Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Plutonium PerilBy Jessica Mathews Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 05:02:45 EST Message-ID: <74.1992Nov16.050246@AmeriCast.com> Plutonium PerilBy Jessica Mathews First, some round numbers. One gram of plutonium is about half the size of a pencil eraser. One ten-thousandth of that, inhaled, is a human cancer dose. Eight thousand grams - eight kilograms, a good-sized orange - makes a good-sized nuclear weapon. One thousand kilograms, one ton, is the amount now making its slow way by ship from France to Japan. This shipment is the first step in a program of imports and domestic production that will leave Japan with a plutonium stockpile of 100 tons by 2010. Two hundred and fifty tons is the amount contained in the weapons of the five nuclear powers. Plutonium is dangerous, both chemically and explosively, in uniquely small amounts. If involved in an accident or stolen by terrorists, the cargo of the Akatsuki Maru is more than enough to cause security and environmental havoc, which explains the fuss being made over the shipment. The Pentagon'sjudgment was that "even if the most careful precautions are observed, no one could guarantee the safety of the cargo." The United States, which holds a veto over the shipment because the fuel originally came from here, approved it nonetheless. The larger issue, however, is Japan's plan - a remnant of the 1970s - to switch from a "once-through" nuclear fuel cycle in which uranium fuel is used once then disposed of, to a plutonium/breeder cycle in which plutonium is separated from used uranium fuel and then both burned and produced in breeder reac- tors, then reprocessed and used again. Aptly described by Paul Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, it is a fuel cycle in which "material is produced by the ton that can be used by the pound in atomic bombs." The promise of the breeder, a reactor that would produce both en- ergy and fresh fuel in an endless stream, once held a lure as strong as the fountain of youth or a perpetual motion machine. It has proven just as chimerical. Engineers knew that it would be technically demanding, expensive and an enormous security risk. But many believed there was no alternative because the world would soon face a critical shortage of uranium. For politicians, the plutonium/breeder cycle was a way to turn an unpopular waste into a valuable product. Even those who knew this was a false promise (because reprocessing itself produces radioactive waste) saw reprocessing as a way to postpone waste disposal for 20 years, making it someone else's problem. Uranium did not become scarce, however. Instead of rising to $200 a pound, its cost has plummeted to $8. Today there are two urani- um gluts - one that can be mined from the ground and another that can be mined from unwanted nuclear weapons. Making the reactor actually breed fresh fuel safely has proven much harder than an- ticipated. France's path-breaking Superphenix, shut down for several years, hasn't worked and may not be restarted. And now, confronting the task of dismantling and disposing of nuclear arsenals, the world sees plutonium and enriched (weapons-grade) uranium not as valuable resources but as a costly burden. Japanese, and to a lesser extent German, contracts have supported the reprocessing plants in France and Britain. Germany is about to "reinterpret" its law that has required reprocessing and prohibited direct disposal of spent fuel. Britain, sensing that reprocessing may not produce export revenue much longer, is hesi- tating before starting up (and thereby contaminating) its new reprocessing plant. Only Japan is keeping this industry alive. The United States has a direct security interest in whether Japan goes ahead with its breeder program. Under Presidents Reagan and Bush, Washington has countenanced plutonium use from U.S.- supplied fuel in countries that do "not constitute a prolifera- tion risk", as though that risk arises solely within national borders. Of course, it doesn't. Proliferation happens in regional clumps: China-India-Pakistan; Israel-Iran-Iraq-Syria-Libya; Brazil-Argentina. Even though Japan's plutonium is intended solely for peaceful use, its presence makes every nation in the region nervous to varying degrees. The stockpile could well derail efforts to denu- clearize the Korean peninsula. Already North Korea has accused Japan of planning a weapons program, and South Korea has begun pushing for a comparable U.S. carte blanche for its plutonium. In decades to come, Japan's program could make it much harder to convince China's leaders to follow Western nuclear disarmament. Nor would its impact be limited to the region. With tons of plu- tonium in circulation, it would be vastly easier for a latter-day Saddam Hussein to steal - using arms or money - a few dozen kilos than to spend years building covert enrichment or reprocessing plants. Japanese views on the breeder program are not monolith- ic. Some think that the social, environmental, security and - above all - the economic costs of separated plutonium far outweigh its benefits. Vigorous quiet diplomacy on Washington's part should encourage a broad debate in Japan. If Japan is truly worried about an ensured supply of fuel, for example, it could buy a 40-year supply of uranium (some of it from Russian weapons) at a fraction of the cost of the breeder program. The post-Cold War realization of how terribly hard plutonium is to get rid of, and the first ever opportunity to contemplate a nuclear weapons-free (or nearly so) world, could then provide a face-saving rationale for abandoning a program that made little sense in the '70s and makes none at all now. The writer, vice president of World Resources Institute, writes this column independently for The Post.<03:12 11-16C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)