Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and Ontario Hydro (recently reincorporated as Ontario Power Generation), in a self-described effort to turn "swords into ploughshares", are promoting a scheme to import up to 100 tonnes of U.S. and Russian weapons plutonium to fuel CANDU reactors. Although Canada was not one of the cold war nuclear super-powers, it now finds itself in the position of accepting environmental and security responsibilities for weapons plutonium.

The plutonium fuel plan is being presented as a means to eliminate the threat posed by the world's stockpiles of weapons plutonium. However, there are many unanswered questions about the feasibility, cost and safety of the CANDU proposal.

Several problems with the current plan have not stopped the federal government from declaring support in principle for the proposal, and funding a feasibility study. 1 Without public or parliamentary debate, the government is permitting AECL to transport up to 1200 grams of weapons plutonium, 600 grams each from the U.S. and Russia, to its Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories for a "test burn". 2  (In a briefing to news media in Ottawa in March 1999, AECL indicated that a total of approximately 300 grams of weapons plutonium would be imported from the U.S. and Russia in 1999.)

The weapons plutonium "test burn", scheduled to take place in December 1997, but now planned for sometime in 1999, will serve as the first step before approval is given for future large-scale plutonium shipments. 3

If the plan is approved, plutonium fuel would be transported into Canada from the U.S. in heavily armed truck convoys once a month for at least 20 years. 4 The plutonium fuel from the former Soviet Union could arrive by ship through the St. Lawrence Seaway or by air. 5 The used plutonium fuel would remain in Canada forever, in the form of high-level nuclear waste. This sets a bad precedent for opening Canada to nuclear fuel waste disposal from other countries.

The government claims this is a positive step for world peace, turning weapons into electricity. However, independent observers, believe the plan will result in precisely the opposite effect.

An independent analysis of the plan, drawing on information from AECL, Ontario Hydro, Natural Resources Canada, Foreign Affairs, and public interest groups concluded that the government's CANDU MOX initiative should be withdrawn. 6 The report's author concluded:
 

"The CANDU MOX initiative is so deeply flawed that it is impossible to see how it might adequately be safeguarded against its own deficiencies. Though suggestions could be made for improvement, their acceptance in any substantial measure would constitute an abrupt turnabout in the stance of a government that has seen fit to give a very unwise offer its informal backing. Proposals for far-reaching change in the initiative, I conclude, are unlikely to be acted upon. The CANDU MOX initiative should therefore be withdrawn forthwith." 7a

In December 1998, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) found the federal government's plutonium import plan to be "totally unfeasible". In its report entitled, "Canada and the Nuclear Challenge: Reducing the Political Value of Nuclear Weapons for the Twenty First Century" the committee (a majority of whom are members of the governing Liberal Party) recommended that the plan be scrapped. 7b In spite of this, the Chrétien cabinet rejected the committee's advice in April 1999.

The federal government's weapons plutonium plan risks promoting wide-spread use of plutonium as a nuclear fuel, launching a global plutonium economy. Not only will this lead to increased environmental, health and safety hazards, there are also global security risks. Transporting plutonium increases the likelihood of theft. A well-equipped terrorist group could make a powerful home-made atom bomb using only a few kilograms of stolen plutonium. 8

Plutonium is simply too dangerous to be transported across the globe to light our homes and run our television sets. Even the United Nations Development Program admits that "it is difficult to imagine human institutions capable of safeguarding these plutonium flows against occasional diversions of significant quantities to nuclear weapons." 9

If the Canadian Government truly wants to contribute to world peace and protect our environment, plutonium should be treated as a hazardous waste and security risk. Plutonium production should be eliminated and what has already been created should be isolated and guarded to the best of our ability.
 

The Hazards of Burning Plutonium in CANDUs

Environmental and Economic Hazards

If particles of plutonium are released into the environment and inhaled, they can lodge in the sensitive tissues of the lung causing extensive biological damage. Inhaling even a few milligrams of plutonium can cause death within months due to severe lung damage.

The Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War state that 27 millionths of a gram would be enough to cause lung cancer in an adult human "with virtual certainty." 13

photograph by Robert Del Tredici from  his book entitled, At work in the Fields  of the Bomb (Harper and Row), 1987

Alpha Rays from a Radioactive Particle in Lung Tissue  The black star in the image at left shows the tracks made over a  48 hour period by alpha rays emitted from a radioactive particle  of plutonium lodged in the lung tissue of an ape (the particle itself is invisible).  In living lung tissue, if one of the cells adjacent to the particle is  damaged in a certain way, it can become a cancer cell later on,  spreading rapidly through the lung.

