This is a very poor choice of words to describe the global market for nuclear materials as discussed at Barack Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington this week…

Administration officials are unequivocal about the coming boom in the very materials Obama speaks of in stark terms as posing one of the world’s greatest threats.

Boom?

There seems to have been some very strange attitudes on display at the conference. The parties acknowledged the dangers of uranium falling into the hands of terrorists – and took some very laudable steps towards preventing that happening - but appear rather more relaxed about the plutonium lying about the place around the world doing the same.

France, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom are just some of the United States’ allies in its fight to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism that also already have or are expected to possess large quantities of civilian sector separated plutonium as a byproduct of their atomic energy activities.

[…]

The United Kingdom has 80 metric tons of separated plutonium and France has 100 metric tons of the weapon-grade material, said Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Program,

"I think that plutonium by and large, it is not being protected," he said.

These countries are, coincidentally, those same countries who want the world to have commercial nuclear reactors. MOX (Mixed-OXide) nuclear fuel is being sold as a solution to nuclear proliferation when it actually makes the problem worse: it’s easier to extract the plutonium from MOX than conventional fuel.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported 18 separate incidents of missing or stolen quantities of plutonium or highly enriched uranium…

It’s rather like giving everyone a gun and then leaving the ammunition cupboard unlocked. Sooner or later someone you really don’t want to might pull the trigger.

Posted by Justin at 6:10 PM | Permalink

There’s more hype and spin on AREVA’s North America blog today as it tries to sell the idea that the company is on the frontline against nuclear proliferation.

As part of this commitment to remove weapons-grade material from stockpiles, AREVA has partnered with the Shaw Group to build the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. This facility when complete with convert the weapons-grade plutonium into MOX fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants. This $4.9 billion project now under construction employs some 1,000 workers and is being built for DOE.

We’ll move swiftly over the fact that the construction at the Savannah River Site was recently issued with a ‘notice of violation’ for multiple failings in quality control evaluations, construction procedures and safety testing.

Instead we’ll focus on AREVA’s claim that MOX somehow helps in the battle against nuclear proliferation. In reality, MOX presents a greater proliferation risk than even conventional nuclear fuel. The plutonium required to create MOX could be stolen by terrorists and can be diverted to nuclear weapons programmes by countries. Once the MOX fuel is produced, the plutonium content is also easier to extract than from other varieties of nuclear fuel.

So, AREVA’s MOX plant may well remove ‘weapons-grade material from stockpiles’ but it certainly doesn’t remove the dangers.

Posted by Justin at 5:48 PM | Permalink