 January 19, 1999
PLUTONIUM FUEL IN NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS?
The Challenge
We are at a turning point in history. At the
close of the Cold War both the United States and
Russia possess a toxic legacy comprised of 50
tons of so-called surplus plutonium from
dismantled nuclear warheads.
On December 22, 1998 United
States Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson
announced the selection of South Carolina’s
Savannah River complex as the preferred site for
a plutonium disassembly and conversion
facility. The new plant would take
plutonium “pits” from existing warheads
and convert them into a form usable in commercial
nuclear power reactors. Previous decisions
designated SRS as the site for immobilizing
plutonium in steel-clad ceramic canisters and the
site for the conversion of the plutonium warhead
pits into commercial nuclear power reactor fuel,
also called MOX: a mixed oxide of plutonium and
uranium.
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League opposes
the use of plutonium fuel in commercial nuclear
power reactors for environmental, public health,
and national security reasons. The reversal
of a two decade policy prohibiting the use of
plutonium in reactors would put a strategically
valuable and dangerous material which is now in
the hands the armed forces under the control of
electric utilities. Ironically, this
swords-into-plowshares alchemy by DOE would not
reduce the nation's stockpile because it would
create new plutonium at a rate similar to its
destruction in a power reactor, yielding new
plutonium for old.
When you add to this the
environmental consequences of plutonium
reprocessing and the additional risks of new
breeder reactors, you end up with an
environmental nightmare.
The US Department of Energy’s surplus
plutonium disposition program would reprocess 33
tons of plutonium at the Savannah River Site for
use as fuel in commercial utility reactors;
Duke Energy and Virginia Power announced plans in
1998 to convert reactors in North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Virginia to plutonium fuel.
The use of plutonium fuel in nuclear powered
domestic utility reactors would employ one of the
most toxic substances on earth to generate
electricity.
The Department of Energy’s program would
make our reactors more dangerous. Utility
reactors designed for uranium fuel would need
extensive modification in order to use plutonium,
but the fundamental physical problems introduced
by the new fuel would not be eliminated.
The problem is reactor component embrittlement
caused by the plutonium’s higher neutron
flux. This will shorten the expected lifespan of
utility reactors and increase the risk and the
severity of accidents.
Furthermore, the use of plutonium oxide fuel in
commercial power reactors will not significantly
reduce the amount of plutonium. Nuclear
reactors produce plutonium where none existed
before. A typical commercial reactor
produces 500 pounds of plutonium a year.
Government contractors have estimated that using
plutonium oxide in commercial reactors would
reduce the total plutonium by only 1%.
The plutonium oxide fuel would be valuable
target. The secrecy and defense measures
which the military uses to safely transport
plutonium would have to be duplicated by every
domestic utility company using plutonium
fuel. Our civil liberties may suffer as a
consequence. Also, the transport of the plutonium
fuel to reactor sites would add to the risk of
accidental release of radiation.
We believe that the toxic legacy of the Cold War
should not be transmuted into a plutonium-fueled
economy. Immobilizing the plutonium in
glass logs rather than transporting it to scores
of nuclear reactors has advantages.
Immobilization would reduce transportation of
plutonium and the risk of transport
accidents. It would avoid the increased
risks to human health from plutonium fueled
reactor accidents. It would eliminate the
short-term costs to ratepayers for converting
reactors to plutonium and the long-term costs to
taxpayers for subsidizing plutonium fuel.
Finally, it would return us to a more sensible
non-proliferation policy.
In the 1970’s the United States rejected
plutonium fuel and breeder reactors because of
the environmental and proliferation
dangers. Throughout the administrations of
Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush, the
policy of the Federal Government banned the use
of plutonium in commercial nuclear power plants
due to the risk that the plutonium could be
diverted to terrorists and to nations that have
not renounced the use of nuclear weapons.
In the 1990’s we face a new and more
complex international security
picture. What the United States decides
both to do and not to do with dismantled warheads
will affect international stability far into the
next century. Plutonium fueled reactors and other
technologies which combine military and domestic
uses of fissionable materials would create an
impossibly complicated proliferation puzzle.
What We Recommend
In 1984 citizens organized the Blue Ridge
Environmental Defense League to stop the
Department of Energy’s Crystalline
Repository Project and Monitored Retrievable
Storage for high-level nuclear waste. We
have worked for fourteen years to prevent the
Southeast Compact from opening a new low-level
radioactive waste dump. Our grassroots
campaigns in 1994 and 1995 challenged the federal
plan to import nuclear waste from foreign
research reactors to Savannah River. The
Southern Anti-Plutonium Campaign is dedicated to
stopping plutonium mixed oxide fuel
reprocessing. We work with grassroots
groups in Georgia, South Carolina, and North
Carolina and with national organizations.
The financial estimate of DOE’s plutonium
disposition project runs into the billions.
The costs of plutonium oxide fuel fabrication
plant at Savannah River alone will cost taxpayers
$1 billion. The Omnibus appropriations bill
for FY99 contains $225 million to upgrade Russian
reactors and MOX infrastructure. There is
the question of a DOE $900 million fuel credit
for plutonium. To this add the open-ended
costs of direct subsidies to domestic utilities
for plutonium fuel. Before this project
goes any further, the DOE budget for surplus
plutonium disposition activities should be
suspended until we have a complete accounting of
the project.
Finally, a full public debate must occur before
reprocessing of plutonium fuel moves
forward. The issues of public health and
safety, energy policy, and national security
ought to be addressed by a more comprehensive
group of people. The Department of Energy
hearing in North Augusta on August 13 was aptly
described as more of a pep rally than a public
hearing. Citizens’ requests for hearings in
Charlotte, Raleigh, Columbia, Atlanta and
Savannah were denied by the DOE. A wider
range of public participation should be solicited
from citizens living in communities near utility
reactors and along transport corridors in
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia.
Louis Zeller, Southern Anti-Plutonium Campaign
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
PO Box 88 Glendale Springs, NC 28629
Phone: 336-982-2691 Fax: 336-982-2954
Email: BREDL@skybest.com
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