The Case for a Dual-Track Approach -- And How to Move Forward From Here

The Case for a Dual-Track Approach -- And How to Move Forward From Here

Matthew Bunn

Disposition of excess weapons plutonium is an urgent national security issue. As long as this material remains in readily weapons-usable form, it remains vulnerable to theft if security breaks down, and it remains available for a possible "breakout" from nuclear arms reductions. Hence, as Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov has said, "real disarmament is possible only if the accumulated huge stocks of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are destroyed." It was for these reasons that the assembled leaders of the Group of Seven nations and Russia, at the Moscow Nuclear Safety and Security summit, agreed that disposition of excess fissile materials should be accomplished "as soon as practicable."

All approaches to disposition of excess weapons plutonium have drawbacks. There is no easy and quick answer that will eliminate the security risk posed by this material. All things considered, I believe the dual-track approach chosen by the Administration -- combining use of some of the material as once-through mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in current reactors with immobilization of some of the material with high-level wastes -- serves U.S. nonproliferation and arms reduction objectives better than any other choice available.

Advantages of a Dual Track

The dual-track approach has five key advantages:

HEDGING AGAINST UNCERTAINTY. Both options face substantial uncertainties; by pursuing both, each serves as a backup in case the other encounters unexpected problems.

Critics of the MOX approach have outlined the political, institutional, cost, and safety uncertainties it faces in detail, and you will hear more about those at this forum. If these turn out to be too daunting, the beauty of the dual-track approach is that we will have immobilization to fall back on. But immobilization, too, faces substantial uncertainties, making it worthwhile to keep MOX in the mix to fall back on should we have problems with immobilization. Given that the current U.S. high-level waste immobilization program began many years behind schedule and many billions of dollars over budget, it is surely not beyond imagination that similar technical difficulties could arise again in immobilizing plutonium, which has never been done before on a substantial scale. Indeed, in one recent vitrification test (unrelated to plutonium), the experimenters got the chemistry wrong, the melt material burned through the melter and poured all over the floor, and the floor caught fire. It would be highly desirable to make certain that does not happen with a mix containing substantial quantities of weapons plutonium. Even on the political issues, MOX is not the only option with potential problems: it would not be a trivial matter to convince the state government and congressional delegation of South Carolina to accept shipping all the nation's plutonium there to be stored in immobilized form there until some nebulous future day when a repository opens. So the foremost rationale for the dual track is to avoid putting all of our eggs in one basket.

ENSURING AN EARLY START. Getting started on this mission as quickly as we can is essential to the credibility of the entire enterprise. Even if both options ultimately work, either could be delayed for reasons we can't now predict -- so pursuing both offers far higher confidence of being able to start one or the other in a timely way. It is not correct, by the way, to say that DOE's studies show that immobilization could definitely begin sooner: DOE's studies assert that MOX could begin slightly sooner if we made use of existing MOX fabrication facilities in Europe for the initial batches of plutonium, as recommended by the U.S.-Russian Bilateral Commission on plutonium disposition. But the larger point is that all of these estimates are highly uncertain, and we need to hedge as best we can. In 1995, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences recommended pursuing both options for this same reason: "Because it is crucial that at least one of these options succeed, because time is of the essence, and because the costs of pursuing both in parallel are modest compared to the security stakes, the panel recommends that project-oriented activities be initiated on both options, in parallel, at once."

SENDING A MESSAGE OF IRREVERSIBILITY. The DOE studies demonstrate reasonably clearly that immobilization, if done properly, would make the material as difficult and unattractive to recover and use in weapons as it would be in spent MOX fuel. Nonetheless, the immobilized material would remain weapon-grade, and therefore, if recovered, it could be used in existing, tested weapons designs with high confidence, while recovered reactor-grade plutonium could not be used in those designs without testing -- at least not with the level of confidence that the military typically requires. Some in other countries -- and Russia in particular -- have therefore charged that relying on immobilization would make U.S. disposition less irreversible, amounting essentially to a different form of storage for our strategic reserve. In a political environment in Russia colored by NATO expansion, ABM uncertainty, feelings of strategic weakness -- and through all the vicissitudes of that environment likely to occur over the next 30 years -- it could well be difficult to sustain long-term support for an approach that left U.S. plutonium weapon-grade and transformed Russian plutonium into reactor-grade. I believe we should respond to this argument forcefully by pointing out the high degree of irreversibility offered by immobilization approaches -- but that adding a MOX component as well will send the clearest possible signal to the world that we are serious in getting rid of our plutonium permanently, and flexible in the means to accomplish that goal.