Environmental Assessment:

Public hearings into the environmental, public health, security and economic aspects of the plutonium fuel import proposal could be avoided by both Ontario and the federal government.

The use of plutonium fuel might be included under a blanket environmental assessment exemption granted to the Bruce Nuclear Power Development (which includes both the Bruce "A" and "B" generating stations) by Ontario in 1976. The operation would be regulated by the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), which does not automatically require a hearing under Canada's Environmental Assessment Act. In fact, the AECB could licence the use of plutonium fuel at any nuclear station by simply treating it as a change in fuel type, leaving no opportunity for an effective public review of the scheme. The AECB has so far refused to undertake an environmental assessment of plutonium fuel experiments at AECL's Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories.

Accidental Criticality:

New plutonium fuel can 'go critical' (undergo a sustained nuclear chain reaction leading to an explosion) in certain transportation and handling accidents, such as crushing of a container of fuel bundles under certain conditions. 14 German scientists have noted that shipping containers may not survive a serious
accident, particularly if a fire is involved. 15 The AECL / Ontario Hydro feasibility study does not provide details of this risk, advising that criticality concerns should be dealt with at the approvals stage. "Accident scenarios with MOX fuel may be postulated which could lead to criticality concerns the complete range of such accidents would be analyzed as part of the licensing basis for MOX operation". 16 A criticality accident would lead to the release of plutonium into the environment.

Nuclear Waste:

The high-level radioactive waste resulting from the use of plutonium fuel at the Bruce reactors would become Ontario Hydro's responsibility, setting a dangerous precedent for the import of other foreign radioactive waste for burial in Canada. 17 The composition of spent weapons plutonium fuel is similar to spent uranium fuel, since the original amount of plutonium is reduced but not actually eliminated and additional plutonium is created while the fuel is in the reactor. In fact, in a best case scenario, the "burned" MOX fuel would have only 30 percent less plutonium than it started with. 18

A major concern with the spent fuel burial proposal is that the waste fuel bundles may eventually leak and that underground filtering processes might concentrate the plutonium. This could lead to a criticality accident with severe consequences for the underground burial vault and the surface ecosystem. 19 This concern would be heightened due to the increased concentration of plutonium in the spent MOX fuel.

Economic Costs:

A report by AECL and Ontario Hydro: Plutonium Consumption Program, CANDU Reactor Option , outlining the use of plutonium fuel at the Bruce "A" CANDU reactors, was submitted to the U.S. DoE in July 1994. Since that time, Ontario Hydro has shut down the Bruce "A" nuclear station and now plans to use the Bruce "B" reactors for the plutonium fuel program.

The cost of the proposal to use plutonium fuel at Bruce exceeds $2.2 billion, not including the cost of the extraordinary security measures needed to guard the Bruce site against terrorism. The price of MOX fuel production and shipping is estimated to be $70 million annually. 20
 

The Global Plutonium Economy

Canada's support in principle for the import of plutonium fuel sends a signal to the world that the commercial use of plutonium fuel is acceptable. Commercial trading in plutonium brings with it tremendous environmental and public health hazards, as well as global security risks. Instead of working to eliminate these risks, Canada would be helping to initiate a plutonium economy.

From the start of the nuclear age, nuclear power advocates have regarded plutonium as the preferred nuclear fuel of the future and dreamed of "recycling" plutonium from waste fuel rods. "Fast breeder" reactors designed to produce large amounts of plutonium were built in Japan, France, and the U.S. But safety and proliferation concerns forced all these countries to severely curtail their breeder reactor programs. 21

Eighty percent of the plutonium in the world today is inside the spent nuclear fuel produced by nuclear reactors. 22 France, Russia and Britain reprocess spent fuel in order to chemically separate the plutonium from the other intensely radioactive materials in the waste.

This is done to obtain the plutonium needed for bombs as well as to obtain the plutonium that may eventually be used as nuclear fuel. 23 The remaining 20 percent of the world's plutonium exists in this separated state. Once the plutonium has been extracted from the other constituents of spent fuel it can then be stolen, transported, used or stored more easily.
 

