Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium Reactor-Related Options (1995) / Chapter Skim
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction
Pages 17-25
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From page 17... ...
These excess nuclear weapons on the two sides could contain well over 100 metric tons of plutonium, and perhaps 1,000 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) , much of which may also be declared excess to military needs.' Given this situation, the United States has an interest in: minimizing the risk that either weapons or fissile materials could be obtained by unauthorized parties; ' Throughout this report we use metric tons (MT)
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From page 18... ...
and Russian governments have agreed that the United States will buy 500 tons of excess Russian HEU, which will be "blended down" to low-enriched uranium (LEU) 2 so that it can be used for nuclear reactors but not for weapons.
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From page 19... ...
We took the task of our panel to be the identification and illumination of all those options for the destruction or alteration of WPu that entail either emplacing and irradiating it in nuclear reactors or immobilizing it in waste forms similar to those contemplated for disposal of fission-product wastes originating in nuclear reactors. (CISAC decided to include the latter options within our purview because of the familiarity of some of our panel members with radioactive waste vitrification technologies and the related radioactive waste management issues.)
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From page 20... ...
In the remainder of the introduction, we outline some of the assumptions related to security issues and goals of disposition, as well as the broader context of the issue, that we have taken from the parent study. Chapter 2 provides background information on a variety of topics: principles of nuclear physics and engineering relevant to the plutonium disposition task; the characteristics of weapons-grade and reactor-grade plutonium; a general scheme for classifying the various approaches to plutonium disposition within our purview; the amount of plutonium likely to be excess to military needs in the United States and Russia, in the context of the overall world stocks of plutonium and HEU; and the character, number, and scale of nuclear facilities around the world that may be relevant to the plutonium disposition mission.
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From page 21... ...
GOALS, TIMING, AND RELATED FACTORS As already noted, the primary goal of long-term disposition of excess WPu should be to reduce the risks to national and international security associated with this material's existence. These risks arise in a complex international context that includes global efforts to reduce nuclear arms and prevent their spread, ongoing unrest in the former Soviet Union, and expanding civilian use of plutonium as a nuclear fuel in several countries.
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From page 22... ...
While the United States is considering construction of a more advanced and costly storage facility, decisions about the further disposition of nuclear-explosive materials resulting from disarmament might not have a decisive impact on decisions concerning the need for such a facility, as this site is designed to store not only weapon components resulting from dismantlement but also plutonium in a variety of residue and scrap forms currently stored throughout the U.S. weapons complex.
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From page 23... ...
While the stockpile of excess WPu looms large in security terms, amounting to the equivalent of many thousands of nuclear weapons, it is quite small in energy terms less than a tenth of the plutonium in the world, and the equivalent of only a few months' fuel for the world's power reactors. As described in detail later in the report, moreover, it would be costlier to fabricate free plutonium from weapons into reactor fuel for today's most widely used and economical reactor types than to purchase low-enriched uranium fuel for these reactors, and under plausible assumptions about uranium availability and associated processing costs over the next few decades, the economic disadvantage of plutonium fuel is unlikely to disappear any time soon.
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From page 24... ...
and Russian disposition approaches may differ, rough parallelism in the timing and scale of long-term disposition would be desirable, so that 5 If current arms agreements are successfully implemented all the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union will be transported to Russia for dismantlement leaving Russia alone with the burden of dealing with the excess plutonium from arms reductions.
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From page 25... ...
What is done with excess WPu in the United States and the former Soviet Union, moreover, could affect the fate of the substantially larger (and still growing) quantities of separated and unseparated plutonium discharged from civilian nuclear-power reactors worldwide.
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