MAXIMIZING CHANCES FOR LONG-TERM SUPPORT. While including the once-through MOX option has proven controversial, excluding it might well have led nuclear power advocates in Congress to force some less sensible reactor approach on the executive branch -- as they have done on this subject several times before. Given that Congress, the Executive Branch, and the interested public include strong proponents of both the MOX and the immobilization options, and that many of the G-7 countries favor primarily a MOX option, only the dual-track approach is likely to be able to muster the bipartisan domestic support that will be needed to fund U.S. plutonium disposition over the long term, or the international support that will be needed to help fund plutonium disposition in Russia.

EASING THE TASK OF GETTING THE RUSSIAN JOB DONE. Russian excess weapons plutonium, in current circumstances, clearly poses more of a threat than U.S. weapons plutonium. So a critical question is: "Would it be easier to get the Russians to reduce their stockpile of excess weapons plutonium -- counting the likely need to round up money from the rest of the G-7 for this purpose, since the U.S. appears to be unwilling to provide all the needed subsidies itself -- if the U.S. pursues an immobilization-only approach, rejecting reactors, or a dual-track approach, including reactors?" It seems clear that the answer, for a wide variety of reasons, is that it would be easier with the dual track. A U.S. decision to opt out of the reactor option would make it much more difficult for the United States to credibly participate in implementing the same option in Russia. Yet if the United States does not participate in Russian plutonium disposition, either Russian disposition will not go forward, or it will go forward without a U.S. voice in ensuring stringent nonproliferation controls. Either outcome would be deeply contrary to U.S. interests. Negotiating a billion-dollar-deal international deal to finance the necessary facilities for disposition in Russia, with stringent nonproliferation controls and international verification, getting countries who profoundly distrust each other's views on civilian plutonium to work together on dealing with weapons plutonium, will be an extremely difficult job as it is; it would surely be more difficult if the United States was simultaneously rejecting the MOX option for its own excess weapons plutonium.

For all these reasons -- hedging against uncertainty, ensuring an early start, sending a clear signal of irreversibility and flexibility, maximizing chances for long-term support, and easing the task of getting the job done in Russia -- I believe the dual track has strong advantages.

Disadvantages of the Dual-Track

Like other options, the dual-track also has disadvantages, which must be seriously considered. Critics have argued that the dual track would increase proliferation threats -- either directly, by increasing the risk of theft of the excess weapons plutonium itself, or indirectly, by encouraging additional reprocessing of plutonium that would itself pose risks of theft or diversion or reducing U.S. leverage in influencing other countries not to pursue such reprocessing.

DIRECT RISKS OF THEFT. MOX critics frequently argue that MOX fabrication cannot be effectively safeguarded, because of the uncertainties in accounting during bulk processing. But modern safeguards systems also incorporate a heavy complement of containment and surveillance, not relying on material accounting alone -- and in any case, the same argument regarding bulk handling applies to immobilization as well. Indeed, the technology for safeguarding immobilization is not yet developed or demonstrated, and how well it can be done is therefore uncertain; for better or for worse, in the MOX case there have been 2-3 decades of learning by experience which have demonstrably improved matters, and that learning has not yet begun for the immobilization approach. (Some variants of the immobilization approach, in fact, would use production processes quite similar to those for MOX fuel, creating ceramic pellets containing plutonium.) One of the main aspects of the current U.S. program I would suggest changing is to increase funding for development of safeguards technology for immobilization, which some experts cite as the single most challenging technical issue facing U.S. domestic safeguards today.

Critics also point out that the MOX option would involve transport to more sites than immobilization requires, which is certainly true. But the risks of theft during transport can be reduced to arbitrarily low levels by investing sufficiently in security. DOE has formally decided to use the identical transport security approaches used for intact nuclear weapons (including SSTs) for plutonium and MOX fuel for the disposition mission. It is, of course, legitimate to doubt that DOE will in fact devote enough resources to securing these transports over the course of 20 years to avoid some significant theft risk, but that is a more nuanced argument.

