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CNP BACKGROUNDER
WEAPONS PLUTONIUM FUEL
June 2001
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has put forward a plan that envisions tonnes of weapons plutonium from the United States and Russia imported into Canada over a period of 25 years. This weapons plutonium will be in the form of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel bundles (a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide) to be used in CANDU reactors.
In April 1996, without public consultation or parliamentary debate, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien declared that Canada supported the plan in principle. Despite numerous critical assessments of the weapons plutonium fuel concept, including the recommendation of a parliamentary committee that the plan be scrapped, the federal government announced on September 2, 1999 that Canada had agreed to import plutonium fuel from U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles (120 grams from each country) for the purposes of a “test burn” (the first of up to three) in a nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ontario.
The government also announced on September 2, 1999 that two Ontario cities had been selected to serve as ‘transit points’ for the shipment of plutonium fuel to Chalk River. (Following the announcement city officials in Sault Ste. Marie — the transit point for U.S. weapons plutonium fuel, and Cornwall, Ontario — the port of entry for Russian weapons plutonium fuel, stated that the government failed to warn them ahead of time that their cities had been selected.)
On January 14, 2000, American weapons plutonium fuel clandestinely crossed the U.S.- Canada border by land transport to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. On the Canadian side it was secretly flown (the mayor and other city officials in Sault Ste. Marie were not informed) by helicopter to Chalk River.
The possibility of transporting MOX plutonium from the U.S. by aircraft was never discussed in any of the AECL plans submitted to Transport Canada and made public in September 1999. (With regard to the test burn, American law prohibits the air transport of MOX plutonium over U.S. territory because of the risks involved in the event of a crash.
Even the lead U.S. agency responsible for promoting the plutonium test burn project, the Department of Energy, explicitly rejected the option of transporting MOX plutonium to Canada by air.) The decision in Canada to move from land transport to air was likely made to avoid blockades and protests expected in many communities along the land transport route from Sault Ste. Marie to Chalk River.
In April 2000, following the air transport of American MOX within Canada, an official with the U.S. Department of Energy was quoted in the media as stating that five times more weapons-grade plutonium would be shipped from Russia to Canada than had been previously identified by the Canadian government (approximately 600 grams vs. 120 grams).
At the time, it was assumed that Russian MOX would be transported to Canada by land and sea. In November of 1999, Transport Canada had approved AECL’s plan to transport the US weapons plutonium fuel by truck, and the Russian weapons plutonium fuel by land and sea, stating not once but five times that the plutonium would not be flown for safety reasons.
However, in July 2000 the federal government announced that MOX plutonium from Russia would be transported to Canada (and within Canada) by aircraft. They also announced a public comment period for a revised transportation plan submitted to Transport Canada. (CNP groups and others believe that the July 2000 comment period was established as a result of a lawsuit launched in June 2000 by a coalition of First Nations and environment groups over the lack of public consultations in connection with the move from land to air transport. The lawsuit was withdrawn following the federal government’s announcement of the comment period.)
The public comment period concluded in mid-September 2000. On September 22, 2000, one day after the deadline imposed by Transport Canada for final receipt of public comments by mail (the deadline for fax and e-mail comments had been set a week earlier), Transport Canada announced that it has approved the air transport of Russian plutonium fuel through Canada. On September 25, 2000, MOX fuel from Russia was flown by air into Canada. The government chose not to announce the arrival of the plutonium fuel until after the news was leaked to the media.
At no time between April of 1996 and September of 2000 were public hearings held or an environmental assessment of the test burn plan undertaken. In fact, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC, formerly the Atomic Energy Control Board), the body charged with regulating the nuclear industry in Canada, refused to undertake an environmental assessment of the test burn.
Similarly, Transport Canada’s invitation for public comments were limited in scope (they dealt with elements of the AECL MOX transportation plan referred to as the Emergency Response Assistance Plan - ERAP) and ultimately had no bearing on the federal government’s actions.
The Chrétien government has indicated that the results of the plutonium ‘test burn’ (or possibly, ‘test burns’) will play a role in determining whether it supports using weapons plutonium fuel in CANDU reactors. Critics of the plan believe that the ‘success’ of the tests is a forgone conclusion and merely intended to serve as a rationale for approval of a full scale plutonium import plan.
The federal government’s determination to proceed with the plan was further demonstrated in its failure to cancel the test burn following release of an October 2000 U.S. National Academy of Sciences report which concluded that AECL’s MOX proposal fails to meet U.S. security guidelines.. The report, which came to public attention as the result of a newspaper article in December 2000, states that the proposal to use weapons plutonium fuel in Canadian-designed reactors fails to meet standards for measuring radioactivity in spent plutonium fuel.
There is widespread opposition to the use of weapons plutonium fuel.
Over the past five years, several Canadian public-interest groups, including Energy Probe, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Nuclear Awareness Project, Concerned Citizens of Manitoba, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Sierra Club of Canada, have written to members of the federal cabinet to express their concerns about plutonium fuel imports. At the international level, 171 environmental, peace and medical organizations issued a statement in January of 1997 condemning the U.S. decision to allow the use of plutonium fuel in commercial nuclear reactors.
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. In March 1999 it was disclosed that in spite of this recommendation, Jean Chrétien informed Bill Clinton that he still supported the plan. One month later (in April 1999) the Chrétien government publicly rejected the committee’s recommendation.
