Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Waste

  • Appeal on Proposed Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel from Kozloduy to Russia Vienna, Austria

    Signed by 46 Representatives of European NGOs

    We, undersigned representatives of environmental organizations, scientists, politicians, are in strong opposition to proposed transportation of spent nuclear fuel from Bulgarian nuclear plant Kozloduy to Russia for the reprocessing. Spent nuclear fuel is high-level nuclear waste produced by nuclear industry and its transportation poses significant danger to the environment and population of the countries through which the spent nuclear fuel will be transported. According to the agreement between the governments of Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova, signed on November 28, 1997, in Sofia (Bulgaria) the Kozloduy’s spent nuclear fuel must be transported to Russian reprocessing facility “Mayak” through Ukraine and Moldova. There were already many protests by citizen’s groups in these countries against the proposed nuclear transport, even the Moldovian Environmental Minister asserted that the transportation through the terrotory of Moldova is illegal. These weren’t taken into account by the governmental institutions in all four countries. Citizens’ rights for healthy environment and access to information are totally ignored by the mentioned agreement: population of participating countries aren’t informed about the risk of nuclear transportation which, in case of an accident, could cause a great damage to the environment and public health. According to the statistical data of Russian Ministry of Atomic Power, 43% of all the nuclear incidents occurred during transportation in different stages of nuclear-fuel cycle. Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel is the most dangerous process the nuclear-fuel cycle consist of – largest nuclear accident in USSR happened to “Mayak” reprocessing facility in 1957 when the amount of radioactivity that was released to the environment was 2,5 times more than during Chernobyl accident. Reprocessing creates additional liquid radioactive waste which quantity is 160 times more, compared to spent nuclear fuel’ amount before reprocessing. According to acting Russian legislative act – decree No. 773 signed by the President of Russia on July 29, 1995 – waste of reprocessing will be sent back to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian public isn’t informed about this condition. Total ignorance of public right by the governments of post-communist countries can seriously damage the process of establishing democratic traditions in Eastern Europe. The public will must be respected. Eastern governments should run the public participation procedures for such a controversial issues through which public may express its concerns.

    We demand to cancel the plan for transportation of Kozloduy’s spent nuclear fuel through Ukraine and Moldova to Russia, as well as its reprocessing. No more spent nuclear fuel should be produced or transported by Bulgaria. Investments should be made into: the finding of a solution for spent nuclear fuel problem right at the Kozloduy’ site immediately; development of renewable sources of energy and energy-efficiency programs in Bulgaria in order to replace dangerous and unnecessary nuclear power reactors.

    Signature:
    46 REPRESENTATIVES OF EUROPEAN NGOS
    Date and Place:
    VIENNA/AUSTRIA, SEPT 25-27, 1998

  • Nuclear Power

    It is my belief, based on a professional lifetime of study, that further development of nuclear power presents an unacceptable radioactive curse on all future generations. Aside from the risks of accidents worse than we have so far seen, there is no suitable place in our environment to dispose of either present or future nuclear waste. Now massive public-relations efforts are being launched to retrain the public to trust the “experts.” Damaged gene pools and cancers, and a ruined environment, will be our legacy to future generations if we continue to build nuclear reactors and nuclear armaments. How many of our grandchildren are we willing to sacrifice for the continuation of nuclear electric power and nuclear war?

    Nuclear Electric Utilites
    The “peacetime” nuclear business in the United States is in bad shape. The hard fact is that nuclear power is the most subsidized of all industries, kept alive by taxpayer, rate-payer, and bondholder financed welfare, and by world wide military support. Abandoned reactors include Rancho Seco in California, Trojan in Oregon, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Shoreham on Long Island. All new reactors ordered since 1973 have been can-celed. Estimates of the cost of disposal rise fantastically above $500 million per reactor, and no one knows what to do with the radioactive stuff stored within and around them. The United States Department of Energy has expressed a desire for tritium to replenish the dwindling supply in its thermonuclear bomb stockpile. In order to survive, some electric utilities have expressed willingness to produce wartime tritium as a government-subsidized by-product of their nuclear electrical power.

    Nuclear Construction Companies
    Nuclear construction companies would like to build nuclear power plants, but it is unlikely that any unsubsidized nuclear power plant will be ordered by a US utility. The United States has proposed to provide reactors to North Korea to replace their “unsafe” nuclear plants. American, French, and Canadian nuclear companies are considering joint ventures to build power reactors in Indonesia and elsewhere, I presume with financial aid from US taxpayers. Now it is proposed that US nuclear corporations sell $60 billion of nuclear products to China, trusting that they will not use their ability to produce plutonium for bombs.

    Nuclear War with Depleted Uranium
    The US Atomic Energy Commission used its enormous diffusion plants to separate uranium-235 from natural uranium for the purpose of making nuclear bombs, like the one dropped on Hiroshima. The tons of depleted uranium (mostly uranium-238) left over from the diffusion process were to be a valuable material for conversion to plutonium fuel for breeder reactors. Because our breeder program has lost its support, depleted uranium is now a “waste” material in need of “recycling.” Its value for “peace” has been replaced by its value for waging nuclear war. In the Persian Gulf the US military recycled hundreds of tons of depleted uranium into armor piercing shells and protective armor for tanks. After piercing a tank wall the depleted uranium burned, forming a radioactive and chemically lethal aerosol, incinerating everyone inside the tank, then spreading unseen over Iraq. Sickness and death for all future time were spread indiscriminately among Iraqi soldiers and civilians (including children). American soldiers and their children became victims as part of the Gulf War Syndrome. Now US military suppliers plan to sell this “free” government bonanza on the profitable world military market.