In the Russian case, I believe that an international approach with U.S. participation offers the opportunity for an international role in ensuring that the most stringent practicable standards of security and accounting are maintained. Indeed, establishing a modern production facility with state-of-the-art safeguards could significantly contribute to Russia's nascent safeguards culture, by demonstrating beyond doubt to Russian facility managers that stringent safeguards are not only not inconsistent with modern, large-scale production, but are an integral part of such production. This could have a beneficial spill-over effect in improving protection of other Russian nuclear materials.

RISKS OF ENCOURAGING REPROCESSING. Critics also argue that the dual-track will encourage additional separation and use of weapons-usable plutonium in the United States or other countries. If the use of excess weapons plutonium as MOX in U.S. reactors led to additional separation of plutonium in other countries that would not otherwise occur, this could increase proliferation risks, and those potentially increased proliferation risks would have to be weighed against the benefits of disposition, and might tilt the logic in the direction of the immobilization option.

It is very difficult to sustain a case, however, that U.S. use of MOX for the limited purpose of weapons plutonium disposition would have much of an effect on utility decisions to reprocess or not to reprocess, either in the United States or in other countries. Utilities around the world are making their decisions on whether or not to reprocess on the basis of comparing reprocessing to the other alternatives they have available to manage their spent fuel; whether the U.S. is getting rid of its excess weapons plutonium by using it as reactor fuel or by mixing it with high-level wastes is not going to play a major role in most utilities' decision-making. Certainly the association of MOX with disarmament will be used, loudly, by plutonium recycling advocates in making their argument (indeed, they are already doing so) -- but I very much doubt this will really help them win any significant battles they would not have won in any case.

Some argue that within the United States, this will be the camel's nose under the tent for a domestic reprocessing and recycling industry, that as soon as the utilities finish with the weapons plutonium MOX, they will want to go straight on to reprocessing and recycling reactor plutonium MOX. But U.S. utilities have no interest whatever in reprocessing, because of the poor economics; the weapons plutonium MOX is something they are expecting to be paid to burn, while reactor plutonium MOX is something they would have to pay extra to burn, and they are simply not interested in doing that. Even if DOE someday reversed its current policy that a MOX plant for weapons plutonium disposition will be used only for that purpose and torn down once that is done, and the MOX plant was made available for the utilities' use, this would really not change the economic argument much, as the capital cost of a MOX plant is an extremely small part of the overall bad economics of reprocessing (consider that the Japanese reprocessing plant, for example, is costing more than $16 billion, while the MOX plant to go with it will cost less than $1 billion -- and then there are the operations costs for both that have to be paid whether you get a MOX plant from the government or not).

Nor would international assistance for a MOX plant in Russia for weapons plutonium disposition be likely to contribute much to Russian reprocessing. Russia is reprocessing as much as it can pay for already, even in the absence of a MOX plant (which certainly would not help them on paying for the reprocessing). Russia, like Britain and a number of other countries, seems perfectly happy to reprocess and build up enormous stockpiles of separated plutonium whether they have any realistic possibility of using that material in the foreseeable future or not.

Moreover, the U.S. government has insisted that a condition of its support for providing a MOX plant to Russia would be that it be used only for excess weapons plutonium, as long as any excess weapons plutonium remains -- which means for two or three decades at least, and it is soon enough to fight about what happens to the aging plant then when the time comes. It is always dangerous to set preconditions for progress.

RISKS OF UNDERMINING U.S. CREDIBILITY AND LEVERAGE. Critics also argue that adopting the dual-track will reduce the United States' ability to influence other countries' decisions concerning whether to reprocess or not to reprocess: how will we be able to tell other countries not to use plutonium fuel if we are using it ourselves?

This argument, unfortunately, ignores the absolutely fundamental distinction between getting rid of stocks of separated plutonium, and making bigger stocks of separated plutonium. What we are against other countries doing is separating additional plutonium for nuclear power generation -- and our policy of not doing that ourselves is as clear as ever. Thus, the dual-track is fully consistent with our pre-existing fuel cycle policies (and indeed, PDD-13 was written carefully to avoid foreclosing the use of weapons plutonium as MOX), and there is no hypocrisy in our continuing to work to convince Korea and other countries not to separate additional plutonium. Everyone from President Clinton on down has made clear that the United States is "not changing our fundamental policy toward nonproliferation and the nuclear fuel cycle." As such, the United States has committed that the spent fuel resulting from disposition will not be reprocessed, and that the government-owned MOX plant to be built for this mission will only be licensed for this mission and will be dismantled when it is complete.

