A research consortium of The Texas A&M University System and The University of Texas System

Senior Technical Review Group Report August 1996

Within the next few months, the U.S. Department of Energy will issue a Record of Decision regarding the storage and disposition of excess weapons plutonium. This decision will be based upon the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, the Technical Cost and Schedule Summary Report, and a nonproliferation and arms control assessment of the various use and disposition options. The goal of the options is to render the plutonium from weapons to be no more attractive or accessible than the plutonium in spent commercial reactor fuel - the "spent fuel standard" as promulgated in the National Academy report. An additional criterion in evaluating the disposition options is the impact on other countries. In fact, this last criterion, particularly as it influences actions taken by the Russian Federation and the republics of the Former Soviet Union, may be the most important action. It should be recognized that the initiatives which the U.S. chooses for weapons materials disposition will strongly affect Russian decisions on these matters. This impact should be a major factor in the government's nonproliferation and arms control policy.

A relatively high confidence level exists about the security of the storage of weapons materials in the United States and the efficacy of the disposition options which might be used in this country to achieve the spent fuel standard. The probability of a subnational group stealing or diverting any of this material appears to be vanishingly small. Moreover, a decision for the U.S. to expand the nuclear stockpile beyond the yet-to-be-ratified START-II levels would represent a very major change in national policy along with far reaching national debate.

However, these circumstances are hardly characteristic of the situation in Russia. Real concerns exist about the security of stored weapons material there. In addition, formal policy statements confirm that Russia regards its weapons plutonium as a "national treasure" for its energy value which is to be used in liquid metal reactors and possibly light water reactors. However, the Ministry of Atomic Energy has not yet declared how much of its fissile weapons material is excess to national security needs, and it is surmised that Russia has produced considerably more fissile weapons grade material than the United States, by perhaps a factor of two or three, and they may still be producing. Certainly, Russia is still in transition to a free, open, democratic society governed by a rule of law. The possibility of theft or diversion of fissile material to nonweapons states or reuse of material in weapons systems cannot be precluded. This then suggests that the security and disposition of Russia's fissile weapons material should be a major element of U.S. nonproliferation policy. Within this context, the impact on Russia of the U.S. disposition strategy should be given a prominence well beyond being only a criterion in assessing our own options.

The first element in this policy should be the safe and secure storage of Russian material. Critical steps in this effort are being taken by the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to build a storage facility at the Mayak Production Association at Chelyabinsk-70. However, still needed are simple, reliable methods of transparency to give confidence that material stored at the Mayak facility remain in place. These methods must be technically mature, yet sufficiently robust and "off-the-shelf", so that the result is a level of confidence on both sides that the mission is being carried out successfully. Overly sophisticated approaches which have not been adequately proven may prove to be counter productive.

Beyond safe secure storage, U.S. policy decisions must be aimed at assuring that Russia moves towards disposition of its own material. This should be an overriding goal since it is the Russian material which poses the clear and present danger. U.S. policy should also seek to recognize and understand the Russian perspective. Too often the United States has embarked on actions on the faulty premise that the rest of the world should see the global perspective from our point of view, without regard to their own culture or other national, geopolitical, or fiscal constraints. An example in the nuclear area would be the decision on the part of the U.S. to forego reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel with the idea that this would set an example for the rest of the world to remove separated plutonium from the commercial fuel cycle. There is little evidence that this decision has had such an effect. Rather, virtually every other major nuclear country has chosen to reprocess spent commercial fuel. The result for the U.S. has been a significant loss in international leadership because other countries find it difficult to understand how we could make such a flawed technical decision in order to achieve questionable foreign policy goals. Additionally, in doing so, we have exacerbated an already difficult situation in terms of commissioning a permanent repository for high level radioactive wastes since we have greatly increased the volume of material for disposal and extended the time needed to assure the performance of the depository by including very long lived transuranic wastes. The lesson learned from this is that we must exercise great care in establishing our nonproliferation policy with respect to Russia and its weapons plutonium.

The three options under consideration by the U.S., deep geologic disposal, immobilization, and reactors, either individually or in some combination, can reasonably be considered to achieve the goal of putting our weapons plutonium in a form no more attractive or accessible than spent nuclear fuel. The same options, however, might not carry the same implications for the Russian material. More importantly, the choice of one or more of these options in the U.S. program may motivate the Russians to indefinitely delay the disposition of their excess fissile material. In this regard, the principal questions relate to immobilization and boreholes.

Spent nuclear fuel, for purposes relating to weapon material disposition, has three main characteristics. It is highly radioactive by virtue of the presence of fission products. It is large, heavy and unwieldy due to the design of light water reactor fuel assemblies. And it contains reactor grade plutonium with Pu-239 contents in the range of 55% to 70% of the plutonium. Weapons plutonium placed in boreholes or immobilization will still contain weapons grade plutonium in the range of 93% Pu-239 or greater. While on a theoretical and engineering basis reactor grade plutonium can be fashioned into a weapon, in practice, no nuclear weapons state has chosen to build a nuclear arsenal based on reactor grade plutonium. Weapons grade plutonium is inherently more attractive than reactor grade plutonium for the purposes of constructing nuclear weapons. In addition, plutonium placed in any medium is recoverable. So a decision on the part of the United States to use boreholes or immobilization may in fact be perceived by the Russians as not being a serious disposition action. The result is that they may choose another action, such as long term storage, so that no effective removal of fissile material from potential weapons use will take place. It is credible to assume that Congress and the American public will not support the disposition of weapons material unless there are comparable initiatives in Russia. If U.S. decisions for plutonium disposition do not stimulate similar responses in Russia, or in fact have the opposite effect of delaying or stopping actions there, then a critical opportunity will have been lost and the entire purpose of weapons material disposition will have been thwarted. It is crucial then that extremely careful consideration be given to the impact that the U.S. decisions will have on Russia. If any of our options either promote or retard a particular Russian response, this factor should be a major element in our decision making.

During the past two years, the Amarillo Center has had opportunities to interact with individuals not only in Minatom and the Minatom institutes but other agencies, government, academia and other organizations and walks of life. Our discussions with them suggest that the views in Russia summarized above are credible and wide spread. There continues to be not only questions about the future of their own country but uneasiness about the policies of the U.S. towards Russia. These perceptions are important in determining the ways to implement the chosen disposition actions and how we can influence Russia as part of this process.

A common approach used in international diplomacy is multiple meetings of delegations in rarefied settings. While this approach is a necessary element of international relations, there is ample evidence that such actions are rarely fully productive. It is equally, or perhaps even more, important to engage the Russians directly on an ongoing basis. The building of trust and a sense of comfort cannot be overstated if we are to achieve our national goals. We must "talk with" our counterparts, not "talk at" them. Recent innovations such as the DOE "lab-to-lab" program is a very significant step in this process. However, the lab-to-lab program does have certain inherent limitations. As part of its nonproliferation efforts, DOE should seek to identify multifaceted approaches to build partnerships with Russian organizations and individuals who play increasingly key roles in the ever widening debate in Russia related to its strategic future and the disposition of its weapons materials. A carefully conceived set of initiatives could have the ultimate result of leading to effective disposition of weapons grade plutonium in both countries and eliminating the clear and present danger to world security posed by excess weapons materials.