    Radioactive Pollution on a Worldwide Scale
    The public has been conditioned by both corporate and government proponents of nuclear power to believe in the necessity for their inherently “safe” nuclear reactors to avert a coming energy crisis. The nuclear establishment advertises itself as the producer of “green” energy, completely ignoring the non-green effects of the manufacture and eventual disposal of reactors, their fuels, and their radioactive products. They claim that they are now ready to produce “safe” reactors. Extension of the analyses by which the experts support their claim of safety shows, I believe, that there is no possibility of a guaranteed safe reactor. There is certainly no way safely to dispose of nuclear waste into the environment. Reactors are bound occasionally to fail. They are complicated mechanical devices designed, built, and operated by fallible human beings, some of whom may be vindictive. Our reactors may be “weapons in the hands of our enemies,” susceptible to sabotage. Despite attempts at secrecy, the list of reactor accidents fills whole books. In 1986 the Chernobyl reactor exploded, blowing off its two-thousand-ton lid, polluting the northern hemisphere with radioactivity, casting radiation sickness and death into the far future, leaving a million acres of land ruined “forever” by radioactive contamination. Radioactive reindeer meat was discarded in Lapland, and milk in Italy. It is reported that half of the 10 million people in Belorussia live in contaminated areas. Some estimates of adults and children doomed to be killed and maimed by cancer and mutations run in the millions. If nuclear power continues, there will be other “Chernobyls” scattered around the world, perhaps more devastating. The Chernobyl accident demonstrates the devastation which could happen with a nuclear accident near a large city. The nuclear business, here and abroad, has a record of willful and careless radiation exposure and killing of unaware people since the beginning: its miners from radon gas, its Hanford “down-winders”, victims of Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the SL-1 reactor in Idaho. Even “successful” reactors are intolerable. Reactors produce radioactive pollution. They use uranium and make plutonium. Both are radioactive, chemically poisonous heavy metals. Plutonium, a nuclear bomb material, is also the world’s most radioactively lethal material. A power reactor at the end of its life has manufactured lethal radioactive products equivalent to those from several thousand nuclear bombs. We as a society cannot afford, even if we knew how, the cleanup of these radioactive messes. Nuclear power, with its lethal radioactive poisons, pollutes “forever”, in new, more insidious, more intransigent ways than any other form of energy.

     

  • Betrayal

    It’s as safe as mother’s milk, they’ll say When wanting to assure you that it’s all O.K. But mother’s milk can be a deadly dish If mom, a downwinder, eats Columbia River’s fish, Or consumes white snow – garden salads on the spot Then mother’s milk can become a deadly lot.

    So I fed poison to my nursing son With radioactive iodine-131. Just because we lived in the wrong place I maimed my babe for that nuclear race.

    This was written by a woman who has lived all of her life in Eastern Washington and remembers consuming local milk and produce around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Her husband loved to fish the Columbia River downstream from Hanford. Her name withheld by request. She says, “When [my youngest son] was seven – and again when he was eight years old – I had two surgeries for thyroid cancers. I didn’t tell people because it would be hard on our children….

    “In 1985 my husband died quite suddenly. Early in 1986 word got out that radioactive iodine-131 and other pollutants had been released in large amounts by the government just to see what would happen to us downwinders from the nuclear plant at Hanford, Washington.

    With the injuries from my thyroid cancers and the worry over my husband’s bladder and bone cancers, I was very angry and felt betrayed by my government. They used us as guinea pigs but we weren’t even that good because the government never followed up to see what did happen to us downwinders. I write poems, but they are all too mild for my anger at my government.” [Reprinted from the Hanford Health Information Network.]

    This atrocity against all people is once again in the news.

    In an extraordinary but not surprising statement, the Department of Energy has admitted that an explosion of a toxic radioactive waste container at the plant on May 14, 1997 exposed workers and released toxic materials into the atmosphere, including plutonium. This from the supposedly “closed” plant, the former flagship of the Department of War’s nuclear bomb plants (that’s what the Defense Department used to be called until the name was changed after World War II – it makes easier to get money from the taxpayers when you are asking for a “defense” budget rather than a “war” budget). Hanford may now rival Chernobyl as the most toxic site on planet Earth, with cleanup costs (if cleanup is even possible for such a site) estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The site promises to be toxic for tens of thousands of years.

    The May 14th explosion and series of errors is just part of the legacy of this nightmarish place. We as human beings must be angry about that place and what it represents. We must learn what is going on there and use our power to get something done about it.

    Since 1943 when 600 square miles of land in Washington State was legally condemned and 1,500 residents of the towns of Richland, Hanford, and White Bluffs were ordered to leave their homes within 30 days, Hanford has released hundreds of thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 and other radioactive by-products into the atmosphere. Between 1944 and 1972, Hanford released as much as 740,000 curies of iodine-131 into the air!

    For comparison, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant partial core meltdown in 1979 released 15 curies of radioactive iodine-131 into the air; the Chernobyl accident released 35 million to 49 million curies of iodine-131 in 1986.

    Thousands of lives have been adversely affected by this subtle, insidious, and mostly intentional radiation poisoning. Only today are some of these victims realizing what has given them cancer, killed their mates and children, and so horribly affected their lives. This information was kept secret until February 1986, when public pressure resulted in the release of 19,000 pages of U.S. Department of Energy documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

    During the 30 years of Hanford’s operation, a staggering 440 billion gallons of radioactive toxic wastes were dumped into the ground! Underground nuclear waste tanks have leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of waste. No complete records of the exact contents of these waste containers were kept, so the clean-up teams don’t even know what they are dealing with most of the time.

    But the Cold War is over, you may say, right? Is it really. Is there anything behind the talk we hear of peace from our leaders? Has much of anything changed? It doesn’t appear so. In fact, it could be argued that things are much worse. Things are different, but the building of our nuclear arsenal has not stopped.

    Did you know that in 1990, the amount of plutonium in the civilian sector of the world was 654 metric tons and in the military was 257 metric tons? By the year 2010, the amount of military plutonium is expected to remain the same while the civilian plutonium will grow to 2,100 metric tons! Civilian plutonium is plutonium produced in power generating nuclear reactors. Plutonium is a by-product of these reactors and many countries are planning to use this deadly material to power other reactors. This plutonium could conceivably be used to make a nuclear bomb.

    We still spend over a trillion dollars world-wide on the military. Countries all over the world are building nuclear weapons stockpiles. The U.S continues to test nuclear weapons – they call them “sub-critical tests” to get around the current moratorium on testing – because the military wants to build a new generation of smaller, more powerful nuclear bombs. Scotland, of all places, is estimated to have as many as 266 Trident submarine warheads, many purchased from the U.S., each one a powerful nuclear weapon. It is estimated that Britain builds a new nuclear bomb every 8 days!

    Five countries have nuclear-powered naval vessels: Russia, the United States, Great Britain, France and China. Even India is currently building a nuclear sub! The submarines of the Western countries typically have only one reactor on board, whereas two reactors power most Russian submarines. Excluding Russia, these nations have 132 nuclear submarines. Russia has 109 nuclear subs in its fleet. Britain has 13 nuclear subs, France has 11, and China has 6. The United States, the country of “peace,” has a staggering 101 nuclear submarines. Two hundred and forty one nuclear subs in the world!

    At least 20 nuclear bomb-carrying U.S. subs are at sea 24 hours a day, each ready to fire on virtually any target in 15 minutes. One U.S. Trident submarine carries the explosive power of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. The locations of these subs is the most closely guarded of secrets.

    And we are still building more! Nine nuclear submarines are under construction in the U.S. alone. So much for the end of wartime.

    “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” said Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe and later President of the United States, referring to the atomic bomb dropped on Japan.

