The Plutonium Perplex
Background:
March 29, 2014
Weapons-Grade Nuclear Explosive Materials
The good news is that weapons-grade nuclear materials in many countries
are being rounded up and confined to a smaller number of high-security
locations in order to at least begin to reduce the risk of criminal
organizations or terrorist groups getting their hands on the nuclear
explosive materials needed to make a powerful atomic bomb.
The nuclear explosive materials in question are (1) Highly Enriched
Uranium or HEU, and (2) Plutonium or Pu. These are the only two types
of materials that can be used to make an atomic bomb at the present time.
The Hiroshima bomb used Highly Enriched Uranium as a nuclear
explosive, whereas the Nagasaki bomb used plutonium.
For the would-be bomb-maker, the main advantage of HEU is that it is
much easier to make an atomic bomb with it, using a "gun-type"
mechanism, compared with plutonium, which requires a more elaborate
"implosion-type" mechanism. The gun-type device is so simple and direct
that testing is unnecessary -- it is guaranteed to produce a very powerful
atomic explosion. The implosion-type device is considerably trickier but not
beyond the abilities of a well-equipped terrorist organization.
But bomb-makers find plutonium has many advantages too.
(1) Plutonium is a more powerful explosive, so less plutonium than HEU is
needed to destroy a city.
(2) Plutonium is extracted chemically from irradiated nuclear fuel all at
once, unlike HEU that has to be produced by a long, slow, energy-intensive
process of gradual enrichment (uranium enrichment takes years).
(3) Plutonium is used as an explosive "trigger" to set off even more powerful
"H-bombs" -- using the nuclear fission to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction.
When nuclear weapons are dismantled, the plutonium "triggers" are
removed. Without plutonium these warheads are useless; no nuclear
explosion is possible. But the "excess" weapons-grade plutonium has to be
carefully guarded forever because we do not know at the present time how
to destroy plutonium or eliminate it once it has been created.
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Other Nuclear Explosive Materials
The bad news is that weapons-usable nuclear materials are NOT being
rounded up and NOT being prohibited internationally. Weapons-grade
materials are not the same as weapons-usable materials. Weapons-usable
nuclear materials continue to be produced, and will become increasingly
accessible to criminal organizations as time goes on.
Plutonium poses thegreatest danger in this regard, because ANY form of
reactor-produced plutonium can be used to make a powerful, highly
effective and completely reliable nuclear weapon. One doesn't need to
have "weapons-grade" plutonium for this purpose; any plutonium will do.
See http://ccnr.org/plute_sandia.html .
"Weapons-grade" plutonium refers to the highest quality of plutonium, in
which the predominant isotope is plutonium-239 (Pu-239) with relatively
little of the other isotopes of plutonium, especially plutonium-240. On the
other hand "reactor-grade" plutonium has up to 40 percent plutonium-240
along with the more abundant plutonium-239. Given the choice, any bombmaker would prefer to use weapons-grade plutonium because it is easier to
handle and more predictable in outcome (the force of the blast). However
reactor-grade plutonium can be used to make an effective, highly reliable
weapon at any level of technical sophistication. See
http://ccnr.org/Findings_plute.html .
Because the nuclear industry wants to be able to use plutonium to replace - or at least to supplement -- uranium as a fuel for nuclear reactors, their
public relations machinery has created a myth that has deceived many
decision-makers, even in very high places, as well as most of the people
who work in the nuclear industry. The myth maintains that reactor-grade
plutonium is "unsuitable" for nuclear weapons use. Without plutonium as a
fuel, any massive expansion of nuclear power is impossible.
But this particular myth -- that reactor-grade plutonium is unsuitable for
bombs -- is not at all true. It would be more correct to say that reactorgrade plutonium is somewhat less convenient than weapons-grade
plutonium for nuclear weapons use, but so what? As Sandia Labs declared
in one of their major publications, "For nuclear weapons use, ALL
plutonium is GOOD plutonium." See http://ccnr.org/plute_sandia.html .
From the point of view of non-proliferation, plutonium poses much greater
difficulties in the very long term than HEU does, because HEU can be
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"denatured" -- made absolutely unusable for nuclear weapons -- whereas
plutonium cannot.
It is impossible to make a bomb with unenriched uranium, because there
just isn't enough uranium-235 to make an explosion possible. In the case of
uranium, the most abundant naturally occurring isotope, uranium-238, is
NOT a nuclear explosive material at all, so it can be used as a "denaturing"
agent to dilute uranium-235 down to harmless proportions.
