Welcome Remarks at Workshop on Teaching the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Good morning, and welcome to The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. I’m Doug Shaw, as associate dean here at GW’s Elliott School, and I am grateful for your participation in today’s workshop on Teaching the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: What do Policy Makers, Practitioners, and the Public Need to Know? I am particularly pleased to welcome Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons, who I will introduce in a moment.

This event, and the Nuclear Policy Talks series of which it is part, responds to the mission of GW’s Elliott School to make the world a better place by conducting research on global human challenges, educating a new generation of leaders to respond to those challenges, and engaging the policy community facing those challenges every day.

Today’s discussion is particularly urgent.

We live in a dynamic moment in the understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle. Just last week in a speech at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, President Barack Obama said “We all know the problem: The very process that gives us nuclear energy can also put nations and terrorists within the reach of nuclear weapons,” and responded to that challenge by calling, among other things, for “an international commitment to unlocking the fuel cycle of the future.” In a short essay in The Huffington Post yesterday, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation President Robert Gallucci responds to the urgent danger of nuclear terrorism by urging a ban on the production of fissile materials that would end the separation of plutonium from nuclear spent fuel and the enrichment of uranium to high levels. In yesterday’s Global Security Newswire, Elaine Grossman reported that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has deferred action on a petition from the American Physical Society urging that an assessment of proliferation risk should precede the licensing of each new enrichment or reprocessing facility. Informed opinions are converging on these important topics, but disagreements remain framed by differences in the perspectives of different expert communities. At GW, we are committed to helping to bring these communities into contact to better understand these important issues.

For nuclear security policy to progress on a productive and informed path, it is imperative that experts communicate effectively across their respective spheres of knowledge. Dr. James Doyle of Los Alamos National Laboratory identifies more than a dozen disciplines that constitute “nuclear security science.” Beyond the academy, communication between the policy, military, technical, business, scientific, and advocacy communities focused on nuclear technology is constrained, and there are few venues for the development of consensus or shared understanding. Efforts to assess proliferation risk and safety of nuclear energy choices are making progress, but this highly specialized knowledge is often developed and held within disciplinary and affinity group silos. These efforts do not yet respond to the need for greater communication across disciplines and communities.

Absent communication among these diverse expert groups, policy makers are constrained from the development of the best options to promote safety and security while the public is constrained from the development of opinions adequate to democratic decision making. Without this communication, efforts to educate a next generation of nuclear security leaders who can synthesize the insights of these various perspectives are impeded.

Responding to this problem requires a focused effort to combine the insights of technical, industrial, policy, and interdisciplinary scholarly communities around the proliferation implications of fuel cycle choices. The development of interdisciplinary nuclear curricula would mitigate these challenges by educating members of the next generation of nuclear security experts.

GW is taking on this challenge. The Nuclear Policy Talks series of which today’s event is part has brought more than 200 nuclear policy experts to campus in the last three years, ranging from Elliott School alumnae and New START negotiator, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Rose Gottemoeller, to Senator Richard Lugar, to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to former Trident ballistic missile submarine commander turned GW Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Murray Snyder. We are engaged in research on this topic, the 2010 MIT Press book Going Nuclear: Nuclear Proliferation and International Security in the 21st Century, co-edited by the Dean of GW’s Elliott School, Michael Brown, reflects. We are also developing new course offerings in this area, including a new graduate course this fall on nuclear materials science for non-technical students, to be offered by Professor of Chemistry and International Affairs Christopher Cahill, working on a grant from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

