Something Worse! Sailing the Seas ...

Just up on MSNBC (drum roll)
THE NEW ARMAGEDDON
Mass Destruction In The Information Age

[ Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only ]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/292687.asp

New plutonium trade raises alarm

By Kari Huus

MSNBCSEATTLE, Aug. 6  This week, the two most heavily armed merchant ships since World War II, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, headed for the Cape of Good Hope. Their cargo: enough plutonium to make 75 nuclear warheads. The ships, en route from France to Japan, are the first of many slated to move large quantities of weapons grade plutonium across the Pacific, part of a trend that some experts will greatly increase the risk of nuclear material falling into the wrong hands.

THE TWO SHIPS are armed with 30-millimeter cannons, seven tons of ammunition and enough fuel to make the 60-day journey without stopping. In Japan, the material, known as mixed oxide fuel or MOX, is to be used to power civilian nuclear plants. Plans call for thousands of tons of the substance to be shipped there in the coming decades. Yet only a small amount is needed to create a weapon more devastating than the one that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima 54 years ago today.

Despite the armaments and secrecy surrounding this voyage, activists led by Greenpeace, joined by some top scientists, have argued that security measures surrounding the MOX shipments were not stringent enough. The reason lies in the nature of MOX, which by many measures is an attractive target for theft and diversion.

Its a wrong turn in the road of securing plutonium from those who might misuse it, said Jim Riccio, staff attorney with Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy Project. This is the coming trend, said Riccio.

MAKING MOX

MOX is made up of uranium and plutonium, which generally comes from reprocessing the spent fuel of nuclear reactors. In terms of proliferation, MOX shipments present a greater risk than shipments of spent fuel, which is so radioactive it is classified as self-protecting. Such waste is difficult or deadly to handle, whereas

MOX can be handled with no special equipment, and minimal immediate danger. The plutonium in MOX can be separated by a simple and widely known chemical process.

Separating and processing the plutonium for use in weapons presents, fewer financial and technical challenges than the attack on two separate U.S. embassies in two separate countries, says Mathew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University, referring to the twin blasts at U.S. embassies in East Africa a year ago Saturday. It is not at all beyond the capability of a well-funded and well-organized terrorist group.

Turning the reactor-grade plutonium into bombs was proven possible at Los Alamos in the 1940s, contrary to what advocates for the nuclear industry say. Its a little known, but unclassified fact, said Bunn, who was science and technology advisor to the Clinton administration in its first term.

There are immediate and long range problems, says Hisham Zerriffi, project scientist for the Institute of Energy and Environment in Washington, DC. The shipments contain plutonium for one, an environmental risk. Not only that but its plutonium in a form much easier to turn into weapons than the plutonium in spent fuels.

PLUTONIUM ECONOMY

Up to now, the movement of MOX has been largely within Europe, and mainly within France, which has the worlds largest reprocessing program outside of Russia. But that is about to change. Japan has contracts to receive an estimated 80 shipments of MOX from reprocessing plants in France and Britain. In total, Japan is contracted to receive about 30,000 kilograms from Europe by 2010.

The U.S. has a policy dating to the 1970s that bans use of plutonium in commercial power plantsprecisely because of concerns about proliferation. But Washington is doing an about face.

Now that the Cold War is over, nuclear weapons programs in the U.S. and Russian military operations are bursting with excess plutonium. Together, the two former rivals have declared themselves 100 tons in excess of what is needed to maintain shrinking nuclear weapons arsenals.

Pantex workers count stored barrels of plutonium and other radioactive material. In 1994, there were 600 stored, but another 14,000 will be stored by century's end. The danger is if the material catches on fire, it could create a radioactive cloud threatening nearby Amarillo, Texas.

But Moscow and Washington have struggled to find common ground on the disposal of weapons-ready plutonium, which remains in large storage facilities such as the Pentax site in Amarillo, Texas. One solution that many scientists consider more permanent, and involves fewer transport risks involves turning the plutonium into a glass or ceramic rod, and then submerging the rods in fluid that is itself radioactive, as a deterrent to theft.