The number of individuals, organizations and communities expressing opposition to the federal government’s plutonium fuel plans continues to grow.
First Nations communities along with hundreds of municipalities, including over 160 municipalities in Quebec, have passed resolutions against the importation and transport of weapons plutonium fuel (MOX) in Canada. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has also passed a resolution against the project, as well as the Conference of Great Lakes Mayors. Firefighters and Police associations have recommended that the project not go forward.
The Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout is opposed to the importation and use of plutonium fuel for a number of reasons including the following:
- This initiative will not turn “swords into ploughshares”.
Using weapons plutonium in reactors consumes only a portion of that plutonium: over fifty percent of the original amount can remain and new plutonium will be produced as nuclear fuel waste. The plutonium remaining in the spent nuclear fuel must be guarded for tens of thousands of years.
Plutonium production worldwide is increasing and Canada is not opposing it. Indeed, through it’s participation in a MOX fuel program, Canada would be assisting in the commercialization of plutonium and thereby increasing the risks of nuclear proliferation.
- The plutonium fuel initiative only serves to prop up Canada’s declining nuclear industry and its unsustainable means of generating electrical power.
Nuclear reactors around the world, including CANDU reactors in Canada, are being shut down long before their predicted lifespan. Edwin Lyman, a scientist with the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute has stated that, “the MOX option appeals mainly to financially troubled electric utilities in search of government subsidies . . .” (“Weapons Plutonium: Just can it”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1996, p. 50)
The provincial power utility, Ontario Hydro, jointly promoted the original MOX import plan with AECL. The test burn was positioned as a precursor to the larger plan. In 1999 there were indications that Ontario Power Generation (OPG - the successor entity to Ontario Hydro) may no longer plan to use MOX fuel in its reactors. In spite of this, AECL and the Chrétien government continue to promote the test burn. (It has been suggested that AECL and the Chrétien government support the test burn, regardless of OPG’s position because it will also demonstrate to prospective customers abroad that CANDU reactors can use plutonium fuel.)
The four Bruce “A” reactors originally identified as the best candidates for using plutonium-based fuel, were all shut down by Ontario Hydro in 1997, and will require billions in repairs to keep them operating for another 25 years (as the original proposal suggests). Under the plutonium import plan Canada would be committed to run specific reactors for decades, even though cheaper and safer energy alternatives are available.
According to Professor Franklyn Griffiths of the University of Toronto, ”the CANDU MOX initiative offers no direct benefits to Canadians and Ontarians aside from locally valued employment and larger business opportunities for a nuclear industry that cannot survive without public subsidy. Not only would there be no substantial benefits, but considerable direct cost would have to be accepted. …[T]he swords-into-ploughshares argument for Canadian-based reactor disposition is not sustainable.” (Dr. Franklyn Griffiths, George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Toronto, MOX Experience: The Disposition of Excess Russian and U.S. Weapons Plutonium in Canada, July 1997. p. 61)
- The transportation of plutonium fuel in Canada poses a serious potential health and safety risk.
The transportation of plutonium fuel in Canada poses a potential health and safety risk. If even a small amount of plutonium were to be dispersed into the environment there could be serious consequences. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a Nobel-prize-winning organization, has estimated that 27 micrograms of insoluble plutonium-239 in the lungs would be sufficient to cause cancer in an adult human being. 100 grams is equivalent to 100 million micrograms. (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age, International Physicians Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1992, p. 148)
The impact of burning weapons plutonium in civilian power reactors represents an increased threat to human health and the environment: “. . . the use of tons of plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads as fuel in civilian nuclear power reactors will result in a significant increase in cancer risk to residents in and near the plants. In particular, because of the greater concentrations of toxic radioactive isotopes such as plutonium, americium, and curium, in a reactor operating with MOX fuel compared to one operating on LEU fuel, the consequences for public health of a core-meltdown accident would be greater.” (Paul Leventhal and Steven Dolley, “The Plutonium Fallacy: An Update”, The Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer, 1999, p. 83)
- The security measures necessary to safeguard the importation of plutonium would affect the civil liberties of Canadians.
Because the proposed plan necessitates shipping nuclear weapons-usable plutonium over enormous distances, it might well increase the likelihood that such material could fall into the hands of terrorists. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that shipments of plutonium fuel will require security measures equivalent to those needed for transport of nuclear weapons.
A report prepared by a special commission of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research states: “Using plutonium as fuel on a large scale would be difficult to safeguard and would involve a high risk of diversion. In the case of plutonium from weapons, there would be a regular traffic of plutonium oxide from dismantlement and storage sites to fabrication facilities and reactors, with the risk of attack along transportation routes.” (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Plutonium: Deadly Gold of the Nuclear Age, International Physicians Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1992, p.133-134)
The Harvard Law School and the United Kingdom Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution have stated that the security measures and civil liberties implications of using plutonium as an article of commerce are a serious concern.
There are alternatives for dealing with Russian and American weapons plutonium stocks (such as “immobilization” which renders plutonium virtually inaccessible for weapons use and does not involve its transportation from the United States or Russia). For its part, the federal government should adopt policies on energy and disarmament that are more constructive than those which have led to the present plutonium import plan. The government could begin to do this by phasing out nuclear power production in Canada, ending the sale of CANDU reactors abroad and working internationally to end all military and civilian plutonium production.
For further information please contact the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout
e-mail: .info@cnp.ca--
web site: www.cnp.ca
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