The main objective of the international federation 'International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War' (IPPNW) is the abolition of weapons of mass destruction. Biological weapons are banned; so are chemical weapons; then why not nuclear weapons.
The IPPNW recommend to treat plutonium as a hazardous waste material rather than as a resource. Nuclear weapons can be made from plutonium, which can be extracted from nuclear waste (see pages 5, 6, 12, 29 and 30). This extraction and further purification take place in reprocessing plants. Therefore reprocessing plants should be closed. Plutonium should be kept out of reach, which might be accomplished by mixing it with high level waste. Even better, we should completely get rid of plutonium.
Nuclear experts consider MOX the "only outlet for the peaceful use of fissile material recovered from reprocessing". But since the MOX-method does not reduce the amount of plutonium this expert opinion is overoptimistic. Besides, reprocessing is risky, and its exhaust products contaminate the environment with radioactivity. The waste from fuel containing MOX is more toxic than the waste from conventional (uranium) fuel. Finally it keeps reprocessing plants running, with the risk that reprocessed plutonium may find military use or even fall into terrorists’ hands.
The method for the destruction of plutonium by accelerated nuclear particles is not ready for use. Its fission-products are highly radioactive.
Russian scientists proposed to get rid of plutonium by means of peaceful underground nuclear explosions. The explosion of only one atomic bomb of 100 kilotons may render the plutonium of a hundred other nuclear bombs at that location beyond reach: they are melted and mixed with highly radioactive fission products. Many dislike the idea because of the possible radioactive contamination of the environment. Others dislike it because the precious plutonium can be used to make electricity.
It is like the myth of the dragon with many heads. If one head is chopped off it will be replaced. Dumping at the bottom of the sea is nowadays strictly forbidden. Even in trenches in the ocean it is too risky. The very dry Yucca mountain in Nevada, US, is being tunnelled for eventual eternal storage of nuclear waste, including plutonium, but that facility, too, is not considered completely safe by all scientists. And the dragon stays alive. The possibility to re-use the plutonium stays open.
Using rockets to get rid of the nuclear waste is an old idea, but it is risky. If the rocket explodes the plutonium may be dispersed in the atmosphere. Moreover it is expensive and it takes energy that could have been used for the generation of electricity. Nevertheless, studies are under way to document the risk/benefit. The idea is not outrageous. The scientific satellites visiting the outer planets, Pioneer, Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini/Huygens etc. all contain a few kilograms of plutonium. The plutonium used in these satellites is of a special type. It is plutonium-238, which has a half-life of 88 years. Plutonium-239, the one most often mentioned in this brochure, has a half-life of 24,400 years. Thus, plutonium-238 is 24,400 / 88 = 275 times stronger radioactive than plutonium-239.
The radioactivity of plutonium-238 is so vigorous that its heat is enough for all electrical functions in the satellite, like computers, radio-contact with the earth, etc. for many years. The alternative, solar panels, cannot produce enough electricity on these missions, because the very large distance of the outer planets from the sun makes this source of energy too weak.
But if we "allow" 34 kilograms of this plutonium-238 in a satellite on a rocket for scientific purposes, why not risk 275 times that mass of plutonium-239 (which is the same amount of radioactivity), i.e. 9350 kilograms, on a rocket, now, for the sake of the safety for mankind in the future?
Scientific spacecraft Cassini-Huygens launched for Saturn October 1997. It carries two Radioisotope Thermal Generators (RTGs) containing a total of about 34 kilograms of plutonium-238. The heat of its radioactive decay is converted into 750 Watts of electricity. The radioactivity of this plutonium is equivalent to that of nine tons of plutonium-239. The latter kind of plutonium is the one used in MOX and in atomic bombs.
Buried nuclear waste ( reprocessed plutonium) will be explored by archaeologists, miners, and others who may not necessarily know anything about radioactivity (or they may know but have weird ideas). They might not even understand our warning pictograms or on the contrary, use them as a guide to further their action of "opening the plutonium tombs". Of course it did not occur to our Egyptologists to measure radioactivity before opening the sarcophages. However, if, ten thousand years from now, an archaeologist finds our "plutonium-phages" and he takes them away, he may seriously jeopardise (public) health and safety.
Electricity can be generated by techniques which do not produce harmful by-products or entail political risks.
To replace one nuclear power plant fifty square kilometres of roofs should be covered by photo-voltaic cells. These cells produce electricity directly from sunlight. But storage of electrical power is a major problem. However, it seems to us that storage of electricity from sunlight is easier and safer than storage of nuclear waste.