    And we must remember the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities murdered by the U.S. But we had to do this to end the war, didn’t we? Well, diaries and documents released since then tell a different story. It seems that President Truman and his senior staff did not believe that we needed to drop the bomb on Japan to end the war. They believed that Japan would surrender without an invasion. In fact, diplomatic contacts and decoded Japanese wireless transmissions proved that surrender was imminent. So why was the bomb used?

    Records suggest that Truman and his advisors believed that if they showed the world that they were willing to use the bomb, it would aid them in negotiating with Stalin over the future of Eastern and Central Europe. There was also a pervasive, racist disregard for Japanese life. The bomb was used to literally burn a memory into the minds of communist and non-European nations of an image of scientific and technological superiority for the Allied countries.

    So, for the sake of image and to test the effects of our new weapons, 200 000 human lives were horribly ended and since 1945, more than 680,000 people have died or have been affected by the radiation released in those blasts.

    These are sobering revelations. I wonder personally what to do with all this awareness. During an Environmental Science class I taught yesterday, I was trying to share environmental awareness with people who had never considered these issues before. Three of my students were police officers who, in the course of their duties, have witnessed the aftermath of illegal toxic spills and see the effects of a disconnected world daily. They fight each day for personal survival, let alone have the time for global thinking. I sometimes feel deflated at the daunting task of opening my fellow travelers’ eyes. But we must go on. We must love the beauty of this world and work towards stopping the folly.

    Nuclear madness must stop. We can stop it. Everyday, we should do these things:

    1. E-mail or write our elected representatives (the Resources section below will tell you how) and tell them to stop this nuclear madness.
    2. Not support nuclear power in any form. Governments and corporations cannot be trusted with that power. There is no way that the relatively small amount of electrical power that is produced can justify the nuclear waste, the excess plutonium, or the temptations to make bombs.
    3. Insist that our elected representatives do something NOW about those who are suffering from the effects of Hanford and all the other bomb-making plants in the country. Insist that they stop all the studies and simply use the abundant money available in the world to help these people. We must stop letting them whine about who should be responsible and simply make them take responsibility. (Still think that money is an issue? See the Resources section below.)
    4. All nuclear testing must stop. Now. The U.S. must show the world that it is willing to take the first step.
    5. The U.S. must get out of the arms business. We sell our weapons of destruction to other nations. This is nuts and it must stop.
    6. All nuclear submarines should come home NOW. Set them up in ports around the country, build impenetrable “caskets” around them (NASA has the technology to build these cases – they do for their deep space probes) as museums so that people can learn of how insane we can be.
    7. Refuse to trade with any country with nuclear war technology.

    But there are so many other horrors in our world? How can we invite this awareness into our lives and survive? I think we can, every day.

    • We must surround ourselves with this knowledge and awareness and get very very angry. Feel the obscenity of these numbers, feel the horror of these events.
    • Then, feel your feet firmly on the ground and take a deep breath. Center yourself. You have work to do.
    • Look at your own personal priorities. What does your day look like? Do you take the time to nurture yourself – take a bath, do something creative, take a nap, exercise? Do you take the time to spend meaningful moments with those in your life that you love? Or do you feel hopelessly driven from one activity to another, not really in control of your own time?
    • Change your priorities. Make the time for nurturing activities and communication with loved ones. Don’t wait for someone or something to come into your life that will allow this to happen. Do it now.
    • Decide what is important to you. What values do you want to have? What values do you want the world to have? What do you want to be remembered for when you are gone? What do you want children to think of you?
    • Make “mindfulness moments” part of your every day, time when you will fully allow the awareness horrors in the world to come in. Visualize the starving child, the suffering and frustrated person poisoned by Hanford, the homeless, the nuclear stockpiles, the Trident submarines traveling at sea, waiting to strike, and whatever else you have chosen to care about.
    • Take an action of some kind every day. Teach someone about what you know. Send e-mail messages to your elected representatives making your demands clear. Choose to not buy something from a socially irresponsible company and write them a note telling them about it. Use your power every day.
    • Allow yourself an occasional “day-off.” Bring your vision for change to mind in some quiet moments, pray for peace, and then go do something for yourself or your loved ones. After a while, you won’t need a day-off.
    • Look at each day as a precious, vital collection of moments that must be savored, for they will never occur again.

    Awareness does not have to be feared. Your day can include walking around the block in the morning, loving your partner, going to work, taking time to see the trees at lunch or wishing there were some, writing an e-mail message to your senator, and having dinner. We can make the desire for change a daily part of our life rather than a feared, unfulfilled dream.

    We must take our power now. Hanford will always be there to remind us of what can happen when people believe the unbelievable – that those in Washington have anything other than a personal agenda of terror and greed. And those nuclear subs will continue to sail – until we say STOP!

    Please, dear mother Earth, Help me to stand firm on my own two feet Drawing on the solid earth below me Help me to know the constancy of your strength the power that is you, oh dear mother earth Help me to walk with the blood of rivers in my veins and the dark crumbling soil of earth in my flesh let my muscles be strong as tree trunks that rise up out of your belly To dance in the sky and sing praises to the life all around Beating, pulsing, rich and full with your sweet energy. Oh dear mother earth live in this body today. Sing loudly in every breath I take Stretch wildly and flow freely with all the directions I move and come home with me, come home to my belly live deep in my soul oh mother earth, SING!

    — Stephanie Kaza

    Ah, not be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner – what is it? if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming.

    — Ranier Maria Rilke

    * Jackie Giuliano is a Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter’s moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and the Sun.

  • Disposal of High-Level Nuclear Waste

    More than a half century after the beginning of the Nuclear Age, there is no satisfactory answer to the serious dilemma of how to dispose of the large quantities of radioactive wastes created by military and civilian uses of nuclear energy. This paper examines technological options for waste disposal, and concludes by favoring Multibarrier Monitored Retrievable Storage (MMRS). The authors point out, however, that this form of storage (it is not really disposal) will require “continuous monitoring… essentially forever.” Thus, the best of the options will require something akin to a “nuclear priesthood” to pass along their skills at monitoring these wastes for thousands of generations – a sobering thought.

    Our century’s indulgence in nuclear technology has created radioactive wastes that are a problem not only in the present but will affect thousands of generations in the future. The problems are so long-term that they are beyond our capacity to plan for adequately. At a minimum, we should cease – with all due speed – to generate more nuclear wastes.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s directors issued a policy statement on nuclear power in May 1996 calling for “a world adequately supplied by renewable, environmentally benign energy sources, and the worldwide elimination of nuclear power.” A copy of the full statement is available from the Foundation.

    – David Krieger

    Introduction

    Disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste is a critical problem for our time and will remain so well into the future. There are two main waste sources: Nuclear power reactors and bomb-related nuclear material from the production facilities and from the decommissioned U.S. and (former) U.S.S.R. nuclear weapons.