But Moscow sees these more final solutions as squandering a resource that could, one day, be useful. Though most Americans regard plutonium as a liability, Russians see it as a precious commodity and are very suspicious of plans to dispose of it, said Bill Potter, at the Monterey Institute.

One reason is that Russia, and a number of other nations that might help Russia pay for its plutonium problem, are developing breeder reactor programs. These programs use a type of power plant that uses some plutonium, but produces more plutonium as a waste. No nation has perfected the system, environmental security or finances of a breeder reactor programand the U.S. dropped its efforts amid protest by environmentalists. The programs allure remains: if perfected, it may allow energy self-sufficiency. This is especially appealing to countries like Japan, which currently rely heavily on imported oil from volatile regions.

LESSER OF THE EVILS

Turning weapons-grade plutonium into MOX for commercial plants is one of the solutions Russia, the U.S. and other major powers have agreed on. It is safer than allowing separated weapons-ready plutonium sit around in storage.

The MOX being burned in the U.S. will move to a handful of plants run by Duke Energy in the southeastern U.S. Security regulations mandate that it be handled with the same degree of sensitivity as nuclear weapons themselves.

What would happen to MOX of Russian origin is less clear. For one thing, there arent enough Russian power plants capable of burning MOX, raising possibility that the fuel will be shipped to places as far afield as Canada. Another issue: security around Russias nuclear facilities has badly deteriorated, a problem that has only grown worse during the current economic crisis.

In 1992, a worker at a fuel fabrication plant near Moscow stole small amounts of uranium day after day, and got away with it because he knew the precisely how much would raise alarms. By the time he was caught he had 1.5 kilograms, not quite enough for a bomb, but the incident raised international alarms. In August, 1994, at the Munich airport in Germany, authorities seized 560 grams of MOX powder. Analysis showed that 350 grams (or 62 percent) of it was plutonium and 87 percent of this was Pu-239-a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

The fundamental problem is that the amounts you need for producing power are in the tons, and for making a bomb just a few kilograms, said Bunn. The precautions required for ensuring that you dont lose a few kilograms are very difficult.

WHO WILL MONITOR MOX TRAFFIC?

As the volumes of plutonium for commercial purposes soar-there amount of plutonium in civil arena is about 180 tons and it creates another 20 tons every year-and it is unclear that any international agency is prepared to police it.

Critics of the nuclear industry have said the U.S. weakened its hand in efforts to discourage the use of plutonium by allies such as Japan and France by agreeing to burn MOX. And some suggest that Washingtons actions set a poor precedent in the case of the Pacific Teal and Pintail. Because the plutonium being shipped on the two ships was ultimately of U.S. origin, Washington had consent rights on the vessels; in effect, the U.S. could have prevented them from sailing or insisted on an armed naval escort. Instead, it approved the vessels to escort each other and so they were armed.

The levels of security were plainly less on this shipment, than is normally demanded, says Bunn.

MOX RACE

Even as Washington and Moscow puzzle over solutions to diminish their plutonium stocks, Tokyo is trying to build plants that run on MOX fuel and its stockpiles of plutonium and MOX are building. For its neighbors, this raises painful memories of Japans brutal World War II aggression in the region. Fear of Japan has helped motivate the two Koreas, Taiwan and China to beef up their plutonium reprocessing programs.

By allowing the use of MOX in commercial reactors, the White House may find it is impossible to convince other countries not to use plutonium in their reactors, warns a report by the activist group WISE. The real plutonium society has arrived.

MARKETPLACE MAY RULE

If there is one serious deterrent to the commercial use of plutonium in commercial plants, so far it is economics.

Japan is in committed to accept the reprocessed MOX, which is derived from shipments of waste from its own nuclear plants, which was sent to Europe in the late 1970s. Japans own reprocessing plants have suffered setbacks, and its breeder reactor program has met with fierce resistance from environmentalists in Japan. And the price of oil, which was sky-high when the breeder program kicked off, has fallen dramatically, decreasing Tokyos incentives. It is faced with a dilemma: It has a shortage of reprocessing. On the other, the country has a growing plutonium surplus, raising accusations of stockpiling.