We believe today’s discussion will support and enhance all these efforts. We will begin with remarks from Assistant Secretary Lyons, followed by a panel discussion on proliferation risk and nuclear fuel cycle choices, featuring prominent experts Sharon Squassoni, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who is a leading participant in the ongoing study at the National Academies on proliferation risk in the nuclear fuel cycle, Joseph Pilat from Los Alamos National Laboratories, and Seth Grae from the innovative nuclear fuel design firm Lightbridge, whose business model makes economic use of the differential in proliferation risk between fuel cycle choices. Over lunch, former head inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Olli Heinonen, will share his expert perspective on the timely issue of Iran’s nuclear program. In the afternoon, a second panel will focus on the relationship between the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and global security, featuring the legendary expertise of Dr. Richard Garwin, the perspective of George Mason University Professor Allison MacFarlane fresh from service on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, and the industry perspective of Dororthy Davidson, Vice President of Nuclear Energy, Renewables, and Science Programs at AREVA Federal Services. Our third panel will reflect the work of a world-class team of experts, led by Dr. Michael Rosenthal of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office of the Department of Homeland Security, that has recently completed a textbook manuscript on nuclear safeguards. In addition to Dr. Rosenthal, Ambassador Norm Wulf and Dr. Linda Gallini of the State Department will also address the crucial issue of safeguards. We are excited about this program and believe it to be unique, and are grateful to you for your participation.

So, without further discussion, it is my great honor to introduce The Honorable Dr. Peter B. Lyons, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy. Dr. Lyons was confirmed by the Senate to this position a year ago next week, following two years of service as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy.

The Honorable Peter B. Lyons was sworn in as a Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on January 25, 2005 and served until his term ended on June 30, 2009. At the NRC, Dr. Lyons focused on the safety of operating reactors and on the importance of learning from operating experience, even as new reactor licensing and possible construction emerged. He emphasized that NRC and its licensees remain strong and vigilant components of the Nation's integrated defenses against terrorism, and was a consistent voice for improving partnerships with international regulatory agencies. He emphasized active and forward-looking research programs to support sound regulatory decisions, address current issues and anticipate future ones. He was also a strong proponent of science and technology education, recruiting for diversity, employee training and development programs, and an open and collaborative working environment.

From 1969 to 1996, Dr. Lyons worked in progressively more responsible positions at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. During that time he served as Director for Industrial Partnerships, Deputy Associate Director for Energy and Environment, and Deputy Associate Director-Defense Research and Applications. While at Los Alamos, he spent over a decade supporting nuclear test diagnostics. Before becoming a Commissioner, Dr. Lyons served as Science Advisor on the staff of U.S. Senator Pete Domenici and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources where he focused on military and civilian uses of nuclear technology, national science policy, and nuclear non-proliferation. Dr. Lyons has published more than 100 technical papers, holds three patents related to fiber optics and plasma diagnostics, and served as chairman of the NATO Nuclear Effects Task Group for five years.

Dr. Lyons was raised in Nevada. He received his doctorate in nuclear astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 1969 and earned his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1964. Dr. Lyons is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, was elected to 16 years on the Los Alamos School Board and spent six years on the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos Branch Advisory Board.

Please join me in welcoming The Honorable Peter Lyons.

A little more lost plutonium gets accounted for

After the “unacceptable mistake” of having unintentionally flown six-nuclear tipped weapons across the country, and the mix-up that resulted in nuclear missile fuses, rather than helicopter batteries, being sent to in Taiwan, bad news about nuclear weapon mistakes may come in threes:

Most recently, a story from the Spanish newspaper El País (a summary of which appeared on the website http://www.typicallyspanish.com/) reported last week that Teresa Mendizábal, the Director of the Environment Department of the Energy, Environment, and Technology Research Centre, CIEMAT (part of the Ministry of Education), stated that 1,000 square meters of radioactively contaminated material, containing plutonium and americium, have been found near Palomares, Spain.