    This paper deals with disposal of (a) reactor spent fuel rods and (b) waste sludge from the bomb-grade plutonium separation process. Disposal of bomb-grade plutonium from decommissioned weapons and from existing stockpiles present somewhat different problems which are not treated here.*

    Nuclear waste disposal poses a number of different yet interconnected problems, all of which must eventually be resolved in an integrated fashion: technical, economic, health-related, environmental, political. The present paper addresses primarily technical issues, and does not attempt an analysis of the overall problem.

    Management of radioactive waste is a complex, multifaceted procedure. Spent commercial fuel rods present the most demanding challenge of all waste problems because of the high level of radioactivity. The fuel rods, relatively harmless before entering the reactor, emerge having become dangerously radioactive. They require storage for at least ten years under circulated water in a pool inside the reactor containment structure.

    By statute, the government, through the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, has promised to provide disposal capacity for the waste generated by the nation’s nuclear power plants. Some of the waste which has accumulated over 45 years of Cold War nuclear bomb production also falls into the high-level category.

    The term “high-level” nuclear waste has had its meaning changed in the U.S. over the years. At the present time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has defined “high-level” very narrowly as mostly, but not entirely, spent fuel elements and reprocessed military wastes, such as sludges. They further define “spent fuel,” concentrates of strontium-90 and cesium-137, and transuranics as something not necessarily included in their definition of “high-level” waste.

    Because this NRC definition is contrary (if not actually contradictory) to standards of the rest of the world and makes no sense to the authors, “high-level” nuclear waste is defined here as all radioactive waste material coming from nuclear reactor fuel rods whether confined or not:

    a) Spent nuclear fuel rods, clad or declad, from commercial electricity generating reactors; average radioactivity being more than 2.5 million curies per cubic meter.
    b) Semi-liquid sludge from nuclear bomb fabrication waste processing residue – average radioactivity being about 3500 curies per cubic meter.

    All this waste contains five shorter lived and longer lived radionuclides of main concern. The shorter lived are strontium-90 whose half life, t1/2, is 28.5 years, and cesium-137 whose half life, t1/2, is 30 years. See Ref. 1 for the half-life values used in this study. The radioactivity of these shorter lived nuclides is approximately 95% of the total radioactivity of the nuclides of concern. Total hazardous life for these shorter lived nuclides is considered to be between 600 years and 1000 years depending upon one’s point of view.

    The longer lived isotopes are plutonium-239 whose t1/2 is 24,110 years, plutonium-240 whose t1/2 is 6,540 years, and curium-245 whose t1/2 is 8,500 years. Plutonium-238 whose t1/2is 88 years will have essentially disappeared after several thousand years, so in storage terms of the longer lived elements this isotope is not of concern as long as it will have been successfully contained for the next several thousand years. As for the life of these longer lived materials, the NRC considers 10,000 years as the storage time required; however, some people consider a lifetime as long as 100,000 years to 500,000 years as more appropriate.

     Table I
    Radioactivity for 100 Tons of Spent Fuel *
    Curies Remaining
     

     Isotope
    		  

      t1/2 yrs
    		  

      10 yrs
    		  

      500 yrs
    		  

      1000 yrs
    		  

     10,000 yrs
    		  

     100,000 yrs
    		  

     200,000 yrs
     

    Sr-90
    		      28 2,000,000         15    trace  

     –
    		  

      –
    		  

      –
     

    Cs-137
    		      30 3,000,000        40    trace  

     –
    		  

      –
    		  

      –
     

    Pu-239
    		 24,110     22,000   27,000  29,000  56,000    8,000      240
     

    Pu-240
    		   6,540      49,000 175,000 170,000  69,000         7      trace
     

    Cm-245
    		 85,000     56,000   52,000  52,000  25,000        0.5      trace
     * A typical 1000 megawatt reactor contains about 100 tons of enriched uranium, one-third of which is renewed each year.

    Table I (above) extracted from Ref. 2 should be helpful. It must be noted that as some radioactive isotopes disintegrate, they create other radioactive isotopes in the process. Thus Pu-239 and Pu-240 increase at first and do not begin decreasing until many years later.

    Table I illustrates, as does Figure 1 (below), rather spectacularly the fallacy of the NRC rationale for a 10,000 year waste storage lifetime, when the radioactivity for the plutonium isotopes are greater after that long period than at the outset. However, it must be noted that this Pu-239 is relatively confined and in general will not be disturbed, so the basic health hazards from such radioactive materials as radon and radium from uranium ores appear to be far more serious.

    The general nuclear waste disposal approach is that the repositories should not be more dangerous than natural ores of uranium and thorium. In fact, they might be much less hazardous; after all, the natural ores have no barriers such as containers, and radium is leached from many of the ores so that traces get into the food chain. Spent fuel rods have to be stored between 13,000 and 14,000 years before their level of radioactivity decreases to that of natural uranium ore.

    One of the most serious engineering problems is that of allowing for release of the prodigious heat emanating from stored nuclear power waste. Most of the heat comes from the strontium-90 and cesium-137 at the start, but the longer-lived actinides produce more in later years. As noted in Table II (below), the heat liberated by spent nuclear reactor fuel decreases significantly as it ages.

    From a practical engineering standpoint there is little difference between a 500 year lifetime and a 500,000 year lifetime. The 500 years is so long a time that no storage prototype system can ever be tested, thus the basic engineering considerations remain unchanged regardless of the waste lifetime. It is on this fact that any long-term storage conclusions are predicated. As is discussed below, any storage technique that utilizes permanent or nonretrievable ground burial is fundamentally a violation of basic engineering principles. This was pointed out to the nuclear industry over 25 years ago, but their response at that time was that they had “faith” that some satisfactory new technique would be developed, by the government of course and at taxpayers’ expense, before it would be necessary to initiate long-term storage. Obviously, that has not happened and we are now faced with a nuclear waste disposal problem that has no fully satisfactory solution and probably never will have.

    Multibarrier Monitored Retrievable Storage (MMRS)

    This, unfortunately, is the final technique of choice for this particular waste disposal problem. It is unfortunate because there must be a continuous monitoring of the waste essentially forever. There are two fortunate aspects deserving mention: (1) the total volume of the waste involved is small by world standards, i.e., one football field for each type of waste each ten or twelve stories high, and (2) the number of people theoretically required to perform the monitoring task is also quite small, perhaps one hundred people or less worldwide. A ball park estimate of costs in present day dollars indicates that about $100 million is required over a 10,000 year time period for each 1000 megawatt nuclear power plant.

