MOX TRANSCRIPT

Burning Warheads as Fuel for Nuclear Reactors?

Mary Olson with Jackie Cabasso

The disaster at Fukushima makes it apparent how little is known about the operation of a nuclear power plant. For example the so-called "spent" fuel in the cooling pools on the rooftops is many times more dangerous than the fresh, non irradiated fuel. The biggest danger from the Fukuchima nuclear accident comes from unit 3 that was stocked in September 2010 with MOX, a new mixed oxide reactor fuel that contains plutonium - not as a fission byproduct - but from the outset inside the fuel rods. MOX fuel is many times more lethal than uranium fuel.

This is conversation between Mary Olson from NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Jacqui Cabasso from the Western States Legal Foundation. It is a rare historic document of the origins of a campaign against MOX plutonium fuel for nuclear power, an analysis of the terrible pact of mutual support between utilities, weapons makers and bought off congress people.

President Obama says, after Fukushima, that nuclear power will remain quote "part of the overall energy plan". Republicans - in their merciless budget cuts leave as yet a program untouched that funds the ongoing construction of a MOX fuel generating plant at Savannah River in South Carolina.

Original recording: Walnut Creek, Contra Costa, CA, JANUARY 2002

Jackie Cabasso: JC

Mary Olson: MO

Maria Gilardin, Host (MG)

JC: Why don't we just back up a step and talk about nuclear fuel and nuclear reactors. Just the real basics. Where does uranium fuel come from and how is it made into fuel for nuclear reactors and what does it mean when fuel becomes "spent".

MO: These are all good questions but we have to start with that word "spent". The only thing spent about anything nuclear is the money. There is nothing spent about what is properly called irradiated fuel and that is the end point of your question. It's the fuel once it's been used by the reactor to generate electricity. Let's start with that point for just a moment. When atoms are split out come a tremendous amount of energy, part of which is converted almost immediately to heat. And the heat is siphoned off through the liquid coolant and turned into steam and the steam is used to turn turbines that make the electricity. (So we think of reactors as really just very fancy teapots. And the atom splitting is doing nothing more than generating heat.

But that is a false picture because) At the same time it's generating massive amounts of new radioactivity. As you ask – where does this fuel come from? Uranium is an element that is in the earth. It's mostly buried deep in the earth because life itself doesn't need it and so the soils have built up on top of it. It's not been in the cycles. Human beings go out and dig it up.

It's processed in many steps. It is radioactive; it is a health hazard. The miners who dug up the uranium have suffered greatly in their health, particularly lung cancer. The communities that have been affected by mining and then the various steps of processing because uranium has to be very highly processed to make fuel for reactors through six separate steps including turning it into a gas and concentrating it into a particular type of uranium which is the same one that can be used for making nuclear bombs.

But in a reactor situation it's in lower concentrations. So once this uranium is processed it's turned into fuel rods and those fuel rods are moved around the country to the 103 reactor sites and they are radioactive. But I have to tell you my dear sweet mother had the idea that somehow the radioactivity was used up when the electricity was made and as I said, when the uranium is put into the reactor the splitting of those uranium 235 atoms actually makes new radioactivity and that fuel becomes millions of times more radioactive than the uranium that came out of the ground and in the course of about 3 years - they are trying to make that longer - the fuel has to be taken out because it has becomes so full of what is called fission products which are the cesium the strontium, radioactive iodines, all of these different radioactive elements get in the way of the fuel generating the heat that is needed and so it is removed and the industry now calls it "spent" fuel.

And as I said it's now very expensive stuff, it has to be safeguarded it has to be kept from melting; the heat from radioactive decay that continues even after it is taken out of the reactor core is so great that the fuel itself will melt if it not cooled for at least 5 years in liquid and even after that it will spontaneously combust. And so this fuel made from uranium is really very nasty stuff.

And the other thing that we need to point out is that when uranium is put into a reactor, plutonium is formed in the process of using the uranium fuel. Every single reactor on the planet that uses uranium fuel generates new plutonium. And so in the U.S. our reactors generate about 1% of the total weight of fuel by the time it is taken out is now plutonium. So indeed the largest stock of plutonium in the world is in used reactor fuel or irradiated fuel. I should stop and you should ask me another question but I want to point out that in other parts of the world that plutonium is harvested from reactor waste. We haven't been doing that in the US. We've been simply storing the fuel as a waste.