The contaminated material has been discovered 42 years after the Palomares accident where four U.S. hydrogen bombs fell over the village of Palomares (in the Almeria region in Southeastern Spain) following a 1966 mid-air collision between a U.S. B-52G bomber and tanker aircraft during in-flight refueling (which killed all crew members). Three nuclear weapons were recovered in Palomares and a fourth was recovered from the Mediterranean Sea. While the nuclear weapons did not detonate, two of them contaminated part of the area (releasing more than 20 kg of plutonium according to a PressTV article). In 1966, the US military airlifted contaminated soil from the site of the crash. Cietmat has been conducting monitoring studies of the area for over 40 years, because of concerns about the above-ground and wind-blown soil, and started decontamination in 2004. Now underground contamination from buried soil has been found as well. The article reports that the US military stated at the time of the accident that it air-lifted all the plutonium-contaminated soil (1.6 million tons), but hid the fact that it had buried some remaining soil in two ditches in 1966.

The article notes that until 2004, lettuce was being grown above the buried waste, and there were plans to develop the area. The article indicates that a formal agreement on clean up of the contamination at Palomares (the extent of which was yet unknown) was reached with the United States in 2006, when the United States provided $2 million for the soil studies. The article notes that it is expected that the United States will remove the contaminated underground soil (further negotiations are expected in June with the US Department of Energy when a US delegation will travel to Spain), as Spain has argued that it cannot store plutonium.

The legacy of this incident underscores the unintended dangers necessarily associated with nuclear weapons operations.

A tough week for GNEP

The National Academy of Sciences released a report this week that dealt a significant blow to the Department of Energy’s current plant for GNEP which Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists blogged about here.

In addition, 48 national and local organizations and experts sent a letter this week to Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Pete Domenici (R-NM), who lead the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee, urging them to eliminate funding for the program.

The letter stated that:

The DOE’s plan “undermines U.S. nonproliferation policy, would cost taxpayers $100 billion or more, and, as many in the nuclear industry point out, does not solve the nuclear waste problem."

The letter also noted that:

“Although DOE is promoting GNEP internationally on nonproliferation grounds as a way to slow the spread of technologies used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, the program has had the opposite effect. Since GNEP’s inception, eight countries have notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that they reserve the right to pursue enrichment and reprocessing technologies, including South Africa and Argentina, which are considering reviving their enrichment programs.”

We’re not done with bad news for reprocessing.

The reprocessing facility at Mayak in Russia had a radioactive waste leak. Reprocessing accidents are nothing new -- In fact the reprocessing plant at Sellafield in the United Kingdom has been shut down since 2005 due to a radioactive waste leak from a broken pipe; and after decades of operation, 100 metric tons of stockpiled plutonium, and no solution to the nuclear waste problem, the UK is preparing to decommission its reprocessing plant in 2011.

These set-backs for GNEP come at as the Senate and House prepare to decide on a funding level for GNEP and reprocessing in the FY 2008 Energy & Water Appropriations.

Step away from the plutonium

Los Alamos Reporter staff report that Chairman A.J. Eggenberger of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board sent an October 23, 2007 letter to the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, observing:

"The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) current plan for sustained manufacturing of plutonium pits, essential to national security, relies on continued operation of the 55-year-old Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board believes that continued operation of the CMR facility in its current condition poses significant risks to workers and the public.”

The letter goes on to observe “serious vulnerabilities” at the CMR including “the lack of robust building confinement to prevent a release of radioactivity during an accident” and “the identification of a seismic fault under two wings and the susceptibility of all the wings to structural collapse due to ground motion from a 500-year return period earthquake.”

Loyal readers will recall from July the Los Alamos National Laboratory “celebration” of the production of the first plutonium “pit” certified for use in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile since 1989 and our curiosity at the time about why new pit production is necessary now. Tuesday’s letter from the Defense Nuclear Safety Board underscores the need for critical thinking about the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the importance of including potential dangers to human life and health in public consideration of this important policy issue.

One step forward, two steps back

Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman announced this week at the International Atomic Energy Agency that the United States would declare another 9 metric tons of plutonium as excess material, “enough to make over 1,000 nuclear weapons.” The material from dismantled nuclear weapons will be removed over “the coming decades” and will be used to make mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel at the controversial MOX facility in Savannah River, South Carolina.

