extremely high risk in terms of security.”
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