Mutually assured proliferation

When you begin contemplating alternative fuels in a serious and pragmatic way, all roads, eventually, lead back to nuclear energy. Most of us are well acquainted with both the hazards and benefits of nuclear energy: while clean-burning and producing scads of power, there’s the little matter of what to do with the spent uranium-based fuel once it has run its course. For years we’ve just buried the stuff in expensively designed and constructed underground storage facilities that are purported to protect us for as long as the waste is toxic, which is thousands of years.

Historically, the storage issue has taken a back seat to the more frightening prospect of meltdowns. The partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island, which occurred 27 years ago last Tuesday, sounded the political death knell for nuclear energy during the latter part of the 20th century. After the accident, the trend against civilian nuclear energy accelerated, such that no new nuclear reactors have come online in the US since 1996 (Duke Power is currently planning to build the first new reactor in years, located in Cherokee County, South Carolina). Along with 1987’s Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine, Three Mile imprinted upon our collective psyche the dangers associated with meltdown. And we see it again and again in popular culture, from The China Syndrome (1979) to the disabled Russian submarine in K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), but in reality, the storage problem is a far more persistent problem than meltdown. After all, no matter how well storage facilities are constructed, they still require monitoring and, potentially, repair. That, in turn, requires a capably funded and talented bureaucracy, and who’s to say what the America of 2355 will look like? In short, you can’t just shutter a storage facility the way a reactor can be mothballed.

But what if you could reprocess the waste to reduce its radioactivity? Or better yet, recycle the stuff to create more power? These ideas have been floated for years in various incarnations and are now making a comeback due to the recent bout of global energy insecurity. For example, earlier this month, The Economist reported that scientists associated with Kyoto University are attempting to transmute radioactive waste into elements that will cease being harmful much sooner, hundreds of years instead of thousands. As the article explains, the great majority of used nuclear-reactor fuel is unconverted uranium; only about 5% is the plutonium (or other like elements) we deem “waste,” so essentially, if the program proves successful, it will lead to civilian technologists handling a massive amount of plutonium, if only to convert it to other elements rather than simply burying it.

While you’re pondering that, consider the rising popularity of so-called mixed-oxide fuel (MOX). MOX is basically a mixture of uranium and plutonium used to fuel some nuclear reactors around the world, principally in Europe and Japan. MOX was once seen, after the fall of the Soviet Union, as an excellent means of getting rid of all that excess plutonium in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and now is being touted as an excellent way to reduce the amount of waste needing storage. By reintegrating the waste product back into the reactor fuel, MOX-fueled reactors can produce more power with less radioactive waste. The drawback is that the process requires the enrichment of plutonium. Strategic Forecasting recently reported that Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. has reached an agreement with one Japanese prefecture to do just that, and as more fast-breeder reactors come online around the world, the market for MOX fuel will likely grow as well.

The long-term problem with this next generation of nuclear-energy technology is that it blurs the distinction between civilian and military usages of plutonium. As Stratfor noted, “civilian fuel only requires uranium enriched to the point that 3.5 percent to 5 percent of its makeup is of the fissile isotope” (by contrast, weapons-grade uranium must be enriched beyond 90%). MOX, presumably, is somewhere in between, or at the very least, the MOX process legitimizes plutonium enrichment. At present, there is no reason for a civilian nuclear program to do this, and for international watchdogs, like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said enrichment is a dead giveaway that a government might be making more than just megawatts. The current inspection regime already suffers from a lack of resources and political will. One can only imagine that, in a world where plutonium enrichment also serves a civilian purpose, the IAEA’s ability to monitor nuclear-weapons proliferation will become severely compromised. After all, it is politically unfeasible to suggest that the US or the UN can dictate to individual countries the type of civilian program they can operate.

If MOX is shown to be a cheaper alternative over the long term, the number of reactors designed to use it will surely grow. While it is a wonderful thing to contemplate less radioactive waste to bury, MOX will make it far easier to obtain enriched plutonium. For terrorists, the increased civilian handling and processing of the stuff will create more opportunities for mischief; for nation-states, MOX allows them greater cover for enriching weapons-grade materials via their civilian energy program (which could then, naturally, be passed along to anyone). All of this is to say that, as nuclear technology continues to evolve, the United States’ current policy regarding non-proliferation will seem increasingly untenable, lending to W. H. Auden’s famous line of verse—“We must love one another or die”—an eerie new poignancy.