Skip to main content

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce electricity in American reactors. For years, half the fuel used by American power reactors was purchased from the Russian weapons program.

Then in 1996, three years after that program began, the Energy Department declared that it would take substantial quantities of plutonium out of its inventory. Most would be converted to reactor fuel, just as the bomb-grade uranium was. The National Academy of Sciences had recommended that method in 1994. After the uranium or plutonium has been used in a power reactor, a little bit of it remains in the fuel assemblies but it is not suitable for weapons use.
Maria Korsnick toured the MOX Facility in Sept. 2016.
In 2000, the United States and the Russian Federation reached an agreement, under which each would dispose of at least 34 tons of plutonium, an amount that could be made into thousands of warheads. In 2010 the two sides agreed that the plutonium would be turned into reactor fuel, a blending of uranium oxides and plutonium oxides, in ceramic form, called Mixed Oxide fuel, and known as MOx.

But four years ago, the Obama administration had second thoughts. The uranium had been easier to convert than the plutonium, and in the face of delays in getting the factory built, the Energy Department said it was looking at other options.

To date, though, DOE has not decided on a viable alternative path, and the United States remains obligated to follow the agreement with the Russian Federation to render the plutonium unsuitable for weapons use.

Former Senator Richard Lugar, co-author of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for reducing the risk of nuclear weapons material going astray, said in a blog post that it would be wrong to bury the material or find some other way of disposing of it. “The Russians have long opposed burying the plutonium because it doesn’t really destroy the material, as burning the MOX in a reactor does—it can be retrieved and reused for nuclear weapons purposes.”

“Given current tensions with Russia, any renegotiation of the plutonium agreement could require us to make costly or damaging concessions,’’ he wrote. “Stopping the MOX facility now would derail one of the most important accomplishments in modern U.S.-Russian relations.”

Bill Richardson, secretary of energy during the Clinton administration, said in a statement, “There is tension in the U.S.-Russian relationship, and we don't need to add more by jeopardizing the plutonium agreement.

Former Senator Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington, said the idea to give up on the factory was an example of “inside politics and unwise budget maneuvers.” Failing to finish the job, he said, would be “extremely disappointing and risky to U.S. national security.”

Plutonium has always been used in uranium-based reactors. Although they are loaded with uranium fuel, only about five percent of the uranium is uranium 235, what physicists call “fissile,” the kind that splits easily. The rest nearly all of that uranium is uranium 238, which is very hard to split in the type of reactor operated in the United States. But uranium 238 is what physicists call “fertile,” meaning that if hit by a neutron, the sub-atomic particle that is released in fission and sustains the chain reaction, it will often absorb that neutron. It then coverts into plutonium 239, which is fissile. And some of that plutonium is then split, as fuel.

Some U.S. commercial reactors were designed to accept loading with a mixture of uranium and plutonium fuel, although that mixture is not commonly used in this country. Reactors that were designed for uranium fuel can accept plutonium with a few adjustments to their control systems.
Anticipating the operation of the South Carolina MOx fuel factory, important progress has been made over the years. Duke used four test assemblies in its Catawba 1 reactor for 36 months, ending in May, 2008. For that test, U.S. plutonium was sent to France, which has extensive experience using MOx in civilian reactors.

Isaiah was about 2,700 years too early for modern physics, and would not recognize any of this. But we can be confident he’d have endorsed the concept. He was, arguably, advocating for arms control.

The above is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should