These 9 MT will be added to the 45 MT tons of plutonium that the United States has declared excess material (34 MT of which is already slated for fuel fabrication at the Savannah River Site [SRS]).

While this announcement is a useful step in further reducing the amount of excess plutonium and furthering the objectives of Article VI of the NPT, Secretary Bodman in the same breath touted the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) which has been one of the Bush Administration’s top energy and foreign policy priorities. The GNEP program would resume commercial spent fuel reprocessing in the United States, separating out tens of metric tons of weapons-usable material per year. The United Kingdom for example has a stockpile of over 100 MT of plutonium as a result of thirty years of reprocessing, and France has accumulated about 80 MT.

Reprocessing is not a necessary part of the fuel cycle, and unnecessarily producing weapons-usable material undermines U.S. efforts to convince other states not to engage in plutonium reprocessing. Another proliferation concern is that reprocessing would create additional stockpiles of plutonium or a plutonium mix that might be diverted by terrorists. In fact, due to proliferation risks and costs, the United States has not reprocessed spent fuel from commercial power plants for over thirty years, when President Ford and then President Carter stopped U.S. commercial reprocessing after India diverted reprocessed plutonium for its first nuclear explosive test in 1974.

So far, the Department of Energy will not make the commitment that the material extracted from nuclear waste will not be weapons-usable.

So while we should celebrate the declaration of additional excess plutonium, it is difficult to ignore that at the same time as Secretary Bodman defends U.S. contribution to non-proliferation, he is promoting the expansion of Department of Energy’s GNEP efforts that will lead to a new plutonium economy.

Highlights of more plutonium-related news from LANL this week

Highlights of other plutonium news out of Los Alamos this week include:

Julie Ann Grimm of Santa Fe’s The New Mexican reports that a “project to divert Rio Grande surface water for use in the Santa Fe area is designed to handle possible contaminants that drain into the river from Los Alamos National Laboratory, planners said Thursday.”

Andy Lenderman of The New Mexican reports that on June 26, 2007 a LANL employee who works at the lab’s plutonium facility was stopped with 30.5 grams of cocaine in his car, while another 1.3 grams of cocaine and electric scales were seized from his home.

Plutonium Pit Party Points a Path to the Past

On Monday, July 2, Senator Pete Domenici, Representative Heather Wilson and others gathered at Los Alamos National Laboratories to “celebrate” the production of the first plutonium “pit” certified for use in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile since the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado in 1989. Noticeably absent were 1) a clear vision for the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, 2) a sustainable vision for the future of the national laboratories, and 3) the application of the best science and technical expertise to the real problems urgently facing the United States.

At the event, Senator Domenici reportedly said:

“The only thing that would keep [Los Alamos] from being the permanent pit manufacturing center would be if we don't get the physical facilities.”

But bricks and mortar are not the only consideration in scoping the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, as Sam Nunn and other national leaders have argued, an informed and careful national consideration of the future of U.S. nuclear weapon is urgently needed.

But in a nearby event sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility/New Mexico, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and the New Mexico Conference of Churches, concerned citizens questioned whether the celebration might be miscast:

Dr. Mike McCally of Physicians for Social Responsibility said:

“Nuclear weapons development is just not needed... DOE laboratories and Los Alamos in particular are not focused on the urgent needs of the 21st century. Laboratory programs focused on energy, environment, nuclear proliferation, global warming, would be a cause for celebration.”

Former Vice President of Sandia National Laboratories, Robert Peurifoy, who joined by telephone said:

“They don't need to be replaced at this time because they are not broken…I'm not in favor of jumping in and replacing something just to have work.”

Why is Los Alamos building new pits when we have no urgent need for replacements and lots of crucial scientific and technical work urgently needed to support the national interest in areas like port security, nonproliferation verification, energy efficiency, terrorism prevention, and environmental remediation?

