Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
	Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
Reducing Stockpiles   HEU Purchase Agreement   U.S. Highly Enriched Uranium Disposition   Russian Plutonium Disposition   U.S. Plutonium Disposition

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Reducing Excess Stockpiles

US Plutonium Disposition

Status

Program mission and purposes. With the end of the Cold War, the United States has declared that 52.5 tons of its stockpile of roughly 99.5 tons of plutonium is excess to its military needs.[2] The mission of the U.S. plutonium disposition program is to reduce, and eventually eliminate, this excess plutonium stockpile, for three reasons:

• to make it possible to work with Russia to reduce Russia's huge excess plutonium stockpile in parallel;

• to send a message to the world that U.S. nuclear arms reductions are intended to be permanent, not temporary;[3] and

• to rationalize management of plutonium within the U.S. weapons complex, making it possible to close some plutonium facilities and reduce long-term plutonium storage and security costs.[4]

Background and history. As the Cold War came to an end and the United States began dismantling thousands of nuclear weapons, the question of what to do with the excess plutonium from dismantled weapons came to the fore. Unlike highly enriched uranium (HEU), the proliferation risks posed by weapons plutonium cannot be eliminated by simply blending the plutonium with other plutonium, as nearly all combinations of plutonium isotopes can be used in nuclear weapons; plutonium mixed with uranium can be separated back out again using unclassified chemical processes.[5] Moreover, because of the safety and security hazards plutonium poses, making reactor fuel from plutonium is more expensive than the fuel is worth, even if the plutonium itself is free and so disposition of excess plutonium will inevitably require a substantial subsidy.[6] In that sense, excess plutonium is a dangerous liability, not an asset.

In 1992, then-National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft asked a committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to examine the options for dealing with excess plutonium. In September 1993, President Clinton issued a directive outlining his nonproliferation policies, which initiated an interagency (and international) examination of the options for dealing with excess weapons plutonium.

The NAS study, released in January 1994, outlined a comprehensive strategy for managing excess weapons-usable nuclear materials.[7] The study concluded that the appropriate objective for disposition of excess plutonium was to transform it into forms that would be "roughly as inaccessible for weapons use as the much larger and growing quantity of plutonium that exists in spent fuel from commercial reactors" the "spent fuel standard." The study argued that options should be chosen that could meet this objective as quickly as possible (minimizing the security hazards of prolonged storage), while maintaining stringent standards of security and accounting for the material throughout, and meeting all applicable safety and environmental standards. After examining a wide range of options, from shooting the excess plutonium into space to diluting it in the world's oceans, the study concluded that, while all options had disadvantages, the two most promising approaches were to use the plutonium as a plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in nuclear reactors that already existed, or to immobilize it with high-level wastes for eventual disposal. Both options would embed the plutonium in massive, intensely radioactive objects that would be very difficult to steal and to recover the plutonium from (spent fuel assemblies in the MOX option, logs of immobilized radioactive waste in the immobilization option); in both cases, these would have to be stored pending the eventual availability of a geologic repository. A companion volume released a year later recommended that, because there were risks of delay or failure on each of these tracks, both should be pursued.[8]

The Department of Energy's (DOEs) Office of Materials Disposition was established the day the NAS study was released and, working with an interagency working group on the subject, went through an extensive process of analyzing the options, taking into account costs, security benefits and hazards, and safety and environmental impacts. In the end, the Clinton administration decided to pursue a "dual-track" strategy, as the NAS studies had recommended, using some of the plutonium as reactor fuel and immobilizing the remainder with high-level wastes.[9]

Throughout the life of the effort, U.S. plutonium disposition and Russian plutonium disposition have been closely linked. From the beginning, Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM), which sees plutonium fuel as central to the future of nuclear energy, insisted that whatever happened to U.S. plutonium, Russia's plutonium would be used as reactor fuel.[10] In the negotiations of the late 1990s, Russian negotiators objected to leaving open the option of the United States immobilizing most of its excess weapons plutonium while Russia used its stockpile as fuel, arguing (wrongly, in the author's view) that since immobilization would leave the plutonium weapon-grade (rather than degrading its isotopics to reactor-grade, as use in reactors would) the United States could readily recover plutonium from immobilized forms and rapidly rebuild a large weapons stockpile. Thus, the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement required that the United States use the MOX approach for at least 25 tons of the 34 tons of plutonium covered by the agreement.[11] (This agreement covers only 34 tons of plutonium, not 50 tons the amount declared excess in Russia because only 34 tons of the U.S. excess stockpile is weapon-grade material in forms comparable to the material Russia has declared excess.) In effect, this meant that of the two tracks, MOX was essential and immobilization was not.