Possible Theft of Plutonium

Weapons of Mass Destruction:

A devastatingly powerful nuclear explosive can be made from four to six kilograms of separated plutonium. 24  In fact, the Nagasaki bomb, which was even more devastating than the Hiroshima bomb, contained only 5.9 kg of plutonium.

Due to its toxicity, a small amount of plutonium would also make a radiological weapon of terrifying effectiveness. A small amount of plutonium directly spread in the air in sufficient concentrations could kill many thousands of people. The resulting contamination of large areas would be extremely difficult and expensive to clean up. 25

The Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute noted, with a figure more conservative than the Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War but no less horrific, that "less than 150 kilograms, proportionally spread to the lungs of the world's 5.4 billion people would be enough to cause lung cancer in every one of them." 26

Black Market Plutonium:

Experience demonstrates that all commercially traded items eventually end up in the hands of criminals. It is highly improbable that plutonium can be separated in a processing plant; packaged and handled; shipped across continents and oceans; fabricated into fuel; and transported to civilian reactors without any loss or theft. 27 While extremely dangerous at all stages of the nuclear production cycle, plutonium can be handled without elaborate radiological protection from the time it is separated until it is actually used in a nuclear reactor. This makes plutonium an ideal substance for terrorist or rogue regimes intent on nuclear blackmail. 28

Civil Rights:

In order to ensure protection from terrorist attacks, extraordinary security measures would be required for plutonium fuel shipments and the reactors used to burn plutonium. The cost of these measures has not been disclosed, nor included in the overall cost of the plutonium fuel import proposal.

The civil liberties of Canadian citizens may well be seriously eroded by the extreme anti-terrorist measures that may become necessary. In the name of national security, federal security organizations could be given almost unlimited surveillance powers to deal with the potential of plutonium theft.

In the U.S., non-violent protests against nuclear shipments have resulted in lengthy jail sentences and security personnel are authorized to use deadly force. Of major concern is the American tendency to "insist on extraterritorial application of their laws." 29
 

Implications for Non-Proliferation Policy

The spirit of Canada's Nuclear Non-Proliferation policy may be violated by the import of plutonium fuel. Canadians have been led to believe that in essence, this policy is intended to isolate the Canadian nuclear industry from the nuclear weapons programs of other countries.

By importing plutonium fuel, Canada, a non-nuclear weapons state, would become integrated into the American and Russian nuclear weapons programs. This is a dangerous precedent which could result in nations with clandestine nuclear weapons programs importing plutonium for use as "reactor fuel".

Since burning weapons plutonium takes longer than immobilization, bomb-usable material would be accessible for years longer than necessary. Ontario Hydro's plan would also provide a precedent for countries to create a full-fledged plutonium economy. This would increase the amount of fissile plutonium in the world. 30

Securing the Future

On January 14th, 1997, 171 environmental, peace, and medical organizations condemned the U.S. government's recent decision to pursue the option of using plutonium fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. The groups, from every corner of the globe, stated that the MOX fuel approach would increase international commerce in plutonium, create even hotter high-level radioactive waste, and provide a disincentive for anti-proliferation efforts around the world. 31

The plutonium fuel initiative is being presented by the Chrétien government as a positive contribution Canada can make to nuclear disarmament. However, the initiative would really provide a "plutonium-clad" guarantee that the Canadian nuclear industry will continue to be subsidized through taxation for years to come. 32

Plutonium must be made as inaccessible as possible for theft or for use as weapons material. This may include "immobilization", mixing it with highly radioactive materials and converting the mixture into a form that is hard to access. Political pressure is needed now to stop the production of plutonium worldwide, and research should focus on methods of neutralizing, or if possible destroying, all plutonium stocks.
 
 

References

1 Natural Resources Canada, MOX Project, background fax from Brian Moore, Director, Nuclear Energy Division, Natural Resources Canada. Date: June 17, 1997

2 Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Weapons Plutonium Dispositioning in CANDU Reactors . Fax from AECL Corporate Relations. Date: June 17, 1997.

3 Letter from Minister of Foreign Affairs (Canada), Lloyd Axworthy, to Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout. Dated: June 27, 1997.

4 AECL Technologies Inc., Plutonium Consumption Program - CANDU Reactor Project, July 31, 1994, p. 5-3.

5 Ibid. p. 10-2.

6 Franklyn Griffiths, MOX Experience: The Disposition of Excess Russian and U.S. Weapons Plutonium in Canada. (University College, University of Toronto, July 1997).