There is no counterpart in the case of plutonium.ANY kind of plutonium -even pure plutonium-240 -- can be used as a powerful nuclear explosive. In
fact plutonium-240 is a more powerful nuclear explosive than uranium-235 - and the same is true for all other plutonium isotopes. See''Explosive
Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium'' by Carson Mark, excerpted with a
hot-link in http://ccnr.org/Findings_plute.html .
Brave New World
As Pierre Elliott Trudeau told the United Nations General Assembly's
Special Session on Disarmament in 1978, if we want to have a world
without nuclear weapons, then we have to begin by "suffocating" the
nuclear arms race by "choking off the vital oxygen on which it feeds". He
was referring to the production of nuclear explosive materials -- enriched
uranium and plutonium. As long as we continue to produce these materials
it will be impossible to eliminate nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, if we stop the production of these nuclear explosive
materials worldwide, then we have a chance to dismantle existing arsenals
of nuclear weapons and achieve a nuclear-weapons-free world. That
means that uranium enrichment plants everywhere (not just in Iran!) and
plutonium reprocessing plants everywhere (not just in North Korea!) will
have to be internationally outlawed.
Then stocks of weapons-usable uranium can be down-graded to levels that
cannot be used for bombs, and that cannot be upgraded without building a
uranium enrichment facility first. Also, existing stocks of "separated
plutonium" can be re-mixed with the fiercely radioactive liquid wastes -containing all the fission products and other nuclear waste materials from
the irradiated nuclear fuel -- so that the plutonium is no longer accessible
without a chemical reprocessing plant.
See http://www.ccnr.org/non_prolif.html
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Such security measures, while not perfect, and certainly requiring constant
vigilance, would at least create a situation of sufficient stability to allow for
the gradual elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world, if that is
determined by world leaders to be the sanest objective to pursue for the
continued survival of the human race. And most other forms of life.
Reality Bites
But that's not what is happening. Look at Japan for example. While selfcongratulatory articles are being written about the significant quantities of
highly enriched uranium and plutonium that are being shipped back to the
USA from Japan, there is slight mention of the fact that the Japanese
Government plans to give the go-ahead this year for the start-up of their
$21 billion reprocessing plant, which will begin extracting weapons-usable
plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel on a mass-production basis.
So the present security measures associated with weapons-grade
materials run the risk of being merely window-dressing, camouflaging the
real danger, and in no way putting the brakes on industry plans to massproduce nuclear-weapons-usable materials, thereby making a nuclear
weapons free world politically impossible due to lack of the necessary trust.
This kind of policy choice cannot be regarded as a commercial or economic
decision like any other, based on a bean-counting cost-benefit analysis -- it
could very well seal the Fate of the Earth. [Jonathan Schell, the author of
the profoundly thought-provoking book The Fate of the Earth, passed away
in New York City on Tuesday, March 25, 2014.]
It is up to the peoples of the Earth to recognize the enormity of what is
going on, and to speak up now -- and act -- so as to keep alive the hope for
a sustainable future for our great great grandchildren. A non-nuclearweapons-future should not be allowed to be foreclosed by the expediency
requirements of the commercial nuclear power industry.
Gordon Edwards.
Article: “Japan’s Plutonium Plans Stoke China Tensions on A-Bomb Risk”
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Japan’s Plutonium Plans Stoke
China Tensions on A-Bomb Risk
By Jonathan Tirone and Jacob Adelman Mar 24, 2014
http://tinyurl.com/n27hfry
Japan is planning to start a $21 billion nuclear reprocessing plant, stoking
concern in China that the facility’s output could be diverted for use in an
atomic bomb.
The issue will be one of the flashpoints at the Nuclear Security Summit
starting today in The Hague, Netherlands, that Japan Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe and China’s President Xi Jinping are due to attend. It’s adding
to bitterness marked by territorial disputes and left over issues from World
War II between Asia‘s two largest economies.
“Japan has stockpiled large volumes of sensitive nuclear materials,
including not only plutonium but also uranium, and that’s far exceeding its
normal needs,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told
reporters on March 11.
The Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant in northern Japan will begin separating
plutonium from spent nuclear fuel in the third quarter, Japan Nuclear Fuel
Ltd. spokesman Yoshi Sasaki said March 7. The plant has missed previous
start up dates because of equipment failures.
“The Chinese have said they saw Japan plutonium as a weapons option
and I think that many people in Japan do too,” said Frank von Hippel, a
former White House national security adviser now at Princeton
University, who has consulted with Chinese and Japanese nuclear
officials. This reflects the tension between the two countries, he said.
Reprocessing Program
Japan was prepared to discuss its reprocessing program at The Hague
summit, a Foreign Ministry official -- who asked not to be identified citing
agency policy -- said at a March 20 press briefing. The country planned to
reiterate its policy of not producing more plutonium than it can use, the
official said.