(And I think it is important to underscore that the language that the government and the nuclear industry use to describe its processes is very, very misleading. Spent fuel sounds like it is harmless it's actually even more dangerous than the fresh fuel. So we are not talking here about the disposition or disposal, - also loaded words - of the uses fuel from the commercial nuclear power plants. Now what we are talking about is something new.)

JC: Isn't it true that the U.S. has historically had a kind of firewall between commercial nuclear power and military nuclear technology for bombs? And what we are talking about now is actually using plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons to burn as fuel in nuclear reactors. Could you talk about that historic separation and what you see is happening there?

MO: I want to just capture the moment to say that the reactors were designed for uranium fuel. So one of the challenges we are facing is a complete experiment of going to plutonium fuel. Now sadly it is not all nuclear weapons and even more sadly there is lots of evidence that new nuclear weapons are being made at the same time. Nonetheless it raises the new question of what the hell do you do with the parts so that you can be sure that they don't become nuclear weapons again. And I tell you right now that that's what this whole program for plutonium or MOX fuel is supposedly about. It's supposedly about making plutonium in the U.S. and in Russia from dismantled nuclear weapons "safe". The sad thing is that not only is it making nuclear power even more unsafe, it is also becoming a very thin cover over a renewed nuclear weapons production program in the U.S.

So it is very difficult for me to give any credibility to the idea that this program is in fact making anything safe. But that's how it is being sold. Yes, there has supposedly been a great separation between the production of nuclear weapons and the production of nuclear energy - electricity. But I have to laugh at that too. Westinghouse built the reactors for making electricity and Westinghouse got the contracts to make the bombs. Where is the separation? General Electric built the other competing reactors, the GE Mark I and Mark II’s that are no better than Chernobyl- have no containment to speak of and undercut the Westinghouse model. They also for many, many years were prime contractors on nuclear weapons. But in any case there has been a supposed firewall.

Now what is changing and truly is changing is that in the past nuclear power has enjoyed a lot of government support in its development, in formulating insurance policy in case of major accidents called the Price-Anderson Act; in nationalizing the waste program - so there have been many supports for commercial nuclear power from the government.

But the plutonium fuel program will give them a role in the National Security Mission and they will receive not only their costs but direct compensation for performing this function and in an era of supposed competition between different sources of electrical energy the reactors that use the plutonium fuel will be effectively underwritten with U.S. tax dollars, a check in the mail first time ever in order to keep the reactors able to out-compete any other form of energy so that they can continue to operate throughout the 20 years or however many years it take to "dispose" of the plutonium.

MG: Can you give a quick definition of the Price-Anderson Act?

MO: The Price-Anderson Act was an amendment to Atomic Energy Act because commercial nuclear reactors could not find private insurance for their operations. The insurance industry said: "No, we will not insure you." And so the Congress stepped in and created a little funny thing, and I'm putting it that way because I find it very interesting. There is a pool of money that each reactor pays into every year that's about $100 million all told. If anything happens in the U.S. that costs more than $100 million all of the reactor operators that are licensed at that time to produce nuclear energy have to pay equal shares and they do so every year for 10 years and the current formula results in about $9 billion that would be a collective payment by the industry towards the damaged.

Now, most reactor accidents would cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars because they are close to urban areas. If you wanted to calculate what would happen if Jumbo jets his the Indian Point Reactors on the Hudson very close to where the World Trade Center was hit I think it would exceed the $200 billion figure that I've heard floated. There are three reactors at that site they've got close to 35 years of collective fuel generation. The amount of radioactivity that would be floating around Manhattan - that place would be a ghost town right now and the economic impact on this country would be far reaching greater than Enron by many orders of magnitude.

