January 2010 Archives

U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu announced the formation of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. The commission will provide "recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the Nation's used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste." The formation of the commission is part of the process of re-evaluating the strategy of dealing with spent nuclear fuel, which until recently relied on disposal of spent fuel in the Yucca Mountain repository. The Obama administration effectively terminated the Yucca Mountain project in the fist months in office.

The Commission should conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including all alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. This review should include an evaluation of advanced fuel cycle technologies that would optimize energy recovery, resource utilization, and the minimization of materials derived from nuclear activities in a manner consistent with U.S. nonproliferation goals.

The Commission is directed to produce an interim report in 18 months (by August 2011) and the final report - in 24 months (by February 2012).

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GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Babcock & Wilcox received NNSA grants ($4.5 million and $9 million respectively) that will help them develop medical isotopes production facilities in the United States. GE Hitachi will rely on a new technology, which "can be used in existing nuclear reactors" to produce the isotopes. Babcock & Wilcox is planning to build a new reactor, which could be ready by 2014. Neither project is expected to involve HEU.

Frank Munger at Atomic City Underground posted a document obtained by the Friends of the Earth, which provides a summary of shipments of spent fuel of research reactors to the United States since 1996. This document, titled "Global Threat Reduction Initiative. Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Shipments", is apparently regularly updated - several earlier versions are available on the web. The current version is an update "as of January 12, 2010". Although collected under the title of the GTRI program, the shipments predate the program, which was established in May 2004. It should be noted that the list does not contain information about shipments of Russian-origin spent or fresh fuel or other Soviet-origin material to Russia or elsewhere.

St.-Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics is ready to start its new high-flux research nuclear reactor, PIK, at its facility in Gatchina, near St.-Petersburg. The institute is awaiting the final approval from regulatory bodies, which is expected to come in March or in April.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that "NNSA Administrator Thomas P. D'Agostino has authorized the start-up of the new Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF) at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee."

In a trading statement issued on January 25, 2010, URENCO outlined its plans to expand its enrichment capacity. The group aims at bringing it to 18,000 tSWU/year by  2015 from the current 12,200 tSWU/y. This will be done by continuing the expansion of the plants in Almelo, the Netherlands (Halls 5 and 6) as well as by bringing into commercial operation the first URENCO plant in the U.S. (NEF, the National Enrichment Facility), which is expected to happen later in 2010.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a document The Long-Term Outlook for the U.S. Navy's Fleet, which contains a testimony of Eric J. Labs, Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, before the Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives on January 20, 2010 (via beSpacific).

On January 21, 2009 one room in the container preparation unit of the URENCO enrichment plant in Gronau, Germany, was accidentally exposed to radioactive material. The worker, who was exposed to the radiation, was taken to a hospital, reportedly as a precaution. According to URENCO no radioactivity was released outside of the facility.

According to Rosatom, the BN-800 fast reactor that is being built at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant, will begin producing electricity in 2014. Rosatom claims that the reactor will be ready for operations as early as 2012, but it could not be connected to the grid before 2014.

The Mayak Plant completed a major upgrade of the MPC&A system at its RT-1 reprocessing facility. The upgrade was funded by the TACIS (Technical Aid to Commonwealth of Independent States) program of the European Commission. The new system will allow operators to monitor measurements and movements of the material "with two-seconds intervals".

On January 19, 2010, Annette Schaper and H. A. Feiveson of IPFM made presentations at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The lunch-time seminar was organized by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). There were approximately 120 attendees at the seminar, most delegates to the Conference on Disarmament. Both presentations focused on the importance and feasibility of including in a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty certain pre-existing stocks of fissile materials - notably civilian stocks, fissile materials declared excess by nuclear weapon states to any military uses, and highly enriched uranium reserved for naval reactors.

Pakistan has blocked the start of talks on a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (CD), in Geneva.

Pakistan's Ambassador at the CD is reported as saying that "We are not in a position to accept the beginning of negotiations on a cut-off treaty in the foreseeable future".

This hard-line position was flagged earlier in January in a statement by Pakistan's National Command Authority, which manages its nuclear complex and nuclear policy, that "As far as the consideration of a Fissile Material Treaty (FMT) at the CD is concerned, Pakistan's position will be determined by its national security interests and the objectives of strategic stability in South Asia."

Pakistan has long insisted on strategic parity with India, including in fissile material stocks. Pakistani officials believe there is a large disparity in fissile material stockpiles between India and Pakistan.

IPFM estimates that the two countries have comparable amounts of weapons material (with Pakistan producing both highly enriched uranium and plutonium, and India producing plutonium, for weapons). The source of the perceived disparity is believed to be India's stockpile of unsafeguarded reactor-grade plutonium.