By the end of the Clinton administration, the cost of the full dual-track plan, originally estimated in the range of $2 billion,[12] had ballooned to over $6 billion.[13] The Bush administration came to office deeply skeptical of the effort, openly asking whether American plutonium stockpiles posed a security risk worth spending billions of dollars to address. During much of 2001, as the Bush administration performed a review of all threat reduction programs with Russia, it appeared very likely that the U.S. plutonium disposition effort would be terminated or fundamentally redirected to focus on joint U.S.-Russian R&D on advanced plutonium-burning fuel cycles for the future of nuclear energy. But as the review progressed, it became clear that continuing the U.S. plutonium disposition effort was central to saving money and fulfilling commitments to clean up and close facilities within DOE's own complex. DOE planned to send all the plutonium from sites such as Rocky Flats to Savannah River, in South Carolina, and close Rocky Flats down, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year but South Carolina would not allow the plutonium to be shipped there without a firm plan for what would be done with it, that involved jobs in South Carolina, and a plan for eventually shipping the material away to a permanent nuclear waste repository.[14] But at the same time, DOE had made a commitment to Colorado to get the plutonium out of Rocky Flats. In short, ending the plutonium disposition program would cost more than implementing it.

In the end, after an extensive re-screening of the full range of possible options, the Bush administration settled on a streamlined version of the previous plan, dropping immobilization and instead burning all 34 tons of plutonium covered by the U.S.-Russian agreement as MOX fuel.[15]

Current plans. The revised plutonium disposition plan calls for building both a MOX fuel fabrication plant and a separate plant to convert plutonium metal weapons components, or "pits," to oxide suitable for fuel fabrication at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Once fabricated into fuel, the plutonium would be used in 6-8 nuclear power plants (some of which are still to be identified).[16] A consortium of Duke, Cogema, and Stone & Webster (DCS) has been contracted to build and operate the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MOX FFF) and irradiate the fabricated fuel. Under current plans, construction of the MOX FFF would begin in 2004, and the plant would begin operation in 2008, continuing until 2019.[17] Construction of the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF) would begin later, since the MOX plant can begin by fabricating fuel from plutonium oxides that are already available. All told, the revised program is expected to cost $3.84 billion (in constant FY 2001 dollars)[18] roughly $113 million per ton of plutonium reduced. The administration has committed to the full five-year funding profile required to build these major facilities.

Remaining challenges. While DOE appears to be poised to move forward with plutonium disposition at last, important challenges remain and DOE's dismal record of success in bringing major projects to fruition on time and on budget in recent years suggests caution. Some of the remaining challenges include:

• Linkage to Russian plutonium disposition. Congress has mandated that U.S. plutonium disposition only proceed if Russian plutonium disposition proceeds in parallel. Thus, for the U.S. program to move forward the Russian program has to move forward, and that is currently proving to be the greater challenge. (See Russian plutonium disposition.)

• MOX political, technical, and licensing hurdles. A broad spectrum of grass-roots environmental and nonproliferation groups oppose the MOX plan, and will do everything they can to stop it.[19] Critics have attacked the MOX program as unsafe and likely to create new proliferation hazards, and they will have the opportunity to make their case as licensing proceedings move forward before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). (See discussion of the MOX/immobilization controversy, below.) To gain regulatory and political approval, the program will have to ensure that they have designed the effort to avoid any substantial increase in safety or security risks as a result of the use of MOX. It remains conceivable that this opposition could stop the effort, particularly if there were a major accident or incident with fabrication or handling of MOX within the program or elsewhere in the world.

• Convincing sufficient reactors to take part. The new approach will require more U.S. reactors to burn MOX fuel. The last effort to identify utilities interested in burning MOX fuel (in return for discounted fuel prices from a DOE subsidy) found very few who wanted to take on the challenge. Since reliable, stable fuel supplies are crucially important to utilities, tying themselves to a program whose fate hinges on the fate of Russian plutonium disposition may be particularly problematic from some utility managers' perspectives. Convincing enough reactors to burn this fuel may turn out to be a significant challenge especially given the inevitable opposition from non-government organizations at each site where the plutonium fuel will be burned.

