The Department of Energy’s choice of leading reactor design to revitalize nuclear power in the United States is so contrary to US non-proliferation policy that it exposes America to charges of gross hypocrisy. The Biden government is proposing to use nuclear fuel that we others – most directly Iran – tell not to produce. It will make it difficult to enforce the restrictions the United States are seeking to restrict nations’ access to bomb-grade uranium and plutonium.
We’re talking about the Department of Energy’s (DOE) enthusiastic support for the TerraPower proposed sodium “fast reactor” demonstration facility and similar fast reactor projects that the DOE is showering with grants and providing department-funded enrichment, test reactors and spent nuclear power plants to support fuel recycling programs. TerraPower and DOE expect to build hundreds of high speed reactors for domestic use and export.
In contrast to conventional nuclear power plants, which use fission reactions triggered by slow neutrons, fast reactors maintain nuclear chain reactions with much more energetic fast neutrons. These reactors are billed as advanced technology, but they’re an old idea. The first designs for fast reactors date from after the Second World War.
The main advantage of fast reactors is that they can make a lot of plutonium that can be extracted and used as reactor fuel instead of mining and consuming more uranium. That sounded good, so good for the Nixon government that it set itself the goal of shifting power generation to fast plutonium-powered reactors by the turn of the century. But the project fell short when it encountered security hurdles that drove up costs. And then increasing awareness of the dangers of using plutonium – one of the two main nuclear explosives – in the world’s commercial channels eventually led President Gerald Ford to announce that the United States would not rely on plutonium fuel until the world could cope with it.
TerraPower is obviously aware of this story and the publicity it is creating for its demonstration project. It insists that its sodium reactor does not use plutonium as fuel or require reprocessing to extract it. The company’s website states: “Both the demonstration plant and the first commercial plants will be operated with low-enriched high-grade uranium (HALEU).” HALEU is enriched in uranium, just below the official definition of highly enriched uranium, but well above the level of uranium fuel used in currently operating nuclear power plants.
In terms of enrichment, it’s within reach of bomb-grade uranium. It’s exactly the stuff we ask Iran not to produce and argue it doesn’t need for fuel for power reactors. It’s also what stopped us South Korea from getting involved (Seoul says it plans to enrich uranium to increase reactor exports and power a fleet of nuclear submarines).
Note TerraPower undertakes to only use HALEU for its first and probably subsidized commercial systems. It is unclear whether using HALEU is the cheapest way to administer sodium. Foreign customers will – if it comes to that – certainly want the “advantages” of plutonium production from the plant and subsequent operation with recycled plutonium fuel. The Ministry of Energy is already safeguarding this option by supporting research into “new” recycling technologies in its national laboratories.
All of this will be difficult to explain, for example, to South Korea, which is trying to prevent the State Department from starting reprocessing to prepare plutonium-fired fast reactors, which South Korean nuclear enthusiasts are dying to develop. It will also be difficult to complain about China’s rapid reactor and reprocessing programs, which could use our military fears to fuel China’s growing nuclear weapons effort.
Fast reactor amplifiers are aware of these points and know that they must, at least apparently, address them. One example is Senator Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) amendment to the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020, which supposedly protects the nuclear explosives (plutonium and uranium 233) that these reactors use or produce for fuel and the reprocessing technologies that they use to win. While his amendment may sound harsh, it offers little more protection than what is already required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that protection can be lifted if the NRC determines that exporting is not “hostile” to US interests . The practical effect of the amendment would not be greater protection, but rather a smoothing of the licensing path for dangerous nuclear exports.
This is worse than hypocrisy. Once nations have easy access to nuclear explosives, no inspections can prevent them from making bombs. The congress has to look behind the beguiling label of the energy ministry as “advanced reactor”. If so, it needs to identify projects that could make nuclear explosives a globally widespread commodity. The beginning is with “advanced” fast reactors.
Victor Gilinsky serves as program advisor to The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, is a physicist and was commissioner for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations.
Henry Sokolski is the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia and the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future. During the George HW Bush administration, he served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for the United States Secretary of Defense.
Image: Reuters.
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