The Christian Science Monitor

Supporters say critiques are outdated

Government scientists say UREX-plus is much better than critics say it is.

"There's only one step where this material has low self-protection, not up to the max, and then it's heavily guarded," says Phillip Finck, deputy associate laboratory director at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., and the administration's top scientific spokesman on UREX. "This process, UREX-plus, is much more proliferation resistant than things developed in the past."

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And the Energy Department's 2004 study that rated UREX-plus only slightly above PUREX "should be performed again in view of the real technological changes since then," he adds.

Nevertheless, Dr. Finck in a presentation to congressional staff last Friday proposed a major change to UREX-plus that would add the radioactive element europium to the mix. That change is intended to boost the fuel's self-protection level, but it would also require additional refining capability at each "advanced fast-burner" reactor site, costing many billions more than the price tag US Energy Secretary Bodman offered in congressional hearings last month, several experts say.

So far, the government has proposed spending $250 million on GNEP planning and development. If GNEP gets the green light, it would cost another $3 billion to $6 billion over five years to get engineering scale demonstration facilities going and perhaps $20 billion to $40 billion overall, Bodman says.

But with the US needing dozens of reactors and reprocessing plants to meet demand, the cost could rise into hundreds of billions of dollars, according to early Energy Department estimates and the National Academy.

Radioactivity isn't the only defense against terrorists and rogue states. Another key is whether the plutonium-based fuel can be measured accurately. Plutonium is a sticky substance that gets caught in nooks, and crannies, like drains. The more accurately it can be tracked, the less likely an employee at a civilian reactor could divert small amounts without getting caught, a strong point for UREX-Plus, Finck says.

But the plutonium in UREX-plus would be in powder and liquid forms and mixed with other materials, known as minor actinides or MAs. And this mixture, which is intended to make it harder for terrorists to extract the plutonium, could make it very hard to measure, government scientists say.

"Even small concentrations of MAs in plutonium mixes could complicate the accuracy of the plutonium measurement if not properly taken into account: consequently, safeguards of plutonium could be affected," Los Alamos scientists wrote in a 1996 study.

A third test of a fuel's proliferation potential is whether it can be readily used as bomb fuel with little further refinement. With PUREX, the reprocessing technology now used by Britain, France, Russia, and Japan, it's clear that its plutonium oxide output could be swiftly and easily converted to metallic plutonium for a bomb, experts say.

By contrast, UREX-plus fuel "is not attractive or useable as weapons material," said Clay Sell, deputy secretary of Energy at a press conference unveiling the GNEP program last month.

But that's not what several energy Department scientists have concluded. They found that plutonium-based reactor fuels with various impurities can still be used in a crude or even an advanced nuclear weapon.

Fuel could become bomb, study says

A "subnational group using designs and technologies no more sophisticated than those used in first-generation nuclear weapons could build a nuclear weapon from reactor-grade plutonium," a 1997 DOE study found. The explosion would be on the scale of the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II. But even a "fizzled" explosion would mean a one-kiloton explosion, enough to devastate the core of a major US city.

True, that study did not evaluate the "minor actinides," elements included in UREX-plus, such as americium and neptunium. But more recent DOE analysis indicates such elements are not much, if any, real obstacle to the fuel's use in a weapon. Indeed, UREX-plus would contain americium and neptunium, nuclear elements with explosive properties any terrorist or a rogue state could well appreciate, government physicists say.

"As nuclear weapon design and engineering become more common in the world, it becomes possible to make nuclear weapons out of an increasing number of technically challenging explosive fissionable materials," including the likes of americium, wrote a DOE scientist in a 1999 report.

Such fears are largely unfounded, counters Finck at Argonne. "Theoretically, yes, you could use it [in a bomb.] But it would be an extremely difficult process. I can't comment further on that."

Common security measures, he adds, such as close-in surveillance cameras, real-time computer tracking of material, guards, guns, and fences at UREX-plus reprocessing plants, in tandem with technical challenges would make the fuel very difficult to steal.

SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; RICH CLABAUGH - STAFF

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For further information:
•	Proliferation-Resistant Nuclear Power Systems: A Workshop on New Ideas - Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, March 2000 (PDF)
•	Proliferation Resistance Assessment Methology for Nuclear Fuel Cycles - Nuclear Engineering Department, Texas A&M University (PDF)
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