7a  Ibid. p. 66.

7b House of Commons, Canada Canada and the Nuclear Challenge: Reducing the Political Value of Nuclear Weapons for the Twenty First Century Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, December 1998), p. 39

8 UNDP, Energy After Rio: Prospects and Challenges, Executive Summary , (New York: United Nations Development Program, 1997). p. 16.

9 Ibid.

10 United States Department of Energy (DoE), "Energy Secretary Unveils Strategy to Reduce Global Nuclear Danger" (Press Release: December 9, 1997, U.S. DoE web site http://www.doe.gov/)

11 "This high-level waste, also called "spent fuel", emits penetrating gamma radiation so powerful that it can quickly kill any nearby unprotected human being." Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Burying Uncertainty (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993), p. 14.

12 Nicholas Lenssen, Nuclear Waste: The Problem That Won't Go Away (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1991), p. 9-12.

13 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Plutonium, Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age (Cambridge, M.A.: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, 1993), p. 148, 8-10.

14 Nuclear Awareness Project, "U.S. DoE Considers Plutonium for CANDUs" Nuclear Watchdog (Uxbridge, Ont.: Nuclear Awareness Project, April 1996), Bulletin No.3, p. 3.

15 Michael Wallace. "Starting Fires in Hell: Why CANDU Can't do Plutonium Burn-up," The Watershed Sentinel (B.C.: Watershed Sentinel Inc., Aug/Sept. 1997), p.11.

16 Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) "Plutonium Consumption Program" p. c-20.

17 Nuclear fuel waste is currently stored at each nuclear station site in Canada. A federal environmental assessment of an AECL proposal to bury nuclear fuel waste at an undetermined location in the Canadian Shield concluded in 1998 after having been underway for several years. The review panel was informed, during the course of public hearings, about the proposal to import plutonium fuel and keep the fuel waste. The panel's final report, tabled at the beginning of 1998, did not address the issue of plutonium fuel imports. Plutonium fuel waste is more radioactive and has a higher temperature compared to CANDU uranium fuel.

18 U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium: Reactor-Related Options ["NAS 1995"], 1995, Table 6-5, p.270, indicates that a fresh weapons plutonium MOX fuel element would contain 25 kg of plutonium. The same element, after irradiation to a burn-up of 40 megawatt-days per kg heavy metal, would contain 18 kg of plutonium. As footnoted in: Nuclear Control Institute, Ploughshares or Swords? (Washington D.C., Nuclear Control Institute, March 28, 1997).

19 C.D. Bowman and F. Vennari, Underground Autocatalytic Criticality from Plutonium and other Fissile Material (New Mexico: Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1994).

20 Nuclear Awareness Project, Submission to the US Department of Energy Regarding the Storage and Disposition of Weapons-Usable Fissile Materials, Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Uxbridge, Ont.: Nuclear Awareness Project, June 6, 1996) p. 1-2.

21 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War et al. , p. 42-45.

22 Canadian Peace Alliance, "Anti-MOX fuel initiative resolution", The resolution states 80 percent of plutonium is in spent reactor fuel, 10 percent is in military stockpiles of separated plutonium and 10 percent is in civilian stockpiles of separated plutonium. Dated: October 2, 1996.

23 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War et al. , p. 28-45.

24 United Nations Development Program, Energy After Rio: Prospects and Challenges , Executive Summary, (New York: UNDP, 1997). p. 16.

25 Martin Bond, Nuclear Juggernaut: The Transportation of Radioactive Materials (London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1992), p. 182-188.

26 Nicholas Lenssen, Nuclear Waste: The Problem That Won't Go Away , (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1991), p. 16.

27 Energy After Rio: Prospects and Challenges , Executive Summary , p. 16.

28 Jeff Sallot, "G7 backing sought on plutonium plan," The Globe and Mail (Toronto: Globe and Mail Inc., April 12, 1996).

29 Wallace, p.11-12.

30 Wallace, p.13.

31 Nuclear Information and Resource Service, "171 Organizations Worldwide Condemn U.S. MOX Decision; Ask President Clinton to Stop Plutonium Fuel Approach" (Washington D.C.: NIRS, January 14, 1997).

32 To date, direct public expenditures total over $15 billion dollars. David Martin and David Argue, Nuclear Budget Watch 1997 (Ottawa: Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout, 1997)