If played well, the dual track could potentially strengthen the signal we send the rest of the world about how dangerous we believe separated plutonium to be: it is precisely because we see stockpiles of separated plutonium as so dangerous that we are willing to use both of the best technologies we have available to us to reduce our stockpiles as quickly and as reliably as we can. Particularly in discussions where we have been attempting to get countries such as Japan and Britain to establish timetables for building down their existing excess plutonium stockpiles, our dual-track announcement should give us greater credibility than we had before. Moreover, if played right, being involved in the kinds of plutonium technologies that other countries are implementing may also give us more credibility in arguing for more stringent physical protection and accounting standards worldwide.

In short, I believe that the proliferation risks raised by the dual-track approach are modest compared to the nonproliferation and arms reduction benefits.

Moving Forward I: Financing in Russia

While the United States has undertaken a major fissile material disposition program, we are still a long way, today, from being in a position in which we can be confident that disposition of excess plutonium will happen anytime soon, or that the hoped-for improvement in the irreversibility of nuclear arms reductions will be achieved. A substantial increase in high-level political attention, the commitment of major financial resources from the international community, and significant changes in existing U.S. and Russian nuclear arms reduction policies will be necessary to get the job done.

The principal obstacle to implementing plutonium disposition in the United States is politics; the principal obstacle in Russia is money. The two are not unrelated. I believe that the political objections to implementing the dual-track in the United States -- serious though they are -- can be overcome if the program is part of a reciprocal disarmament package with Russia eliminating its excess stockpiles on a parallel track. But with an economic crisis so severe that even basic necessities such as wages and pensions are not being paid, Russia simply does not have the money to build the facilities needed to implement a plutonium disposition program. Given the very low cost of uranium fuel in Russia, it is highly unlikely that any substantial portion of the cost can be financed on a purely commercial basis through sales of the MOX fuel to Russian reactors. And the United States is unlikely to be willing to pay for 100% of the cost of its own plutonium disposition program, and 100% of the cost of Russia's program. This financial mystery -- where will the money came from? -- is, in my view, by far the largest obstacle that must be overcome if plutonium disposition is to be accomplished. Unfortunately, little progress toward resolving it has been made so far: despite the many discussions of this subject following the Moscow nuclear summit, including the Paris international experts' meeting in November of last year, there have as yet been no volunteers to pay any substantial fraction of the necessary cost.

Two general approaches to overcoming this obstacle can be envisioned. The international community could agree to share the cost through direct government contributions, as is being done to finance the shut-down of Chernobyl and the construction of new reactors in North Korea, to pick just two examples. The principal difficulty of such an approach is that governments would have to remain focused and committed for many years for it to succeed. Nevertheless, this is a serious possibility that ought to be further explored. The second general class of approach is some form of barter arrangement. For example, the French and German experts working with Russia on the proposed MOX pilot plant have considered an arrangement in which Cogema and Siemens would help MINATOM build a MOX plant in Russia, and would be paid with low-cost uranium and enrichment services, which they would sell on the international market. I have proposed a somewhat similar arrangement in which a joint venture would be established including MINATOM and Western fuel-cycle and construction firms: MINATOM would transfer 100 tons of excess HEU to this joint venture (above and beyond the 500 tons being sold to the United States), the Western governments would agree to open their restricted markets to this modest additional increment of material, and the joint venture would then be able to borrow the funds needed to build and operate the necessary facilities against the large asset represented by this 100 tons of HEU, which would be blended and sold over a period of time as market conditions allowed. This concept could potentially make it possible to finance plutonium disposition, create a management structure for implementing plutonium disposition that can sustain itself over the long term, eliminate an additional 100 tons of HEU, and provide substantial business to both MINATOM's desperate nuclear cities and to Western firms, all at little or no direct on-budget cost to the countries involved.

What matters is not so much which approach is chosen to solve this financing problem, but that the international community buckle down to the job of solving it -- and soon. The Denver P-8 summit later this month is the place to begin; at a minimum, it is to be hoped that the summit will agree to task experts to begin preparing approaches for a later decision by the P-8 member states. While the Russian-French-German proposal for a MOX pilot plant in Russia is a useful idea that ought to be pursued, in the long run U.S. participation and support is likely to be essential to success. A preliminary agreement between the United States and Russia on what needs to be done, and joint U.S.-Russian efforts to convince the other states to take part, would dramatically increase the chances for progress.