So the point here is that the industry all pay to play one screws up they all pay but then they stop at about $9 billion, which is a fraction of the true cost of a real Chernobyl style event in the U.S. Chernobyl dumped the entire reactor core and contaminated vast areas of Europe and even in the U.S. there was fallout. So the point is that they have limited liability conferred upon them by law and the result is that the victims would have to pay the rest. So ultimately those who would pay are those who would suffer.

Now I want to say one last thing about this. The plutonium doesn't go away. While the plutonium is in the reactor some of it is split. It releases the energy that is the heat that makes the electric power. Yes, but at the very same time mixed oxide fuel is made of both plutonium and uranium. And the uranium in the fuel generates new plutonium at the same time. So while the plutonium that is put in is reduced new plutonium is generated and the net reduction is possibly 1 %. So this is not a way to get rid of plutonium. It is only a way to making plutonium highly radioactive, which is part of the goal of supposedly making it safer. A way to give tax dollars to selected utilities that participate in a National Security Mission and prop them up against any competition they might have -- and here comes the real kicker -- re-purify plutonium to the point where it is so pure that weapons designers or nuclear-fuel designers can use it.

That's why many organizations say that plutonium IS a waste and should be treated as a waste and is not a fuel source and certainly the experiment of using plutonium in Europe has shown that it is not an economic fuel source. They are in debt in plutonium industries and they are failing in Europe and indeed that's part of why they are coming to the U. S. for our tax dollars to do this program to justify their expertise. But I want to go back to the question, once it's in the reactor, why is it so dangerous?

Reactors are not safe. Uranium fuel is not safe. There have been two major accidents and a lot of lesser-known accidents with uranium fueling reactors - and speaking of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The work has been done, the calculations have been made. If Chernobyl had had plutonium fuel in the core, twice as many cancers would result. Twice as many fatal cancers, twice as many non-fatal cancers. You infer therefore that all the other health effects that come from radiation would also be twice as bad.

Why? Because not only is plutonium much more effective at causing cancer, it's also very toxic and reactors that have plutonium fuel in them not only make additional plutonium, they make even heavier elements like americium and neptunium. You hardly ever hear about them, but believe it or not, they're worse than plutonium for causing cancer and for toxicity.

And so the reactor core is fundamentally changed by introducing plutonium as a fuel. The consequences of a reactor accident are fundamentally worse and there is every reason to believe that an accident is more likely with plutonium in the core. And it's for precisely the reason that plutonium-239 is selected for weapons production is because it likes to go boom! - and is much harder to control than uranium. Uranium has a very interesting attribute, which is the hotter it gets inside the reactor, the harder it is to split a uranium-235 atom. It's a natural negative feedback loop that allows the reactor operators to have a little bit of grace in their ability to control a reactor core.

Weapons-grade plutonium - exact reverse. The hotter it gets, the easier it is to split it.

The second attribute of uranium that helps the reactor operators is when the atom is split, out comes that energy. Well, some of the energy is in the form of particles that are highly charged called neutrons. Uranium happens to have two releases - an initial one that's immediate and a secondary one that is seconds to minutes later.

Reactors are controlled with something called a control rod - many rods that are inserted. Well, they are mechanical mechanisms that require seconds and minutes for them to move. You cannot move a control rod in a nanosecond. It is not physically possible. Well, the weapons-grade plutonium they want to put into these reactors as fuel has only one third as many delayed neutrons. The second burst that comes out later.

So control rods are only one-third as effective when you're using plutonium fuel. So the engineers, you know, they love to solve all these problems. But every time there is a new problem and a new solution, I believe - and many others believe - it cuts into what's called the margin of safety. And so we have a fuel that's much more dangerous in terms of the consequences. We have a fuel that's likely to cause an accident more readily. And we're paying for it with our tax dollars.

JC: And I just want to talk a little more about why plutonium is so dangerous. As you mentioned, when plutonium is in a metal, solid form, it can be handled. And the skin will actually serve as a barrier to radiation. But it's when it is in a particularized or finally divided form that it's pyrophoric - it spontaneously bursts into flame on contact with air. And under those circumstances, the tiniest particle if inhaled or ingested or taken in through a cut in the skin could very likely lead to a cancer and to other kinds of diseases.

