April 2003
America's Plan to Dispose of Weapons-Grade Plutonium

But is this program, as its proponents argue, the best way to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium? Or will it heighten the risk that this deadly material falls into the hands of terrorists? What can be done to protect our country against nuclear theft and nuclear terrorism?

The single most important factor that should govern our thinking about how to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium is U.S. national security. Nuclear proliferation continues apace in the world-in Pakistan, in North Korea-and we must make it more difficult for this to occur, not easier.

It is ironic, therefore, that the apparatus the United States and Russia have settled on to dispose of their excess weapons-grade plutonium will make proliferation easier by fostering commerce in fissionable material. By creating a business out of the processing, handling, and transporting of excess weapons-grade plutonium, the proposed program will place a great deal of fissionable material into global circulation. There will be dangerous consequences for this: foremost, a drastically higher risk that nuclear material will fall into the hands of terrorists.

Rather than spend billions of dollars on this program, the Bush administration should spend it instead on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which is aimed at directly addressing the danger posed by Russia’s doomsday arsenal. Nunn-Lugar is underfunded and has not received enough support from our government. That is where we should concentrate our nonproliferation efforts in Russia, and not in fostering a trade in fissionable material.

Some of the world’s plutonium is in nuclear weapons (weapons plutonium), while other plutonium has been produced for "civilian" purposes. Of the latter, there is spent fuel from reactors and there is "fresh" fuel. All of this, unfortunately, is weapons-usable. Just a few kilograms of plutonium, or twenty or thirty kilograms of highly enriched uranium, can produce a full-yield nuclear explosion. A nuclear explosive detonated at ground level in a city like Washington, D.C., would probably kill half a million people, even if the weapon were in the range of one or two kilotons.

The best way to address this threat is to appoint a single official in the United States and a single official in Russia, and empower each with the means and the budget to ensure that this material does not fall into the hands of terrorists. The first, and most urgent, priority should be to consolidate and secure highly enriched uranium in Russia and rapidly blend it down. These stocks of highly enriched uranium represent as much a threat to U.S. national security as weapons-grade plutonium. Blending the uranium renders it much more difficult to use in weapons, but in no way imperils its application toward peaceful purposes.

Russian military plutonium is another matter that deserves careful scrutiny. Russian military plutonium is a much larger problem than American military plutonium because, simply put, the U.S. economy is on much firmer footing than the Russian economy, and thus the potential for illicit Russian military sales is greater. At the same time, many have recommended a dual-track approach with U.S. and Russian military plutonium, both to spur competition in the United States and so as not to reprocess but deprocess, transforming the plutonium into highly radioactive material that could be sealed away in a geological repository.

With regard to the mixed oxide (MOX) track, the best approach is to burn the excess weapons-grade plutonium in European reactors. That method would require that the fissionable material be transferred from Russia to Europe, and it is possible to provide security for that operation. The proliferation risk of spent MOX fuel, like low-enriched uranium fuel, is low. The real problem is that there are only 34 tons of Russian MOX versus 170 tons of weapons plutonium; to deal with the latter will require a great deal of money, which should be provided by the G-8.

There really are not any easy answers to the questions surrounding excess weapons-grade plutonium. At the same time, however, the idea of recycling the plutonium in civilian reactors is a particularly bad answer for several reasons.

First, the disposal of the weapons-grade plutonium will take a long time. Because there are few reactors in Russia that can process the material, it will take twenty to thirty years to get through all of it. In order to speed this process up, the United States would have to rely on reactors outside Russia or, alternatively, subsidize the construction of additional reactors in Russia. Furthermore, there is a significant risk of theft and the subsequent hostile use of this material as it is taken out of storage, transported, and processed.

Second, since the Ford administration the United States has put security ahead of economics with regard to plutonium reprocessing. There are businesses and bureaucrats eager to make money off reprocessing this material, but for nearly thirty years, our government has recognized that plutonium recycling would make weapons-usable material more accessible all over the world. Washington should continue to recognize this fact.

The MOX program, however, will subsidize a commercial plutonium industry in Russia, setting up fuel fabrication facilities and other associated facilities. More to the point, this program will be subsidizing-at the cost of billions-the major European reprocessing firms, entities that are not engaging in these activities for the sake of arms control.

The overall effect of this program will be to undermine longstanding U.S. nonproliferation policy. In the course of trying to create a reprocessing plutonium economy, the Department of Energy and the Ministry of Atomic Energy in Russia will run down the controls that the international community has so carefully built up over the years. This program is not necessary for nonproliferation. In fact, it is counterproductive.