Is a near-term U.S.-Russian agreement of this kind possible? I believe so. While not making any specific financial commitment, the United States has expressed its willingness to support disposition of Russian plutonium, including the construction of a MOX plant in Russia, if four nonproliferation conditions are met: international safeguards throughout the disposition process (while protecting sensitive weapon design information); stringent security and accounting measures to prevent theft or diversion; use of a facility financed with help from the international community only for excess weapons plutonium, at least until disposition of that material is complete (since the international community would be contributing to the financing primarily for disarmament reasons); and no reprocessing of the spent fuel, at least until all of the excess weapons plutonium has been processed once through. None of these are particularly onerous, as they leave open what would be done with the relevant facilities once disposition is complete. They are an effort to do what has to be done: to bring countries that have common security interests in dealing with excess weapons plutonium together in a cooperative approach that does not compromise any of their diverging interests in the future of civilian plutonium.

In February of this year, John Holdren and Yevgeniy Velikhov, the co-chairmen of the U.S.-Russian Independent Scientific Commission on Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium which was established by the U.S. and Russian governments to make recommendations to the two Presidents on how to proceed with plutonium disposition wrote to Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, urging them to direct their governments to prepare an initial agreement which would: a) endorse implementation of the dual-track approach in both the United States and Russia; b) accept the U.S.-proposed non-proliferation conditions, to be implemented reciprocally in both countries; and c) commit both countries to work together with their P-8 partners to raise the necessary funds and establish an international entity that could implement such an international cooperative program. Agreement on these basic points remains as urgent and essential today as when that letter was written.

Moving Forward II: Massive Reserves and Real Irreversibility

In addition to the financing issue, there is the issue of ensuring genuine irreversibility -- and a comparable degree of irreversibility in the United States and Russia. If either country retains reserve stockpiles of warheads and fissile materials sufficient to rebuild a Cold War nuclear arsenal, plutonium disposition will not achieve its irreversibility purpose. Yet as far as can be determined from publicly available information, that is precisely the policy both countries are now pursuing. While the United States has declared more than half of its plutonium excess, the remainder is sufficient for a very large nuclear arsenal. It has now been officially declassified that the United States plans to retain a reserve of warheads and fissile materials sufficient to replace 100% of its deployed warheads -- which is to say, sufficient to rapidly double its deployed arsenal. If the fraction of its HEU that Russia has agreed to sell is any indication, Russia plans to do much the same. If genuine irreversibility is to be achieved, START III and associated agreements will have to address these "extra," reserve stockpiles, and reduce the total stockpiles of nuclear warheads and nuclear materials to the levels necessary to support the number of deployed warheads permitted by U.S.-Russian agreements -- resulting in substantially larger quantities of excess material than have been declared to date. Verifying the total stockpiles of warheads and fissile materials will be a difficult task; the necessary regime of data declarations and inspections can and should be built step-by-step, with each new step adding to confidence while posing minimal risk in itself.

This already tall order will be further complicated by the imbalance in total stockpiles. Russia's total stockpiles of warheads, plutonium, and HEU are all substantially larger than U.S. stockpiles -- so to achieve parity at lower levels will require larger reductions on the Russian side. This principle of "reductions to equal levels, not equal reductions" has already been established in the START treaties. Equal reductions from unequal starting points would only exacerbate the existing disparities in the stockpiles. Over time, the United States and Russia will have to negotiate an agreement specifying how much plutonium and HEU will be removed from their military stockpiles, and when; ideally, this agreement should call for reducing their remaining military stockpiles to low, equal levels. Work on the initial disposition demonstrations and facilities should not wait until such an agreement is completed, however.

In short, achieving the goals of plutonium disposition will require intensive efforts to arrange the necessary financing, and substantial revisions in the current nuclear arms policies of both the major states involved. Such measures will require a dramatic increase in the level of active and concerted attention to this issue from the highest levels of government. The job of disposition advocates, therefore, is to impress upon governments that eliminating the fissile legacies of the Cold War is an essential international security endeavor which must be accomplished as quickly as possible, and that what is required from Presidents and Ministers is not just endorsement in principle, but active engagement to get the job done.