Russia:  Plutonium Disposition in Russia: Executive Summary

Due to the ongoing dismantlement of warheads removed from missiles under the START I agreement and other disarmament efforts, Russia and the US have each accumulated about 50 metric tons of weapons plutonium considered surplus to military needs. The two countries are considering ways to render the surplus materials difficult to steal or to reuse in nuclear weapons. Such a program would mark the first time that the long-term fate of military plutonium will have been addressed by either country. Arms control agreements to date have focused on disabling delivery systems, but have not dealt with the security and arms control problems associated with the fissile materials removed from nuclear weapons.
 

The status of surplus fissile material in Russia is of particular concern due to the uncertain political and economic climate in that country. Russia has taken some step unilaterally and in cooperation with other countries to reduce its huge stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and to increase security within the nuclear complex. Dealing with plutonium is more problematic, because there is no simple way to denature it so that it ceases to be weapons-usable. Moreover, efforts at increasing security at nuclear facilities are considered insufficient in the long term, since they depend on a stable political and economic climate, which Russia currently lacks. Instead, intrinsic radiological, physical, and chemical barriers to recovery of the surplus plutonium must be put in place.

According to several Russian and US studies, plutonium disposition will take about 20 to 30 years, including the time for construction of facilities and licensing. The program is estimated to cost from one to several billion dollars. Immobilization methods appear to have some cost and timeliness advantages, amounting to some hundreds of millions of dollars and several years, although all time and cost estimates made to date have large uncertainties.

The amount of plutonium involved depends on the rate at which disarmament proceeds and the willingness of the two countries to declare additional plutonium as surplus. Currently, it is expected that both the United States and Russia will each disposition about 50 metric tons of plutonium, though to achieve parity in terms of the amount of remaining material, Russia would have to disposition substantially more, perhaps as much as 100 metric tons.

In order to put effective barriers in place, it is necessary to determine the acceptable level of security for the surplus stockpiles. An influential National Academy of Sciences study proposed that military plutonium be converted into a form that is as safe from theft and reuse as the plutonium contained in spent fuel taken from civil reactors. Spent fuel assemblies are massive, highly radioactive, and required extensive chemical processing to extract the plutonium they contain.  This level of security is referred to as the "spent fuel standard."

Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to proceed with either of two methods of plutonium disposition, both of which meet the spent fuel standard. The first is to fabricate a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel composed of plutonium and uranium oxides for use in currently operating light water reactors. Following reactor irradiation the plutonium would be contained in a massive, highly radioactive spent fuel assembly. The second disposition method is immobilization of the plutonium at low concentrations (5 to 10  percent, compared to the 90 to 100 percent concentrations of plutonium in its metallic or oxide forms) along with high level radioactive waste (HLW) in a large, heavy glass or ceramic waste form. As with spent fuel, the main barrier to theft and recovery of plutonium from the immobilized  waste is radiological. The large size and heavy weight of the waste form are additional obstacles to recovery, so that this combination of barriers meets the spent fuel standard.

There has been a good deal of high-level attention paid to the problem of plutonium disposition by both the United States and Russia, but efforts to date have been largely informal and, more importantly, have not been well funded. There are several obstacles to further progress. Chief among these is the question of funding the Russian program. Russia's weapons complex is undergoing a massive post-Cold-War restructuring, and does not have the resources to pay for the disposition of surplus plutonium. Progress on the US-Russian HEU deal was made primarily because Russia was able to profit from the sale of its surplus HEU to the United States, and the deal was considered budget-neutral by the United States government. The economics of plutonium use are much less favorable. As a result, subsidies from the United States and possibly Europe or Japan will be required if disposition is to occur in a timely fashion in Russia. A second problem is that Russia, unlike the United States, has yet to reveal the amount of plutonium in its military stockpile. Unofficial open-source estimates put Russia's military plutonium stockpile between 110 to 160 metric tons. However, an official and far more precise declaration will have to be made by Russia before the United States will proceed further with the program. A third important obstacle is the complex relation between surplus military plutonium and the "closed" or "plutonium reprocessing" nuclear fuel cycle, in which plutonium is recovered from spent fuel and re-used in fresh reactor fuel. United States nonproliferation policy explicitly seeks to avoid the expansion of closed fuel cycles worldwide. Conversely, Russia has long had plans to close its fuel cycle, and hopes to use the disposition campaign as an aid to build some of the necessary infrastructure. European and Japanese nuclear industries also view the disposition program as an opportunity to create new markets, to gain another ally in support of reprocessing fuel cycles, and to earn some of the billions to be spent (mostly by the United States) on plutonium disposition. Opposing this constituency are a variety of government and NGO analysts who fear that use of military plutonium in civil reactors will provide economic and political encouragement to the reprocessing industry, thereby undermining US nonproliferation policy and, many argue, the intent of the disposition program. For this reason, these groups have decried US and Russian plans for reactor-based disposition, and instead called for a bilateral program based on the alternative technology, immobilization.
 
Finally, some technical obstacles exist for both the reactor and immobilization technologies that could slow completion of the program. However, technological difficulties are not the principal factors that will determine the speed of plutonium disposition. Rather, the main obstacles are disarmament policy, economics, and the general state of US-Russian relations.
 

Comments or questions? Contact Elena Sokova at MIIS CNS: esokovaATmiis.edu

This material is produced independently for NTI by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2002 by MIIS.

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