IPFM estimates that as of mid-2009, India had separated almost 7 tons of unsafeguarded plutonium from the spent fuel of its heavy-water-moderated power reactors. India intends to use this plutonium as start-up fuel for a planned fleet of breeder reactors, but this material could be used directly for weapons. Using this plutonium as fuel, India's unsafeguarded Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (still under construction) could produce up to 150 kg per year of weapon grade plutonium in its blankets. Pakistan is investing heavily in new fissile material production facilities to try to keep up in its nuclear arms race with India. This fissile material arms race could ease if India declared its reactor grade plutonium and breeder program to be civilian and placed them under IAEA safeguards.

Pakistan's position is described in the October 2008 IPFM Report Banning the Production of Fissile Materials for Nuclear Weapons: Country Perspectives on the Challenges to a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty.

On 19 January 2010, Ellen Tauscher, US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, gave a presentation at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University entitled "Addressing the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Internationalizing Enrichment Services and Solving the Problem of Spent Fuel Storage."

She outlined the progress made in providing assurances of reliable fuel supply, in particular the approval by the IAEA Board of Governors of the Russian fuel bank proposal, and indicated that the United States will work to get IAEA approval of the NTI fuel bank proposal in the spring of 2010.

Speaking of fuel banks and other guaranteed fuel supply arrangements, Tauscher identified "the IAEA's perceived need to determine eligibility only on the basis of the record of compliance with safeguards" as the very first challenge these arrangements have to deal with. It is not clear whether she was saying that the U.S. administration believes that consideration other than a country's compliance with IAEA safeguards have to be taken into account in determining eligibility for fuel supply from a bank.

Tauscher indicated that the U.S. administration is skeptical about multinational enrichment facilities, citing the challenges of integrating them into the established commercial market and a potential problems with control over the technology.

On the issue of spent fuel management, she admitted that the two key options that are currently considered - isolation in a geologic repository and use of MOX fuel in light-water reactors - are "unattractive". In particular, she mentioned the problem of civilian plutonium:

Reprocessing does not significantly reduce the waste burden, but passes it on in the spent MOX. And reprocessing has resulted in large and growing stocks of separated plutonium - about 250 tons, and growing about 10 tons per year. The growing worldwide stockpiles of separated plutonium as a byproduct of reprocessing used civil reactor fuel represent one of our greatest nonproliferation problems.

She said that the U.S. administration supports research in fast and high-temperature reactors as one approach to dealing with the issue.

Tauscher indicated that meanwhile the administration supports the solutions that involve interim (retrievable) dry storage of spent fuel as well as those that involve establishment of regional or international interim storage facilities. She said that there is a clear potential in "fuel lease and take-back" arrangements, but admitted that the United States is unable to take its spent fuel back.

(with Mycle Schneider)

Background Removal of Categories I and II Special Nuclear Material from Sandia National Laboratories-New Mexico, Inspection Report DOE/IG-0833, 15 January 2010, issues by the DoE Inspector General outlines some uncertainty about categorization of the HEU material that remains at Sandia after it completed the removal of Category I and II materials in February 2008.

On 14 January 2010 the nuclear cooperation agreement between India and France entered into force with the exchange of letters, representing the instruments of ratification, between the Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and the French Ambassador Jérôme Bonnafont. The English version of the agreement signed on 30 September 2008 is published on India's Department of Atomic Energy site. France signed the agreement into law in December 2009.

Ukraine reportedly received Kazakhstan's formal approval to join the International Uranium Enrichment Center (IUEC). Russia formally approved Ukraine's participation in February 2009. The "Nuclear Fuel" concern, which will represent Ukraine, will receive a 10% stake in the Center at estimated cost of $200 million. 

NNSA announced that it removed "the final 5.4 kilograms (11.9 pounds) of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) spent nuclear fuel" from Turkey as part of the GTRI program. The fuel was apparently taken from the Çekmece Nuclear Research and Training Center, which worked with NNSA to arrange the shipment. The 29 fuel assemblies from Turkey (along with 102 fuel assemblies from Israel) were delivered to the Savannah River Site in the United States.

Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Erwin, Tennessee shut down its production processes in order "to focus on internal operations and safety". This decision followed a number of incidents at the plant that involved unexpected release of chemical compounds. One such incident took place on October 13, 2009. In a letter exchange with NRC, Nuclear Fuel Services outlined a number of steps that would be necessary to bring the facility back to operations.

In an interview given to Frank Munger, Y-12 complex officials discuss organization of nuclear warhead refurbishing process in the United States. Some components are reused, while others (this includes HEU components) are remanufactured.