What
Happens To All That Uranium? The Telling Of American
Double Standard
05 May 2010By Tim Buchholz
The United States, in an effort to be “as transparent
as we can be” in the words of Hilary Clinton, recently
announced it has 5,113 in its nuclear stockpile, and
thousands more retired warheads awaiting the
junk-pile. President Obama recently signed a new
agreement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
called The New START Treaty that will reduce current
American and Russian stockpiles to 1550. So I started
thinking, “What happens to all that uranium after the
bombs are dismantled?”
It seems a lot of the disarming process is merely
paperwork. According to an article called “Where
nuclear weapons go to die” by Jeffrey Lewis and Meri
Lugo, a nuclear weapon is taken off the active list
and put in storage, if it is not there already, or
shipped to a company called Pantex in Texas to be
disassembled. The authors say that during the Clinton
administration, more than 1,000 warheads were
dismantled a year, but since 2000, employees at Pantex
have spent most of their time “refurbishing
operational nuclear warheads to extend their life.”
They say there are some 4,000 nuclear weapons waiting
in line to be dismantled. But this doesn’t answer the
question of where the uranium ends up once the bomb
has been taken apart.
I was able to find a program set up between The United
States and Russia called “Megatons for Megawatts.” The
program is handled in the US by the company USEC, Inc.
The company’s website calls the program “a 20 year, $8
billion, commercially funded nuclear nonproliferation
of the U.S. and Russian governments.”They say the
“program is recycling 500 metric tons of weapons-grade
uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads
(the equivalent of 20,000 warheads) into low enriched
uranium used by USEC’s customers to generate
electricity.”
The process starts in Russia, where the weapons are
dismantled and the weapons grade uranium (HEU) is
converted to low enriched uranium (LEU). Then USEC
purchases this material from Russia, and sells it to
utility companies in the United States. USEC says this
program has “significantly enhanced world security by
steadily reducing stockpiles of nuclear-grade
materials, while creating a clean, valuable
resource-uranium for use in nuclear fuel.” They say 1
in 10 customers in the United States receives this
fuel and by the program’s end in 2013, enough LEU will
be created to power the entire US for two years.
What if the US did the same thing with our nuclear
warheads? Now, get this: we already own this nuclear
material. We paid for it the first time when we built
the bomb. What if we dismantle our own bombs, just
like Russia, and we sell it to USEC, who then sells it
to the nuclear power plants? We take the profits, and
invest in alternative energy development; creating an
energy source to power our transition to renewable
resources and the funding to pay for it.
The Pentagon says the US has 5,113 nuclear weapons,
and several thousand more retired. Robert S. Norris, a
longtime analyst of US and Russian nuclear arsenals,
and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American
Scientists, estimated in a recent Associated Press
article that several thousand to be roughly 4,200
retired warheads. This gives us a grand total of
roughly 9,313 nuclear warheads. The new agreement
between Obama and Medvedev of Russia brings the limits
to 1,550.
So, let’s forget about the 70,000 the US is said to
have built since the program began, and the 32,193 the
US is said to have had at its peak in 1966, and just
look at the 9,313 warheads we have to reduce to 1,550.
If we comply with this treaty that leaves us with
roughly 7,763 bombs that will need to be “retired.” If
20,000 dismantled Russian warheads could power the
entire US for two years, this gives us nearly one
year’s worth of energy for the entire country, give or
take a few megatons.
The International Panel on Fissile Materials says much
of the world’s excess highly enriched uranium is held
in reserve for nuclear submarines. The US has the
largest supply at 128 tons, enough reactor fuel to
keep them running for 60 years. The panel says if the
US and Russia were to agree to cut their total
stockpiles to 1000 and convert their subs to run on
LEU, as most countries are now doing, they could
“dispose of perhaps 360 and 700 tons of weapon-grade
uranium respectively,” If we could get Russia to sell
us their leftovers we would have enough to power the
US for over four years.
Let me make it clear that I am not a fan of nuclear
energy. I do not see it as the solution for the
future. But I am even less of a fan of nuclear
weapons. Short of firing them all into the sun, or
deep into the earth’s core, two proposed ideas by the
way and neither of which sound like that great of an
idea to me, how else can we get rid of the nuclear
material? Nuclear power does leave us with nuclear
waste, which isn’t that much better, but at least it
won’t explode and kill millions of people. Nuclear
power plants are left storing this waste until a
suitable dumping ground is found. The US has been
preparing Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the site has
not yet been approved.
How about this?
According to “Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do
It, Why Can’t Oui?” by Jack Spencer, The United
States’ nuclear power industry has produced 56,000
tons of used fuel, which, if recycled, could power
every US household for 12 years. He says the US
developed the technology to recycle spent fuel, but
banned its use in 1977 over fears of proliferation and
cost effectiveness. France, on the other hand, has
recycled spent nuclear fuel successfully for 30 years,
and the 23,000 tons of spent fuel they have processed
could power all of France for 14 years. He says the US
has already created enough waste to nearly fill Yucca
Mountain, and we haven’t even begun storing anything
there yet. Spencer says the French have helped Japan
get a recycling program going, and are looking into
building a plant in China. He also says that the
British, Indians, and Russians all engage in some form
of reprocessing. And while recycling fuel does not
render it harmless, recycling decreases the harmful
levels of nuclear material, and reduces the chances of
making it into an effective nuclear weapon.
The French Government says that recycling nuclear
waste reduces the radioactivity by a factor of four or
five by taking plutonium and uranium out of the
equation, according to E&E reporter Katherine Ling.
She says that the United States has the biggest
nuclear power market on the planet, and that Areva,
France’s majority state owned complex of nuclear
companies, is already building a reprocessing plant in
South Carolina with its partner the Shaw Group, with
the intent of reprocessing excess plutonium from the
U.S. nuclear weapons program. Do you think they will
remember who owns that excess plutonium? Many say the
US is waiting for the price of uranium to increase,
which it has recently, before it begins recycling. But
with no approved place to store this waste, maybe it
is time they reconsider.
So, the US is sitting on an awful lot of power that
the American taxpayer has already paid for, enough to
power the entire country for several years, and 12
more if we start recycling. The US is already involved
in a program with Russia that converts weapons-grade
uranium into nuclear fuel, set to expire in 2013. The
United States has agreed to reduce their nuclear
weapon levels. The US is also facing massive debt and
a constantly decreasing oil supply. If we converted
some of our nuclear weapons into low enriched uranium,
complying with treaties we have already signed, and
then sold it to the power companies just like USEC and
Russia does, (or cut out the middleman and sell it
ourselves:), we could invest that money in alternative
energy. Then we use the new energy supply and our
recycled waste to make our transition to renewable
resources and energy independence.
The safest way to get rid of our nuclear weapons is to
use them as energy. How else can we prove that we are
really disarming? The question really is, are we
serious about disarming? Does the US really mean it
when they say they want to see a world without nuclear
weapons? If so, they should prove it and actually get
rid of some, not just store them away with a few loose
screws for quick access. Are we buying the converted
uranium from Russia just to know for sure they have
less of it? Are we not converting our subs to run on
LEU so we can keep more HEU on hand, ready to make
into more bombs? If we made this change, it might just
help in our negotiations with Iran too. If the United
States is really serious about making a world without
nuclear weapons, let’s take the first step. Turn our
weapons of mass destruction into energy for our
people, and fix both our economy at home and our
reputation in the world.
Tim Buchholz is a freelance writer living in Ohio
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