    For the nuclear power plant waste, which consists of spent fuel rods, the most desirable inner barrier is the original cladding used for the nuclear fuel in the basic power plant configuration. This excellent cladding barrier is usually zirconium but sometimes stainless steel is used. The lifetime of this cladding has never been tested, so there is no telling exactly how long it can be depended upon. Safety engineering, however, dictates that because this barrier has already proved to be very reliable, it should be left in place and not removed. Further barriers have to be determined as a result of experimental development based upon both thermal characteristics and mechanical properties. Possibilities include glass, copper, ceramic, additional zirconium, stainless steel, nickel, or titanium. All this is for the power plant spent fuel rods only. Bomb waste having been processed requires another barrier or cladding before application of the “standard” multibarriers.

    Because the bomb waste is initially in a semi-liquid sludge form, it has to be solidified at the outset. The quantities involved are approximately 105 million gallons for the U.S. as of 1994, so the total quantity worldwide would be about 200 million gallons. A ball park estimate of the solidified quantity results in roughly the same volume as the power plant waste with the identical radioactive nuclides. The major difference between this solidified nuclear bomb waste and the spent fuel rods will be that the former will probably be contained in vitrified or glassified cylinders as compared with the latter being in long slender cylindrical fuel rods with metallic cladding. Actually, if we fabricated the bomb waste’s vitrified cylinders in long slender rods the same size as the spent fuel rods, the remainder of the waste disposal process could be identical for both waste components.

    Of special note here is that the final configuration must be a solid container or cask whose outer surface is monitored. Engineering jargon usually refers to this approach as placing the canister in a “bath tub.” Sensitive radioactive sensors in the “bath tub” must monitor this outer container surface continuously in an automated fashion. Such automation must incorporate Built-In-Self-Test, making use of many space exploration techniques.

    While the waste canisters or containers are stored in shallow, underground but easily accessible facilities, all testing and monitoring should be performed by automated equipment. Such techniques preclude human errors caused by boredom, undetected equipment malfunctions, and misinterpretation of displayed information. Human intervention is necessary only for overall supervision and periodic testing of the automated equipment because of multiple error causation possibilities beyond the original design. We have to remember that there is nothing that is 100% safe; nuclear bombs for example only possessed six or seven safety interlocks. Periodically, the nuclear waste monitoring equipment must be replaced and the waste canisters themselves will require retrieval and automatic repackaging every hundred years or more. It is noted that there are essentially two sets of automatic equipment, (1) the canister “bath tub” monitors and (2) the retrieval/repackaging mechanism. The latter might well be simply remote controlled equipment or a combination of semi-automatic components.

    A summary of our viewpoint is that the best disposal method known to date consists of sealing the zirconium or stainless steel-clad spent fuel rods, without reprocessing, in copper or steel canisters and storing these in a geologic but easily accessible repository. This is the once-through fuel cycle. The spent fuel rods should be allowed to stand at least ten years under water so that most of the radioactive materials decay, and the rate of heat generation has fallen by about 86%. The repositories must have multiple barriers. The canisters must be arranged so that sufficient cooling air can circulate around them after disposal. The waste density must not exceed that required for adequate heat flow.

    A major point to be made is that a very responsible and conscientious group of people is required to take care of our long-term nuclear garbage. This group must have substantial credentials for at least several centuries of resource concern and responsible treatment of their environment. Few groups in the world will qualify and it is worth considerable remuneration from the society at large to this select management group to perform the waste monitoring required. The compensation referred to, while quite large for the equipment and personnel involved in terms of the select group, will be minuscule compared with the monetary interest the U.S. presently pays on its debt or the amount societies throughout the world have been willing to spend on weapons of mass destruction.

      Table 2: Thermal Power Per Metric Tonne* of Spent Fuel
     

    Age (years)
    		  

     Rate of Heat Liberated(watts)
    		  

     Percent of Heat from Strontium and Cessium
     

    1
    		  

     12,300
    		  

     67
     

    5
    		  

      2,260
    		  

    69
     

    10
    		  

      1,300
    		  

    72
     

     20
    		  

      950
    		  

     68
     

     50
    		  

      572
    		  

     56
     

    100
    		  

      312
    		  

     31
     

     200
    		  

     183
    		  

     5

     * 2 metric tonne = 1000 kilograms = 1 long ton = 2200 lbs.

    Nonretrievable Geologic Storage

    The major effort toward long-term high-level nuclear waste disposal has been in the area of depositing in the ground all the dangerous material in some sort of containers. This approach seeks to find a permanent disposal technique so the waste can be left for posterity without any possibility of future generations being at risk. While the motivation and results sought after are commendable, the reality of what is being attempted has not really been fully recognized.

    Of prime importance here is the basic engineering principle alluded to above that any truly new system has to be tested for at least one life cycle in order for there to be reasonable confidence that there have been no design or fabrication errors. Given a new disposal system that has a life cycle of at least 300 years, the required engineering prototype test is not possible. After twenty-five years, the faith of responsible nuclear power parties that government would figure out an acceptable solution eventually is as remote a possibility today as it was in the first place. Needless to say, that confidence in a permanent solution has now been thoroughly shaken, as basic engineering considerations dictated at the outset.

    The geologic materials investigated throughout the world have included salt, granite, volcanic tuff, and basalt. Each particular site chosen, after much consideration of geologic and scientific aspects, has proven to have some flaw that makes such contemplated irretrievable burial unacceptable. In some instances fractures in the structure have occurred or been discovered whereby the nuclear waste could eventually get outside the confinement volume. Other problems include the buildup and then outflow of water. Earthquake susceptibility is always of concern and automatically precludes use of some sites.

    In the end it does not look as though we can possibly have sufficient confidence in any one geologic site that would allow permanent disposal. One possibility, of course, is to treat the waste similarly to the way we instituted nuclear power in the first place, i.e., proceed with what seems satisfactory at the time and leave any serious long-term problems to be solved only after they have actually arisen. In other words, there is always the irresponsible option of letting our distant descendants be plagued with our 20th century errors.

    Burying of Casks Inside Underground Bomb Test Cavities

    Given the already contaminated underground cavities made by bomb-testing in Nevada, a logical option would appear to be the use of these voids for permanent waste disposal. An important factor to be considered is the high level of radioactivity already present within those cavities. While leaks into the air occurred in some tests, in most cases all of the radioactivity from the explosions was confined. After all, this was the bomb-testing option of choice to prevent contamination of the atmosphere. A typical test was the Chesire experiment, conducted on February 14, 1976. It was a hydrogen bomb with a yield between 200 and 500 kilotons. It was detonated at a depth of 3830 feet, which was 1760 feet below the water table.