Within a hundred years all roofs will be covered with photo-voltaic cells... energy stored in batteries and in the form of hydrogen gas... gasoline in cars forbidden... with an electrical aircraft to the other side of the world... people living in the Sahara desert under photo-voltaic roofs....
The new reprocessing plant in Sellafield, near Seascale, South of Whitehaven, Cumbria, on the Irish Sea, started in spring 1994. It is five hundred metres long, cost 4 billion pounds and is called the "THermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, THORP". The factory removes plutonium from nuclear waste. Plutonium oxide is used in MOX fuel for the generation of electricity (see page 17). Otherwise this material would be useless.
Because of the multitude of safety measures, nuclear power is one of the most demanding technical processes known. THORP makes it world-class sport. To better understand why THORP was built one should know more about its history.
About 1950, in order to make a national atomic bomb, the British government built a plutonium production plant on the coast of the Lake District, in Cumbria, at a place called Windscale. To make enough weapon-grade plutonium two uranium "piles" were required. The word pile is an old-fashioned word for the core of a primitive nuclear reactor. In these piles non-fissile uranium was converted into plutonium, while the heat was allowed to escape through huge chimneys. The new plutonium was harvested from the nuclear waste in a reprocessing plant built adjacent to the two piles.
Reprocessing is a chemical technique. It consists of dissolving the used fuel in hot nitric acid, followed by extraction of the plutonium by a mixture of kerosene and dibutylphosphate
Everything went according to plan, until one of the piles at Windscale caught fire in 1957, releasing a massive quantity of radioactive substances into the environment. The fire was extinguished but the pile was beyond repair. Shortly after this the second pile was closed down. Plutonium production continued at Calder Hall.
The new complex of Calder Hall and Windscale was called "Sellafield". Reprocessing was flourishing now that non-military clients, also from abroad, were sending their waste. The so-called "Dirty Old End" of Windscale still awaits the robots to have it pulled down.
On the other side of the river Calder, adjacent to the Windscale site, four reactors had been built at Calder Hall to produce electricity (from fissile uranium). The plutonium in the waste of these reactors was suitable to be reprocessed for military purposes. The reactors were ready for use in 1956. The military programme was thereby assured while the public could be told that electricity would be "too cheap to meter".
A dual purpose.
Two atomic bombs, one in Alamogordo, New Mexico and one on the people of Nagasaki, had shown the power of plutonium beyond any doubt *). This power (heat), if moderated, should also be able to generate electricity! Plutonium is the product of a very cheap precursor, the non-fissile form of uranium. It seemed as if mankind was able to make gold at last.
Until that time only the scarce fissile variant of uranium was usable for the generation of electricity; plutonium from military reactors was separated (by reprocessing of nuclear waste) only for bombs.
Now plutonium from civil nuclear reactors could possibly be used for the generation of heat and electricity.
In 1975 the odds were favourable for large profits: the uranium price went up. With financial help amounting to several billions of pounds from abroad, a huge non-military reprocessing plant was built, THORP.
The next step had to be the use of the harvested plutonium as fuel in nuclear reactors, or even better: it would be used in breeder reactors where plutonium would take over the role of the precious fissile uranium. New plutonium would be formed from the cheap and abundant non-fissile uranium, 238U. The increase of plutonium in breeder reactors would be larger than the decrease by its fission. A good breeder reactor pays for itself: it is like yeast. To set up a breeder reactor, you first have to load it with an amount of plutonium ('yeast') and with the cheap 238U ('breeder substance').
With the heat from nuclear fissions water can be boiled; the steam drives turbines and, connected to them, generators can produce electricity.
Thus a breeder reactor is nearly a perpetuum mobile or even better -- it produces more fuel than it started with. And the source, 238U, is cheap and abundant.
Thus the prospects were brilliant. In the early nineties there were world-wide 450 civil nuclear reactors working on fissile uranium. Their nuclear waste was not reprocessed, so it went straight to the graveyard. That meant the burial of 70 metric tons of plutonium and 7000 metric tons of uranium each year. The amount of electricity that could have been made from this material is very large indeed, but without reprocessing and MOX this could not be achieved. Good business for THORP.
While the UK continued in the reprocessing business, times had changed: the uranium price plummeted because its production was greater than its usage, and the breeder reactors, being too expensive, disappeared from the stage.
To rescue the plutonium economy the nuclear industry developed the so-called Mixed OXide fuel (MOX), a mixture of plutonium- and uranium oxide fit for normal nuclear power plants (see page...). Military plutonium from dismantled nuclear arms had not yet appeared on the civil market. The conversion of "swords into plough shares" is being postponed.