Resistance even for this single shipment has been significant, and at least three governments  South Africa, New Zealand and Spain  have insisted that the two ships not enter their territorial waters. As the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail head for their destination, the cost of transporting and secure the MOX fuel is rising.

The ships were delayed by protests in Europe, and will meet more in South Korea. This is one of the early shipments of MOX fuel to take place between Europe and Japan and offers an early opportunity for protest groups to highlight this type of transport, says Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International Co. in Washington, D.C., a company that ships radioactive materials. But he plays down the proliferation risk of MOX. The material itself is not necessarily riskier than material than that being transported in other trade routes or other materials being shipped in same trade route.

MSNBC international correspondent Kari Huus is based in Seattle.
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-- Ashton & Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), August 07, 1999

Answers

And By Land and River ...

Just up on MSNBC (another drum beat)

Reactor Barged Up Columbia River

[ Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only ]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/298130.asp

RAINIER, Ore., Aug. 6  Pressure-wrapped in blue plastic, filled with concrete and wrapped in six inches of steel, the 1,000-ton radioactive reactor of the largest U.S. nuclear power plant ever to be shut down began its barge trip 270 miles up the Columbia River.

TWO TUGS nudged the barge into the main channel of the river Friday night on its trip to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington, where it will be buried 45 feet deep.

The river skirts the northern edge of Portland and the southern edge of Vancouver, Wash. It is the first time a commercial reactor of this size and level of contamination was to pass so near a major American city, said officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency overseeing the decommissioning of the Trojan Nuclear Plant.

Even the utility that owns the reactor considered the river journey risky, and environmentalists were worried.

VERY HIGH LEVEL OF RADIOACTIVITY

Im not saying if the reactor falls off into the water, everybody would have to be evacuated from Portland, but it would not be good for the Columbia River to have a reactor vessel sitting in it, said Lloyd Marbet, who led three unsuccessful ballot initiatives to have the plant shut down.

The fact of the matter is that the interior of the vessel contains a very high level of radioactivity.

Environmentalists had urged Portland General Electric to mothball the plant for at least 50 years so the radioactive isotopes could cool before dismantling the facility.

NO FASTER THAN 12 MPH

The barge will travel no faster than 12 mph to the Port of Benton dock near Hanford and should arrive Sunday. From there, two trucks creeping along at 5 mph will pull the vessel on a 320-wheel, 16-axle trailer to Hanford, 15 miles away.

Utility officials say they chose the safest way to decommission the plant, which for 16 years generated enough electricity to power all of Portland.

I would characterize it as a risky move, but its a lot safer than the traditional method of cutting the reactor into pieces and trucking it over the highway, said Kregg Arntson, a spokesman for PGE.

The plant was closed in 1993, two decades earlier than planned, after a series of problems, including a faulty safety system that drew federal fines, the accidental release of radioactive gases and cracked steam tubes.

In 1996, a train hauled away the reactor vessel of the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant in Massachusetts, but it weighed only 360 tons and was not transported through heavily populated areas.

PGE already has shipped Trojans contaminated steam generators in five trips to Hanford since 1995, and the Navy often ships reactors from submarines and cruisers up the Columbia for burial at the site.

The Trojan reactor contains 15 times as much radioactivity as those objects, according to state officials.

A person standing within six feet of the reactor for an hour would receive no more radiation than an airplane passenger would get from the sun during two cross-country flights, Arntson said.

A potentially worse problem remains at the Trojan site: hundreds of highly radioactive spent fuel rods. Since the federal government has yet to build a disposal site for such waste, PGE said has no option but to encase the rods in canisters and leave them there.
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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 07, 1999.

And coming right up,
Cassini due to swipe near earth
N Korea going ballistic
China posturing war towards Taiwan
Solar flares maxing

There's more, much more, but this is enough, for the prudent, to:
JUSTIFY GETTING PREPARED for a few little possible storms and inconveniences.

@}->-- 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 3~0 @}->-- 3~0 3~

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 07, 1999.