• Dealing with the other excess plutonium. The reason that previous plans had called for immobilizing more than 8 tons of the material covered under the U.S.-Russian agreement is that this material is contaminated with various chemicals that complicate its use as reactor fuel. Hence, under the new plan, the MOX plant would be equipped an expanded purification capability, to purify this material. Nevertheless, 2 tons of the material was judged as of early 2002 to be too contaminated to clean up for use as fuel, and was slated for disposal as waste.[20] Since DOE is legislatively barred from disposing of this material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, its ultimate fate remains unclear. Similarly, the Office of Fissile Materials Disposition is no longer responsible for the 18.5 metric tons of U.S. excess plutonium (most of it in forms unsuitable for use as fuel) that is not covered by the 34-ton U.S.-Russian agreement. This material has been transferred to DOE's Office of Environmental Management, and its fate remains undecided.[21] Depending on the costs of managing these materials, it may be that the revised plan will not, in fact, turn out to be less costly overall than the previous plan.

• Maintaining budgetary support and momentum. To move from studies to building facilities has required a very large increase in the plutonium disposition budget, which is scheduled to keep going up and to stay high for several more years. The administration has formally committed to the full five-year budget profile, and the program currently has good support in Congress but if a perception arises that momentum is again lagging and the program is not moving forward, support for these large budgets could be jeopardized.

The MOX/immobilization controversy. For decades, the United States has not pursued reprocessing of its spent nuclear fuel and recycling of the resulting plutonium, in part because of the proliferation hazards associated with large-scale use of separated plutonium as civilian fuel. Thus, critics argued that the decision to use excess weapons plutonium as fuel represented a reversal of this policy, and voiced concern that it could lead to increases in the use of plutonium fuel in other countries. For both supporters and opponents of plutonium recycling, the issue of what to do with weapons plutonium has become part of that long-term ideological struggle; other analysts have pointed that since the amount of excess weapons plutonium is large in terms of the number of bombs that could be made from it, but tiny in terms of the world's energy future, decisions on what to do about the security hazard posed by excess weapons plutonium can and should be made independently of the ongoing debate over the future of the civilian nuclear fuel cycle.[22]

Critics of MOX have generally supported immobilization as a better alternative. In an immobilization approach, the plutonium would be prepared for disposal by mixing it with high-level wastes (HLW) from past reprocessing (so as to create a radiation barrier roughly comparable to that from spent fuel), and putting it in a glass or ceramic matrix that would be stable enough to permit permanent disposal in a geologic repository. To avoid some of the technical difficulties that were expected to arise from mixing plutonium directly with HLW, DOE developed an approach known as "can-in-canister," in which the plutonium would be immobilized in ceramic "pucks," which would be placed in metal cans arrayed inside the large canisters into which molten glass containing HLW is poured.[23] MOX critics have argued that such an immobilization approach would be:

• Cheaper. Immobilization advocates have generally argued that it would be cheaper to implement than the MOX approach, even when the value of the nuclear fuel produced in the MOX approach is taken into account.[24] DOE agrees that an all-immobilization approach would have been at least somewhat cheaper than the all-MOX approach chosen.[25]

• Safer. MOX critics have argued that the use of MOX fuel will make reactors more difficult to control, reducing safety margins;[26] that the increase in the quantity of actinides in the core would result in more deaths in the event of a catastrophic reactor meltdown and containment failure;[27] that the ice-condenser containments used in the plants slated to use MOX are particularly vulnerable to such an accident;[28] and that immobilization would not run these safety risks. DOE has not provided a point-by-point rebuttal of these critiques, but its environmental impact analyses have concluded that there would be few significant safety issues associated with the use of such MOX.[29]

• More secure. MOX critics have argued that the process of MOX fabrication is difficult to safeguard, and that transporting plutonium in fresh MOX fuel from fabrication plants to reactors could create serious security risks. Immobilization, they argue, would avoid the transportation risks. DOE has argued, by contrast, that with sufficient investment in security the security risks from transportation can be reduced to a low level (indeed, the MOX fuel is to be transported within the United States using the same Safe, Secure Transports (SSTs) used to transport nuclear weapons), and that difficulties of safeguarding MOX fabrication and future immobilization processes are roughly comparable.[30]

• Faster. MOX critics also argue that since the capacity of an immobilization plant would not be limited by the number of reactors available to burn fuel, immobilization of a large stockpile of excess plutonium could be accomplished much more rapidly than MOX use could.[31] DOE, by contrast, argues that both would take about the same amount of time, with immobilization likely starting later because it is less fully technically developed.[32]

MOX advocates have their own set of critiques of immobilization, arguing that (a) because plutonium has never been immobilized on an industrial scale, the technical uncertainties and potential for delays on the immobilization track are substantially higher; and (b) because the plutonium is not irradiated and remains weapons-grade, it could be recovered for weapons use more easily. Most important, MOX advocates (including the Bush administration) point out that Russian negotiators had made it clear that Russia would not be willing to move forward with disposition of its own plutonium if all the U.S. excess plutonium were going to be immobilized, leaving it in a form from which Russian experts argue it could be readily recovered. As the current head of the U.S. disposition program put it: "It is not a question of MOX or immobilization. It is a question of MOX and Russian disposition, or immobilization and no Russian disposition at all."[33] Some independent analysts, including the author, remain of the view that both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, and that implementation of both should have been continued.

