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The Plutonium Business

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The Plutonium Business WALTER C. PATTERSON for the Nuclear Control Institute The Plutonium Business and the Spread of the Bomb Granada Publishing 1 Paladin Books Granada Publishing Ltd 8 Grafton Street, London WIX MA Published by Paladin Books 1984 Copyright Nuclear Control Institute 1984 ISBN 0-586-08482-7 Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Limited, Aylesbury, Bucks Set in Ehrhardt All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re- sold , hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Walter C. Patterson was born in Canada in 1936. He took a postgraduate degree in nuclear physics at the University of Manitoba. In 1960 he moved to Britain, where he became involved in environmental issues. He joined the staff of Friends of the Earth in London in 1972, was their energy specialist until 1978 and was their lead witness at the Windscale Inquiry. Since 1978 he has been an independent commentator and consultant, dealing with energy and nuclear policy issues. He is energy consultant to Friends of the Earth, and was a witness at the Sizewell Inquiry. He is a regular contributor to a number of publications, including New Scientist and The Guardian, and he also appears on radio and television. He is an editorial advisor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Walter C. Patterson is the author of Nuclear Power (1976, and since updated), The Fissile Society (1977) and Fluidized Bed Energy Technology: Coming to a Boil (1978). For Perdy and Tabby, in hope that they never need to read it 2 Contents (page numbers in original 1984 text, included here for convenience) Preface vii Foreword ix Introduction: the plutonium rush xi Part I: Plutonium dreams - 1946-74 1 The plutonium people 3 2 Separating plutonium: the origins of reprocessing 8 3 Burning plutonium: the origins of the fast breeder reactor 15 4 Plutonium international 23 5 Reprocessing for peace 37 6 Breeding dismay and enthusiasm 53 7 Reprocessors, civil and otherwise 68 8 Explosion of concern 73 Part II: Plutonium diplomacy - 1974-9 9 Pokharan and after 83 10 Proliferation comes to Washington 89 11 Thy neighbour's plutonium 95 12 Enter Carter 105 13 Carter speaks out - and back 109 14 International fission 115 15 Plutonium and the public 121 16 I reprocess, you reprocess, he reprocesses 131 Part III: Plutonium addiction: curable or terminal? - 1980 and after 17 Reagan restores the faith 147 18 Piling up plutonium 156 19 Plugging in plutonium 173 20 Bad business 184 The plutonium business: what now? 193 Appendices 201 Bibliography 247 Notes 251 Index 265 3 Preface In approaching Walter C. Patterson to write The Plutonium Business, Nuclear Control Institute had one basic objective in mind: to simplify and de-mystify for the general public the evolution of plutonium from the rare stuff of atomic bombs to a plentiful civilian fuel that may yet be used in nuclear power plants throughout the world. The danger is enormous - all the more so because most of the world's citizens are unaware of it. By the turn of the century, less than two decades away, there may be plutonium fuel being trafficked in commerce sufficient to build about 100,000 atomic bombs. This will be the situation if those who would make a business out of plutonium get their way. Who are these people? How did the material used in the Nagasaki bomb become their fuel of the future? How did elected governments in the free world, and the centrally managed governments of the Communist world, come to embrace such a dangerous idea? What is the potential for 'civilian' plutonium being made into weapons by nations or by terrorists? Walt Patterson is ideally suited to answer these questions. He is a physicist and safe-energy specialist long associated with Friends of the Earth UK, who has written extensively on the industrial use of plutonium and has been active in public-interest efforts to block such use throughout the world. He brings to the subject a vast knowledge and first-hand experience, as well as a sense of humour and a point of view. It will become apparent to the reader that The Plutonium Business is not another academic tract on plutonium and nuclear proliferation. This report is intended to engage the reader, overcome apathy and provide some practical suggestions on how to stop the global spread of plutonium before it gets out of control. At the same time, Patterson's study is well documented, including appendices with key documents on plutonium policy and an extensive bibliography for those wishing to pursue the subject. Nuclear Control Institute is a Washington-based non-profit organization that develops studies and strategies for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Curbing the production and use of plutonium is essential to all meaningful nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Yet plutonium proves to be the most intractable proliferation problem, largely because of the mystique that has come to surround this man-made element, as detailed in Patterson's study. Among the members of the Board of Directors of Nuclear Control Institute is Dr Theodore T. Taylor, once the foremost designer of nuclear fission bombs in the United States arsenal, now a developer of advanced solar-energy technology and a leading advocate of stronger safeguards and controls on civilian nuclear technology to prevent misuse for nuclear weapons. Dr Taylor, in the foreword to this report, describes the 'life or death' implications of the widespread use of plutonium. Dr Taylor, who knows as well as anyone how plutonium can be used or misused, is clearly worried. The point of this report is that we all should be worried, lest we perish in our ignorance. Paul Leventhal President Nuclear Control Institute Washington, DC May 1984 4 Foreword Walt Patterson leads us through the history of mankind's efforts to develop the peaceful uses of plutonium in a world in which at least five nations have made enough nuclear weapons to destroy civilization. It is a history of intertwining boundless enthusiasm and cold fear; advanced technology and familiar human failings; visions of hope and of despair. Plutonium has been with us since 1940. It was the first artificially produced element made in quantities big enough to be seen with the naked eye. Now there are about 400,000 kilograms worldwide. Roughly half of it has been separated from the radioactive fuel and is in the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Several dozen tonnes of separated plutonium are being used for Research and Development and plutonium breeder reactor fuel, or awaiting recycling in nonbreeder nuclear power plants. The rest has been produced in civilian power reactors around the world and is still unseparated and stored for eventual separation or disposal. If present plans for nuclear power are fulfilled, within fifteen years the world's rate of production of plutonium in nuclear power plants will be more than 200,000 kilograms per year. Most of this would be separated from spent fuel and then recycled or used to fuel new breeder reactors, and plutonium in forms that can be easily used for making nuclear weapons will be in hundreds of nuclear facilities and transport vehicles in dozens of countries. It takes less than 10 kilograms of plutonium from a nuclear power plant to make an atomic bomb that is now old fashioned. The information and non-nuclear materials needed to make such bombs are now accessible worldwide. This is the dual nature of plutonium: it can power cities or it can blow them up. The record is not auspicious for peace. Many countries capable of making nuclear weapons have not subjected themselves to controls over plutonium under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is sometimes argued that the existence of plutonium in a country's nuclear power system has little to do with national decisions to acquire nuclear weapons. If a nation wants nuclear weapons, so the argument goes, it can get the nuclear materials directly, by building 'dedicated' facilities, perhaps secretly, to produce plutonium or highly enriched uranium, rather than diverting plutonium from 'peaceful' facilities already in operation. But this argument is made in the context of a world in which commercial plutonium separated from highly radioactive materials is not commonplace, as it would be if the planned plutonium economies become a major source of power for the world. A decision to make nuclear weapons could be acted on much more rapidly, and yield much greater numbers of nuclear weapons, in a country that is already producing large quantities of separated plutonium than in a country that is not. It has already been revealed that in the United States the use of power-reactor plutonium for increasing stockpiles of plutonium in weapons has received serious consideration. Why should not that temptation be even stronger in a nation that now has no military plutonium, but wants it desperately? The big question is whether, in the light of the forty-four-year history of plutonium, it can be so controlled worldwide that its growing presence for peaceful uses will not greatly increase the dangers of its destructive use, whether by military forces, terrorists, or criminal blackmailers.
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