Oh, hello, Mr. Pluto, fancy seeing you twice in a week.

The Associated Press reported on June 7, 2007 that “authorities are investigating how three workers were exposed to radioactive plutonium during environmental restoration work at the Nevada Test Site.”

While the employer of the three contract workers, National Securities Technologies, holds that there is no reason "to believe there were any security or safety considerations here," this seems like a great occasion to reflect on plutonium and human health.

As a fission product, isn’t plutonium basically a man-made element?

The Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment recalls that “Before 1945, plutonium was virtually nonexistent in the human environment. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, plutonium was released into the environment during atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Plutonium can now be found in very small amounts in the soil throughout the Northern Hemisphere because of fallout from the atmospheric testing. Plutonium has also been found in soil near nuclear weapons production plants such as Rocky Flats due to accidents and spills.”

Accidents and spills? Shouldn’t workers be very careful with plutonium?

Len Ackland, Director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder observes on page 112 of his 1999 book Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West that there are at least three reasons to be very careful with plutonium: “First, microscopic particles of radioactive plutonium were extremely toxic if inhaled. Second, a small amount of plutonium – depending on its makeup, shape, and factors such as the presence of water – could create a localized chain reaction called a “criticality,” which could be fatal to anyone within several yards. Third, plutonium metal, especially small chips or filings, was pyrophoric, meaning it could catch fire on its own in the presence of air.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency observes that “External exposure to plutonium poses very little health risk, since plutonium isotopes emit alpha radiation, and almost no beta or gamma radiation. In contrast, internal exposure to plutonium is an extremely serious health hazard. It generally stays in the body for decades, exposing organs and tissues to radiation, and increasing the risk of cancer. Plutonium is also a toxic metal, and may cause damage to the kidneys.”

So, safety first, right?

It seems the first Americans to work with plutonium took its dangers, if not in their stride, at least in their stream. Ackland (pps 104-5) recalls the formation of a “UPPU Club” at Los Alamos National Laboratories around 1951, ostensibly for individuals whose urine tested positive for plutonium (UPPU = you pee Pu).

A new facility for plutonium pit production opened at Rocky Flats, Colorado in 1952. The U.S. Department of Energy reminds us that “On June 6, 1989, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Rocky Flats Plant as part of its investigation of allegations of mismanagement, negligence, and criminal practices...Rockwell International, the plant operator at the time, eventually pled guilty to ten counts, including violations of the Clean Water Act, and agreed to pay a fine of $18.5 million.”

Wow, aren’t we lucky that’s over!

Not so fast. According to a June 7, 2007 press release from Nuclear Watch New Mexico, “The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has invited Members of Congress to ‘celebrate’ on July 2 its production of its first certified plutonium trigger (AKA ‘pit’ or ‘primary’) … produced by the U.S. certified for deployment to the nuclear stockpile since 1989.”

So…a party to celebrate the first new plutonium pit certified for deployment to the stockpile since the year the FBI raided and closed the old plutonium pit facility?

I’m sure the July 2 Plutonium Party at LANL will be a glowing celebration, but I don’t think I’d eat anything.

Adding insult to taxpayers to potential for life-threatening injury to workers, as Nuclear Watch Director Jay Coughlin observes, the celebration is “five years late and a billion dollars over budget.”


Some additional plutonium resources:

Dr. Robert Gould, President of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, Plutonium Health Effects: Basics, powerpoint presentation made on October 9, 2004
W. G. Sutcliffe, R. H. Condit, W. G. Mansfield, D. S. Myers, D. W. Layton, and P. W. Murphy, A Perspective on the Dangers of Plutonium, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, April 14, 1995
Plutonium: Human Health Effects Fact Sheet, Argonne National Laboratories, October 2001
The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Fact Sheet on the Physical, Nuclear, and Chemical, Properties of Plutonium
Plutonium on the Internet (from the Nuclear Control Institute)