Advanced reactors and fuel cycles. Since the plutonium disposition debate began, advocates of a wide range of advanced reactor designs or advanced fuel cycle approaches have argued that their proposed system would offer the best solution for plutonium disposition. In recent years, advocates of the Gas-Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) and of thorium-plutonium-uranium fuel cycles have been particularly active, and Congress has directed the Office of Fissile Materials Disposition to support limited research on some of these concepts. As virtually every government or independent analysis has concluded, however, paying and waiting for the development, licensing, and deployment of such new reactor or fuel cycle would result in substantial additional delays and higher costs, compared to beginning with the reactors that already exist and fuel cycle approaches that are already demonstrated.[34] If, however, such new approaches are developed and deployed as beneficial approaches to the future of nuclear energy, then their use to consume whatever excess plutonium still exists at that time should certainly be considered.

Budget

See budget table

Through FY 2003, $1.179 billion has been appropriated for the U.S. plutonium disposition program. Because the program is moving from studies to actual construction, the budget is increasing substantially. The administration has requested $70.1 million for U.S. plutonium disposition, $415.6 million for construction of U.S. plutonium disposition facilities for FY 2004, and $24.7 million for various supporting activities an increase of hundreds of millions of dollars over the FY 2003 appropriation.[35] The administration has committed to request the full funding required to build the plutonium disposition facilities: as of early 2002, the projected request for U.S. plutonium disposition in FY 2005 was $485 million; in FY 2006, $565 million; in FY 2007, $513 million; and in FY 2008, $324 million, as construction of the facilities neared completion (all in FY 2001 dollars).[36]

Key Issues and Recommendations

Maintaining momentum. Plutonium disposition is in the unusual position of being a long-term project requiring urgent action. To maintain congressional support, it is crucial to move as quickly as possible toward construction and operation of the needed facilities for plutonium disposition. If the current momentum is lost, it may be very difficult to regain.

• Recommendation: The U.S. government should continue to place substantial priority on moving forward with disposition of U.S. excess plutonium, including providing the necessary funding and the high-level political support needed to overcome obstacles as they arise.

• Recommendation: The U.S. government should continue to seek to move the Russian disposition program forward as rapidly as practicable, so as to be able to move forward with the U.S. program.

Lack of a backup to MOX. There remain significant political and regulatory uncertainties on the MOX track. A significant accident or security incident involving plutonium fuel anywhere in the world, for example, could make the MOX program politically difficult to sustain.

• Recommendation: DOE should restart an immobilization research, development, and demonstration program, to ensure that the technology will be ready if needed.

• Recommendation: The U.S. government should work with Russian experts to analyze the difficulty and expense of recovering plutonium from immobilized forms for use in weapons, as part of a broader effort to convince Russian negotiators that immobilization is as viable a strategy for disposition of U.S. excess plutonium as use in reactor fuel.

Lack of a defined path forward for the excess plutonium not covered by the U.S.-Russian agreement. Most of this additional excess plutonium is not suitable for use as MOX fuel, or for direct disposal as waste without processing. While disposition of this plutonium is not directly linked to disposition of Russian plutonium, it is nonetheless important for sending a signal to the world that U.S. arms reductions are intended to be permanent, and for rationalizing management of plutonium in the U.S. complex.

• Recommendation: DOE should move forward in selecting a disposition path for this 18.5 tons of excess plutonium (as well as for the 2 tons of plutonium within the 34 tons covered by the U.S.-Russian agreement that is not suitable for use as MOX), and should consider the immobilization technology previous developed in the disposition program.

Large remaining military plutonium stockpiles. The plutonium stockpile that the United States has not declared excess is enough to support a stockpile of well over 10,000 nuclear weapons. Reductions in these stockpiles need to go far deeper than either the United States or Russia presently plan, if the goals of substantially reducing theft risks and ensuring the irreversibility of deep reductions in nuclear arms are to be achieved.

• Recommendation: The United States and Russia should work toward putting in place agreements to reduce their total stockpiles of nuclear warheads not just those deployed on active strategic systems to low levels, and to reduce their fissile material stockpiles to the levels necessary to support the agreed remaining number of warheads.

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