    There is already considerable experience in drilling into bomb cavities. The purpose was to sample the radioactive materials for analysis, in order to estimate the yield and efficiency (which is the percentage of U-235 and/or Pu-239 which underwent fission). If the deeper cavities are chosen (to insure that they are well below the water table), it would be easiest to drill a shaft in the same place as the original one. By now, the fission products which are most dangerous, such as iodine-131, have all decayed. The only gaseous fission product left is krypton-85, with half-life 10.7 years. It is not nearly as dangerous as radon, and in any case only a small amount would diffuse out. Casks of waste would be lowered into the cavity using a cable suspended from a derrick, with the operator inside a shielded housing, if necessary. At the end, the cavity is filled with earth, and the shaft closed.

    Although this burial technique looks promising and derserving of further study, it is by no means clear that this technique for disposing of hazardous waste is satisfactory. It could develop that creating new cavities for the express purpose of using them as repositories could become attractive. In that case, the site would be carefully chosen with the water table in mind, and the cavity blasted very deep. Hydrogen bombs might be best since most of the energy comes from deuterium fusion, thus minimizing the amount of radioactivity created.

    So much for the positive aspects. Negative aspects include the idea that just because deep underground cavities are already contaminated with long lived radioactive nuclides from nuclear bomb explosions, we are not justified increasing the potential future health hazards by orders of magnitude. As with other geologic burials, there are possibilities of earthquakes, ground fractures, and unanticipated failures in the deep drilled shafts that would cause water leakage. However, of all the possible permanent disposal sites, these deep holes of hazardous remnants from past bomb development follies appear to be the most attractive, even though a time period of at least 10,000 years is too long to confidently conclude that there are no significant failure-modes.

    Because permanent geologic disposal in nuclear bomb cavities violates fundamental engineering principles, it can be considered to be irresponsible for present generations to pursue that option. Perhaps considerations of our lack of knowledge today of what the worldwide land usage was many thousands of years ago will provide an understanding of our cautious conclusions here. We simply cannot be reasonably certain how the use of land throughout the world will evolve over the forthcoming thousands of years. Thus conscientious adherence to responsible behavior requires our not utilizing this bomb cavity technique at present. Further study might possibly result in something useful a hundred or more years hence.

    Burial Between Tectonic Plates

    The interior of the Earth contains the elements potassium, uranium, and thorium, all slightly radioactive. This radioactive decay liberates heat, which keeps the Earth’s core hot. The consequence of a hot, liquid core is movement of floating tectonic plates, and formation of mountain ranges and continents. Were this not the case, mountains and all land would erode down, and our planet would be covered with water. Without this radioactivity, we would not exist.

    Geologists discovered many years ago that the continents are in constant motion relative to each other. Far below the ground tectonic plates are sliding very slowly over each other. The continents rest on these plates, so the oceans are changing size and shape while the surface continents are moving relative to one another. At the edge of a plate whose motion is toward the ocean, there will be a subduction layer between that tectonic plate and the one below. Any material between the plates at that point will be pulled in between and remain there for at least several million years.

    Concern over the years has been to consider just how one could perform the placement of high-level nuclear waste into a tectonic plate subduction layer. One major problem is digging down to that depth. But even more stringent than that is the problem of construction of shaft walls that will withstand the weight of all the earth above. The same problem is encountered when constructing a research module to descend to the ocean floor. While the ocean depth is a maximum of about 6 miles, the tectonic plate depth is as much as 50 miles. Finally, there are the construction strength problem differences between an enclosed submerged module in the ocean and the side wall problems in a shaft through which nuclear waste canisters are to be lowered.

    There has not been, nor is there even a contemplated possibility of constructing a shaft that would be strong enough for this nuclear waste disposal option. Thus, another apparently attractive approach seems to be beyond our reach.

    Transmutation

    Soon after commercial generation of electricity via reactors started and their high-level waste began to accumulate, ways to simplify and manage the problem were sought. Among these was reprocessing to separate the waste into several fractions, and then, using neutrons, to transmute via fission the transuranium elements (neptunium, plutonium, americium, etc.) into nuclides which have relatively short half-lives so that they lose their radioactive sting in a repository during an abbreviated storage time. The transuranium elements would require sequestering in a repository for many thousands of years.

    If the nuclear waste is bombarded with neutrons, electrons, or other atomic particles so that it is changed from a long-lived to a short-lived radioactive material, the process has been termed “transmutation.” About thirty years ago, people inquiring about the long-term nuclear waste disposal for commercial reactors were told that the military had the identical problem for its nuclear bomb waste. Because the military waste was already twenty years old, the word to one of the authors was that the military had not only decided that transmutation was the best solution to this problem but had already worked out all pertinent details. Many years and many nuclear reactors later, of course, we found out that the military had not developed any viable transmutation waste disposal system at all.

    In fact, the basic problems with transmutation have been perennial. Each nuance has resulted in the same general result. Any process based on transmutation would require reprocessing to separate the waste into several fractions, and then, using neutrons, to transmute via fission the transuranium elements (neptunium, plutonium, americium, etc.) into nuclides which have relatively short half-lives. Considerable research has been carried out recently on these nuclear incineration techniques. Tests are being conducted at Hanford, Los Alamos, and Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. Success of the proposed procedure depends on reprocessing spent fuel by either the PUREX process or a technique similar to the TRUMP-S process. The actinides would then be reintroduced into the reactor or bombarded with neutrons generated using an accelerator. Thus neutron sources might be either nuclear reactors, perhaps of the breeder type, or linear accelerators to produce high-energy protons, which collide with lead, bismuth, or tungsten targets. This produces abundant neutrons, which must be moderated using heavy water. The neutrons then cause fission of the actinides, and liberation of huge amounts of energy, as in a nuclear reactor.

    Disposal of wastes by transmutation is intimately related to fast breeder reactors. While American reactors of this type were phased out by Congress in 1983, a new type, the Integral Fast Reactor, is now being studied. These breeder reactors use liquid sodium as coolant and have no moderator. They are being promoted as a way to cope with nuclear waste. The problem, of course, is that “we’ve heard that story before.”

    Even though the outlook for nuclear transmutation is most unpromising, a few details are perhaps in order. The accelerator procedure is highly unfavorable from the standpoint of energy consumption. The steel and other parts would be activated by neutrons, and become radioactive. It seems that about as much radioactive waste would be produced as is consumed, as stated above, if not more. Costs would be fantastic. The procedure could not easily be used with fission products. They absorb neutrons poorly; after all, they were in a neutron environment for years, and survived. Only two, iodine-129 and technetium-99, are easily transmuted to nonradioactive nuclides, and these are not particularly important. Technetium-99 (half-life nearly a quarter of a million years) is converted by neutrons into technetium 100 (half-life only 16 seconds) forming ruthenium. If this process is carried out while a stream of ozone is passed through the apparatus, volatile ruthenium tetroxide is constantly removed. Transmutation might be successful in this case, and perhaps that of iodine-129, but in general the technique is not expected to be satisfactory.