And in fact the Department of Energy studies on beagle dogs at the University of California, Davis, resulted in a bunch of dead dogs. They couldn't find a particle placed in the lung that was so small that it didn't cause a lung cancer. Every one of their experimental animals died which is another small tragedy in the world of nuclear tragedies.

What are the alternatives, and specifically, what are the alternatives to plutonium storage, if you will, or disposition? And that's one question. And the other question is, what are the alternatives to this nuclear energy path that we continue to be on despite all of the accidents, dangers, expenses and so on?

MO: Well, there's good news, Jackie. And we need it. But the fact is that all of this is a relic of not only the last century but the last millennium but I believe the last age. Because we have survived the nuclear age and if we don't do something quick, we may not. And so I think the fact of the matter is, people in every country on every continent are united in the perception that the world would be a far safer place if we had no nuclear weapons at all, and if we did not use nuclear energy at all.

So I think as much as right now, there is so sort of this fervor and this fear going around about security and terrorism, underneath that is a bedrock that was identified in the 1990's and the 1980's in various opinion polls and questionnaires and research projects, that something like 7 out of 10 people in this country believe that getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely would make the world safer.

And the reason I repeat that, even now, is the fact that we can look around - in the grocery store, in our places of work, in our schools - and know that if we believe in nuclear disarmament, and we believe in a nuclear-free world, the majority of those around us agree with us. Even if they're of a different political party, even if they're a different gender, even if they're a different age. The majority of people actually already agree with us.

And so how do we manifest that? How do we bring it forward? How do we do it? And the even better news is that every time the corporations try to do something like this mixed oxide fuel, or new weapons production or whatever, it turns back around to the fundamental truth that this stuff is not good for us. And more people wake up and more people realize we have a problem.

And so every time the nuclear industry thinks that they're moving forward, it's actually those of us who are working for the preservation of life and the healing of the planet who get to go forward because they inevitably go backwards.

And so the alternative to plutonium? Well, stop making it. And where is it made? In reactors. Every single reactor on the planet that uses uranium fuel makes plutonium. So when arms control people talk about plutonium production, I start laughing because they're just talking about the separation of the plutonium. It isn't until we turn off all the reactors that we stop actually making plutonium.

MG: Is it 20% that's provided by nuclear power, is that the correct number?

MO: It is a correct number than 20% of our electric power, not our total energy – in total energy much less is nuclear. But electric power is 20%. However, the single largest consumer of electricity in the United States is the production of uranium fuel. It consumes 1%, which is one 100rds of the total electrical consumption of the United States. And so in fact, the net contribution is only 19% because if you turn off the fuel production at the same time as you turn off the reactors, you only lose 19%.

How can we turn off the reactors? Well, it's really very simple. For every dollar we spend on efficiency, which is not the same thing as going without. Efficiency is when you have the same product or the same service but you can look at the bottle and say, "Aha, I made this bottle with less energy than this other bottle". And they're both bottles, and it doesn't matter what the source of the energy was. If you're making the same product with less energy, that's more efficient. And efficiency has - in the United States, the capacity to displace the entire nuclear generating outfit and a good chunk of the coal-generating outfit, if we only came to the level of efficiency that Germany and Japan have. Germany and Japan today get 4 to 5 times more product, more service, for every unit of energy than we do here in the United States.

If we want to be patriotic, in my humble opinion, we need to adopt energy efficiency as our number one commitment and our number one goal. And every corporation that produces anything should be thinking about how to do it with less power. Everybody who delivers a service should be thinking about how to do it with less power.

And the flip side of all this is the ability to rebuild our economy through investment in renewable energy. And if every roof in this country was a photovoltaic electrical generating roof, we could power an economy at least three times the size of the one we have now. Just by using the roofs we have. Without sacrificing another square acre of land for solar power. That's not touching wind. In the state of South Dakota alone, if the wind potential was realized, we could power the entire country at the level we are at now.

So we have tremendous resources. We have the ability to rebuild our economy by investing in those resources. And through the efficient use of power, we could phase out nuclear almost overnight.

JC: You given us a very useful prescription. And you've also let us know that it's going to take long time but we're going to win. I'm very encouraged - thanks!