In the meantime there was a growing concern amongst the public about a possible link between leukaemia in children and the radioactive contamination of the environment during the fire in one of the two reactors in Windscale in 1957, and later during a leakage the adjacent old reprocessing plant. In 1989 the English epidemiologist Gardner and colleagues analysed this possible link and the results of his study made a great impact among scientists, medical practitioners, and the people at large, but scientific proof was not beyond doubt. The association Cumbrians Opposing Radioactive Environment (CORE) accused British Nuclear Fuel Limited (BNFL) of making their children sick, but they lost the lawsuit. However, the nuclear industry remains in a defensive position vis-à-vis the population and health professionals. Now that THORP has been started one would expect that the radioactive contamination of the environment will accumulate further. During reprocessing radioactive gasses cannot be contained and they are allowed to escape via chimneys into the environment. Although this is legal it is not desirable. And in spite of modern measures the risk of inadvertent leakage is not zero.
Books edited by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, IPPNW, and the Institute for Energy and Environmental research, IEER. (if not available in the regular bookshops please contact IPPNW, tel. + 1-(617)868-5050 or fax --2560.
Robbins A, Makhyani A, Yih K. Radioactive Heaven and Earth
IPPNW and IEER, 1991, ISBN 0-945257-34-1
Hu H, Makhyani A, Yih K. Plutonium, Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age. IPPNW and IEER, 1992, ISBN 0-9634455-0-2
Makhyani A, Hu H, Yih K. Nuclear Wastelands. The MIT Press 1995,
ISBN 0-262-13307-5
Kuppers C, Sailer M. The MOX Industry or the Civilian Use of Plutonium. Risks and effects associated with the production and the use of MOX. IPPNW Report, 1994. Please contact IPPNW Germany +49-30-693.0244 (E-mail ippnw@oln.comlink.de, or IPPNW Belgium +32-2-218.7109 (E-mail ippnwbelgium@gn.apc.org
Abolition 2000, Handbook for a world without nuclear weapons. Physician's edition 1995. E-mail ippnwbos@igc.apc.org
IAEA Yearbook 1996. Division of Publications, International Atomic Energy Agency, PO Box 100, A 1400 Vienna, Austria. If not available try: Stationary Office Books London, telephone: +44-171-873-9090; fax --8200
World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1992, SIPRI. Oxford University Press 1993.
Plutonium and Security. The Military Aspects of the Plutonium Economy. Barnaby F. Editor. Macmillan Academic and Professional Ltd. 1992.
Mettler FA, Upton AC. Medical Effects of Ionising Radiation. WB Saunders Company, 1995, ISBN 0-7216-6646-9
The Metabolism of Plutonium and Related Elements. Annals of the ICRP 48, Pergamon Press 1986 for the International Commission on Radiological Protection.
Bodansky, D. Nuclear Energy. Principles, practices and prospects. American Institute of Physics, Woodbury, New York, 1996.
ISBN 1-56396-244-6
DOE Facts. Additional information concerning underground nuclear weapon test of reactor-grade plutonium. U.S. Department Of Energy. Office of the Press Secretary, Washington D.C. 20585, June 27, 1994. Contact: Telephone Sam Grizzle +1-(202) 586-5806
Freeman S.E., Ormiston-Smith H.M. The biological hazards of plutonium. Medicine and War, Vol. 10 pages 106-126 (1994)
Taubes G. No easy way to shackle the nuclear demon. Science Vol. 263 pages 629-31 (1994).
Berkhout F, Diakov A, Feiveson H, Miller M, Von Hippel F. Plutonium: True separation anxiety. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (Nov. 1992) pages 28-34
Voelz G.L. Health considerations for workers exposed to plutonium. Occupational medicine: State of the art reviews. Vol. 6 (Oct. - Dec 1991) pages 681-694
Mark JC. Reactor grade plutonium's explosive properties.
Nuclear Control Institute (1000 Connecticut avenue N.W. Suite 704 Washington D.C. 20036; tel. 202-822-8444/Fax 202-452-0892) August 1990.
Thorne MC, ed. The metabolism of plutonium and related elements. Annals of the ICRP, ICRP Publication 48, Pergamon Press, 1986, ISBN 0 08 034827 0
Lovins, Amory B. Nuclear weapons and power-reactor plutonium. Nature Vol. 283, pages 817-823 (1980)
Bair W.J., Thompson R.C. Plutonium: Biomedical research. Science Vol. 183 pages 715-722 (1974)