    In 1992 a group of nine qualified experts finished an exhaustive assessment of disposing of waste through transmutation via fast breeder reactors, accelerators, and high temperature electrolysis techniques (the Ramspott report, after the first author). These scientists are associated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, two universities, and a private firm. The study concluded that high-temperature electrolysis procedures for separating actinide metals in reprocessing high-level waste offers no economic incentives or safety advantages. Unfortunately, actinide separation and transmutation cannot be considered a satisfactory substitute for geological disposal.

    Spacecraft Transport to the Sun

    Of all the theoretically possible disposal techniques one can think of, this is one of the most preferable. Materials on the sun are already similar to our waste products, so our depositing high level nuclear materials on the sun would blend right in. Unfortunately, the numbers are such that we cannot do the job, either technologically or economically.

    Given the liquid sludge nuclear bomb waste of about 108 gallons for the U.S. alone, the following ballpark numbers apply:

    ~0.1 = conversion factor for solidification.
    ~0.1 = conversion factor for gallons to cu ft.
    ~100 lbs/cu ft density.
    10,000 lb effective spacecraft waste payload for an Apollo-type vehicle assuming the additional 7000 lb payload will be required for containers and the retro-rockets.
    108 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 100 x 10-4 = 104 spacecraft for only accumulated U.S. military waste.

    Besides the fact that the U.S. does not have the economic resources to fund such a gigantic number of spacecraft, each vehicle would have to have perfect launch systems that would not blow up on the launch pad plus perfect guidance systems that would insure the vehicle not turning around back toward the Earth. Obviously, this is beyond any forseeable capability and must be abandoned as a possible option.

    Conclusions

    A major point emphasized in this study is that it is unethical to force a known potential environmental hazard on future generations when a reasonable alternative exists. This aspect was phrased above in engineering terms, i.e. basic engineering principles; however, it could easily have been phrased in more socially oriented terms. This leads to the only responsible choice being the multibarrier monitored retrievable storage (MMRS) technique which will cost in present dollars between $100 million and $1 billion per 1000 megawatt power plant over a 10,000 to 100,000 year storage period.

    It also needs to be pointed out that there are some important lessons to be learned from Mother Nature:

    1) The natural nuclear reactors at Oklo in Gabon, West Africa, demonstrated that the plutonium and most metallic fission products did not leach out, even over thousands of centuries of leaching. Even the strontium-90 stayed in place until it decayed. The cesium-137 did migrate out, and the iodine fission products evaporated. Despite this favorable result, strictly speaking it applies to the particular geology of that area.

    2) Another natural site teaches us more valuable lessons about the behavior of radioactive materials during long storage. There is a hill called Morro do Ferro in Brazil where there are 30,000 tons of thorium and 100,000 tons of rare earths. Much of the fission products are rare earths. Chemically, thorium resembles plutonium in some ways and the rare earths resemble curium and americium. Again, the evidence is that migration of the most dangerous materials from the surface over eons of weathering has been negligible.

    3) Still another area whose study yields valuable lessons is the Koongarra ore body in Australia. This is a giant deposit of uranium ore in a common type of geological formation through which groundwater has been flowing for millions of years. Movement of uranium and its decay products has been investigated by drilling a series of holes through the ore body and surrounding layers. The results indicate that migration of only a few tens of meters has occurred on the weathered surface, and virtually no movement has taken place underground.

    So with responsible behavior designing and implementing the MMRS long-term nuclear waste system, there is reasonable historical assurance that future disasters will probably be avoided even if some failures should occur in that system.

    References

    1. Edgardo Browne, Richard B. Firestone; and Virginia Shirley, Ed.; Table of Radioactive Isotopes, John Wiley & Sons: New York,1986, Table 1 pp. D-10 to D-26.
    2. Warf, James C., All Things Nuclear, First Edition, Southern California Federation of Scientists, Los Angeles, 1989, p. 85.

     

  • Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons

    Introduction

    The two nuclear fission bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki each released nearly 4,000 times as much explosive energy as chemical high explosive bombs of the same weight. Together they killed more than 200,000 people. The energy released by the splitting of the atomic nuclei in the cores of these bombs was more than 10 million times the energy released by rearrangements of the outer electrons of atoms, which are responsible for chemical changes. For an instant after detonation of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, an amount of explosive energy equivalent to a pile of dynamite as big as the White House was contained in a sphere of plutonium no bigger than a baseball.

    This is why, a short time later, Albert Einstein said: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our mode of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Suddenly the destructive capacity accessible to humans went clear off the human scale of things.

    About 10 years later this destructive capacity jumped dramatically again when the United States and the Soviet Union developed hydrogen bombs. By the 1970s, there were five announced members of the nuclear club, and the total number of nuclear warheads in the world had increased to some 60,000.

    Since 1964, when China tested its first nuclear explosive, further horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons has been secret or ambiguous or both. India tested a nuclear explosive in 1974, but claimed that is was strictly for peaceful purposes, and has consistently denied that it has any nuclear weapons. Although its government has never admitted that it has nuclear weapons, there is little doubt that Israel has been accumulating a growing stockpile since the 1960s. South Africa announced that it had made a half-dozen or so nuclear weapons, starting in the 1970s, but that it now has eliminated them. Other countries strongly suspected of having at least one nuclear weapon, and the capacity to make more, include Pakistan, North Korea, and Iraq. Commitments have been made by Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to turn over to Russia all nuclear weapons on their territories for dismantling. Ukraine completed this transfer on June 1, 1996.

    The immense potential destructive capacity of uranium and plutonium can also be released slowly as energy that can serve the peaceful needs of humans. It took about 10 years after the first nuclear bombs were exploded for nuclear energy for peaceful purposes to begin to be practical. Nuclear power has expanded considerably in the last 30 years or so. The two technologies-for destructive uses and for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy-are closely connected. I’ll discuss these connections in some detail in this paper.

    Facing the realities of the Nuclear Age as they have become evident these past 50 years has been a difficult and painful process for me, involving many changes of heart in my feelings about nuclear weapons and nuclear power since I first heard of nuclear fission on August 6, 1945. I started with a sense of revulsion towards nuclear weapons and skepticism about nuclear power for nearly five years. Then I worked on and strongly promoted nuclear weapons for some 15 years. In 1966, in the midst of a job in the Pentagon, I did an about-face in my perception of nuclear weaponry, and have pressed for nuclear disarmament ever since. My rejection of nuclear power, because of its connection with nuclear weapons, took longer, and was not complete until about 1980.