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Rokkasho is designed to separate as much as 8 tons of plutonium per year
for reactor fuel. If diverted, that’s enough material to make hundreds of
nuclear bombs like the one dropped over Nagasaki in 1945.
While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors
Rokkasho, the facility’s throughput is so large, inspectors cannot guarantee
that “significant quantities” of material don’t go unaccounted for. About
eight kilograms (18 pounds) of plutonium are needed for a single bomb.
Neighboring Countries
“Nuclear facilities are very complicated things,” IAEA Director General
Yukiya Amano said March 3. “It happens from time to time there exists
material unaccounted for.”
Keeping nuclear material from slipping outside official control, where it may
be sold for weapons or passed on to terrorists, is the focus of The Hague
meeting.
The IAEA’s Amano, a career Japanese diplomat who has headed the
Vienna-based agency since 2009, added that inspectors “have drawn the
conclusion that all nuclear material in Japan stays in peaceful purposes”
and that there’s no “reason to be concerned that this will be diverted for
military purposes.”
China, in discussion with Areva SA (AREVA) to build a plant similar to
Rokkasho since 2008, has raised public concern over Japanese atomic fuel
stockpiles, set to grow even as the majority of the country’s reactors sit idle
following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Japan agreed to return “hundreds of kilograms” of highly-enriched uranium
and plutonium to the U.S., according to a White House statement today.
Abe is due to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama at the security
summit.
Japan, South Korea
China’s own nuclear weapons program, which began in 1955, is thought to
have left the country with as many as 75 nuclear-capable intercontinental
ballistic missiles, according to U.S. Department of Defense estimates
cited by the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative.
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The U.S. has sought to dissuade Japan and South Korea from abandoning
their nuclear-weapon bans by protecting the countries under its nuclear
umbrella.
“We are working with Japan and the Republic of Korea in order to make
sure they don’t feel so threatened that they move towards nuclearization in
self-help,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said at a March 13
Senate subcommittee hearing.
The country’s decision to reprocess nuclear fuel to extract plutonium may
have other knock-on effects.
Asia Chills
South Korea is also looking at doing the same and may be encouraged
to proceed, while international negotiators are trying to prevent the build-up
of nuclear weapons material in Iran, according to Steve Fetter, the former
assistant director in the White House’s science and technology policy office.
Japan’s ties with China are at their frostiest since diplomatic relations were
established in 1972.
Coastguard ships from both countries have been tailing one another
through waters around disputed East China Sea islands. The tension rose
a notch when China declared an air defense identification zone over much
of the East China Sea covering the islands.
Matters got worse in December when Abe visited Tokyo‘s Yasakuni
shrine seen by China and South Korea as a symbol of past military
aggression.
“While Japan has no stated plan to use its nuclear fuel for a weapons
program, it’s ability to do so is causing mistrust among its neighbors,”
Fetter said. “When you combine those things with disputes over island
territories, I think it’s easy for people in China to connect that this is another
indication that Japan has other motives.”
‘No Point’
Former Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, now a professor at the Meiji
Institute for Global Affairs in Tokyo says Japan’s membership in the NonProliferation Treaty, its protection under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and public
antipathy to nuclear arms mean making a bomb is out of the question.
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“What would be the point of Japan breaking the treaty and being subject to
sanctions by the international community, just like North Korea?” she
said in an interview. “There would be no point.”
More than 9 tons of separated plutonium are stockpiled in Japan, according
to IAEA declarations. Another 35 tons are stored outside the country.
Facilities in France and the U.K., two of the five officially recognized
nuclear-weapons states, currently reprocess Japanese spent fuel.
“Implementation and functioning of safeguards is for the most part a matter
of trust in the impartiality of the IAEA and the competence and diligence of
its inspectors” said David Cliff, a researcher at the London-based
Verification Research, Training and Information Center.
‘Never Before’
The IAEA, which spends more safeguarding Japan’s nuclear material than
in any other country, worked for more than a decade on a system ensuring
Rokkasho’s material wouldn’t be diverted.
“IAEA had never before been challenged with designing a credible
safeguards approach for a large commercial scale reprocessing facility”
said a 2009 Department of Energy report, co-authored by Shirley
Johnson, the former IAEA official who helped design monitoring at
Rokkasho. “It was always recognized that the available verification
measurements would have inadequate sensitivity and reliability to
statistically detect the diversion of a significant quantity.”
To contact the reporters on this story:
Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at [email protected];
Jacob Adelman in Tokyo at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Alan Crawford at [email protected];
Jason Rogers at [email protected] Peter Langan
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