Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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None of the options yet identified for managing this material can eliminate this danger; all they can do is to reduce the risks. Moreover, none of the options for long-term disposition of excess weapons plutonium can be expected to substantially reduce the inventories of excess plutonium from nuclear weapons for at least a decade.
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. Because plutonium In spent fuel or glass logs incorporating high-level wastes still entails a risk of weapons use, and because the barrier to such use diminishes with time as the radioactivity decays, consideration of further steps to reduce the long-term proliferation risks of such materials is required, regardless of what option is chosen for disposition of weapons plutonium.
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excess fissile materials under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards; and a recognition that plutonium disposition is an important non-proliferation problem requiring renewed interagency, and ultimately international, attention.
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Roughly 130 tons of plutonium have been separated from spent fuel for reuse as reactor fuel, of which some 80 to 90 tons remains in storage in separated form. Plutonium customarily used in nuclear weapons (weapons-grade plutonium)
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Because of the more difficult technical and policy issues involved, this report focuses primarily on the disposition of plutonium rather than HEU. The International Environment The management and disposition of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons will take place within a complex international context that includes the arms reduction and nonproliferation regimes of which this problem is an element, the continuing crisis in the former Soviet Union, worldwide plans for civilian nuclear energy (particularly the use of separated plutonium)
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International efforts to reduce the proliferation risks posed by the existence of civilian plutonium and enriched uranium rest on safeguards, which are national and international measures designed to detect diversion of materials and enable a timely response, and security, which consists of (currently national) measures designed to prevent theft of materials through the use of barriers, guards, and the like.
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Choices regarding the fissile materials from dismantled weapons may also affect and be affected by civilian nuclear power programs, a topic that depends on economic, political, and technical factors outside the scope of this study. In some countries, nuclear power programs already include the use of plutonium in the fuel loaded into reactors.
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The Russian government asserts that these reactors provide necessary heat and power to surrounding areas, and that the fuel must be reprocessed for safety reasons. The United States has begun discussions with Russia about assistance in converting these reactors so that separated weapons plutonium is not
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INTERMEDIATE STORAGE Present and Planned Arrangements It will be necessary to provide secure intermediate storage of surplus weapons plutonium for decades, since long-term disposition will take years to start and possibly decades to complete. In both the United States and Russia, fissile materials from dismantled weapons are currently stored in the form of weapons components, some at the dismantlement site and some elsewhere.
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Less is known about Russian storage arrangements. Russia has requested, and the United States has agreed to provide, assistance in constructing a storage facility for excess fissile materials from weapons.
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LONG-TERM DISPOSITION Categories, Criteria, and Standards The technical options for long-term disposition of excess weapons pluto nium can be divided into three categories: · indefinite storage, in which the storage arrangements outlined in the previous section would be extended indefinitely; · minimized accessibility, in which physical, chemical, or radiological barriers would be created to reduce the plutonium's accessibility for use in weapons (either by potential proliferators or by the state from whose weapons it came) , for example, by irradiating the plutonium in reactors or mixing it with high-level wastes; and · elimination, in which the plutonium would be made essentially completely -inaccessible, for example, by burning it in reactors so completely that only a
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Risks of Recover~The "Spent Fuel Standard." A third key security criterion for judging disposition options is the risk of recovery of the plutonium after disposition. We believe that options for the long-term disposition of weapons plutonium should seek to meet a "spent fuel standard"-that is, to make this plutonium roughly as inaccessible for weapons use as the much larger and growing quantity of plutonium that exists in spent fuel from commercial reactors.
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The Spent Fuel Option Excess weapons plutonium could be used as fuel in reactors, transforming it into intensely radioactive spent fuel similar in most respects to the spent fuel produced in commercial reactors today. This use could probably begin within approximately 10 years (paced by obtaining the necessary fuel fabrication capability and the needed approvals and licenses)
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The subsidy required to transform 50 tons of plutonium into spent fuel in this way (compared to the cost of producing the same electricity by the means with which it would otherwise be produced) would probably fall in the range from a few hundred million to a few billion dollars, depending on assumptions and on the specific approach chosen.
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Given the high costs and long times required for the construction of new reactors, building such reactors for the mission of transfo~n~ing weapons plutonium into spent fuel would be justifiable only if problems of licensing and public acceptance made currently operating or partly completed reactors unavailable (and only, of course, if the reactor-MOX option were deemed preferable to the vitrification and deep-borehole approaches)
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Plutonium in such boreholes would be extremely inaccessible to potential proliferators, but would be recoverable by the state in control of the borehole site. The method would be relatively inexpensive to implement, but developing sufficient confidence to permit licensing could be costly and time-consuming; the United States has expended decades and billions of dollars in preparation for such licensing in the case of geological repositories for spent fuel and HLW.
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THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK The institutional and political issues involved in managing weapons dismantlement, intermediate storage of fissile materials, and long-term disposition may be more complex and difficult to resolve than the technical ones. Because disposition options will require decades to carry out, it is critical that decisions throughout be made in a way that can muster a sustainable consensus.
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The president should establish a more systematic process of interagency coordination to deal with the areas addressed in this report, with sustained top-level leadership. The new interagency examination of plutonium disposition options envisioned in President Clinton's September 27, 1993, nonproliferation initiative is a first step in that direction, but much more remains to be done.
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