    Since that time I have been persistent in calling for the prompt global abolition of all nuclear weapons and the key nuclear materials needed for their production. Since all of the more than 400 nuclear power plants now operating in 32 countries produce large quantities of plutonium that, when chemically separated from spent fuel, can be used to make reliable, efficient nuclear weapons of all types, I have also found it necessary to call for phasing out all nuclear power worldwide. To accomplish this while being responsive to the environmental disruption caused by continued large-scale use of fossil fuels, I also find it necessary to call for intense, global response to opportunities for saving energy and producing what is needed from renewable sources directly or indirectly derived from solar radiation. I shall try in the rest of this paper to explain briefly the convictions that have led me to join others in making these calls with great urgency.

    Latent Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

    There are many possible degrees of drift or concerted national actions that are short of the actual possession of nuclear weapons, but that can account for much of what has to be done technically to acquire them. Harold Feiveson has called such activity “latent proliferation” of nuclear weapons.1 A national government that sponsors acquisition of nuclear power plants may have no intention to acquire nuclear weapons; but that government may be replaced by one that does, or may change its collective mind. A country that is actively pursuing nuclear power for peaceful purposes may also secretly develop nuclear explosives to the point where the last stages of assembly and military deployment could be carried out very quickly. The time and resources needed to make the transition from latent to active proliferation can range from very large to very small. Inadequately controlled plutonium or highly enriched uranium, combined with secret design and testing of non-nuclear components of nuclear warheads, can allow a nation or terrorist group to have deliverable nuclear weapons within days, or even hours, after acquiring a few kilograms or more of the key nuclear weapon materials.

    Contrary to widespread belief among nuclear engineers who have never worked on nuclear weapons, plutonium made in nuclear power plant fuel can be used to make all types of nuclear weapons. This “reactor grade” plutonium has relatively high concentrations of the isotope Pu-240, which spontaneously releases many more neutrons than Pu-239, the principal plutonium isotope in “weapon-grade” plutonium. In early nuclear weapons, such as the plutonium bomb tested in New Mexico in 1945, and then used in the bombing of Nagasaki, use of reactor grade plutonium would have tended to cause the chain reaction to start prematurely. This would lower the most likely explosive yield, but not below about 1 kiloton, compared with the 20 kiloton yield from these two bombs. Since that time, however, there have been major developments of nuclear weapons technology that make it possible to design all types of nuclear weapons to use reactor grade plutonium without major degradation of the weapons’ performance and reliability, compared with those that use weapon grade plutonium.2 These techniques have been well understood by nuclear weapon designers in the United States since the early 1950s, and probably also for decades in the other four declared nuclear weapon states.

    Reactor grade plutonium can also be used for making relatively crude nuclear explosives, such as might be made by terrorists. Although the explosive yields of such bombs would tend to be unpredictable, varying from case to case for the same bomb design, their minimum explosive yields could credibly be the equivalent of several hundred tons or more of high explosive.3 Such bombs, transportable by automobile, would certainly qualify as weapons of mass destruction, killing many tens of thousands or more people in some locations.

    All nuclear weapons require plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Some use both. The required amounts vary considerably, depending on the desired characteristics and on the technical resources and knowhow available to those who design and build the weapons. Estimates of the maximum total number of U. S. nuclear warheads and of the total amount of plutonium produced for those warheads correspond to an average of about 3 kilograms of plutonium per warhead.4 The minimum amount of plutonium in a nuclear explosive that contains no highly enriched uranium can be significantly smaller than 3 kilograms.

    Nuclear power plants typically produce a net of about 200 kilograms of plutonium per year for each 1,000 megawatts of electric power generating capacity. Some 430 nuclear power plants, with combined electrical generating capacity of nearly 340,000 megawatts, are now operating in 32 countries. The plants account for about 7% of total primary energy consumption worldwide, or about 17% of the world’s electrical energy. Total net annual production of plutonium by these plants is nearly 70,000 kilograms, enough for making more than 10,000 nuclear warheads per year. 5

    So far about four times as much plutonium has been produced in power reactors than has been used for making nuclear weapons-about 1 million kilograms, most of which is in spent nuclear fuel in storage, compared with about 250,000 kilograms for weapons.6

    Nearly 200,000 kilograms of plutonium have been chemically separated from spent power reactor fuel in chemical reprocessing facilities in at least 8 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States).7 This is typically stored as plutonium oxide that can relatively easily be converted to plutonium metal for use in nuclear explosives.

    Research and test reactors can also produce significant amounts of plutonium that, after chemical separation, can be used for making nuclear weapons. This has apparently been the route to nuclear weapons followed by Israel and started by North Korea.

    Although use of highly enriched uranium in nuclear power plants has been sporadic and rare, substantial quantities have been used for R&D purposes-as fuel for research and test reactors, and in connection with development of breeder reactors. Principal suppliers have been and now are the five declared nuclear weapon states. It has been estimated that the world inventory of highly enriched uranium for civil purposes is about 20,000 kilograms.8

    Although this is dramatically smaller than the more than 1 million kilograms of highly enriched uranium associated with nuclear weapons, it may be extremely important to some countries that are secretly developing the technology for making nuclear weapons.

    Facilities for enriching uranium in its concentration of the isotope U-235 to the levels of a few percent needed for light water power reactor fuel can be used for further enrichment to high concentrations used for making nuclear explosives. The technology for doing this is proliferating, both in terms of the numbers of countries that have such facilities, and in the variety of different ways to carry out the enrichment.

    The continuing international spread of knowledge of nuclear technology related to nuclear power development is an important contributor to latent nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the people who have become experts in nuclear technology, whether for military or civil purposes, could be of great help in setting up and carrying out clandestine nuclear weapon design and construction operations that make use of nuclear materials stolen from military supplies or diverted from civil supplies, perhaps having entered a black market.

    An example of highly advanced latent nuclear weapon proliferation is the nuclear weapons development program that started in Sweden in the late 1940s. It remained secret until the mid-1980s, when much detail about the project started becoming publicly available. It included hydronuclear tests of implosion systems containing enough fissile material to go critical but not enough to make a damaging nuclear explosion. The objective of the Swedish nuclear bomb program was to determine, in great detail, what Sweden would need to do if the government ever decided to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons.9 I have no reason to believe that Sweden has ever made that decision. I would not be surprised, however, if many other countries with nuclear reactors or uranium enrichment facilities that could be used to supply needed key nuclear materials have secretly carried out similar programs of lesser or perhaps even greater technical sophistication than Sweden’s.

    Bombardment of Nuclear Facilities

    Another type of latent proliferation that I find especially worrisome is the possible bombardment of nuclear facilities that thereby would be converted, in effect, into nuclear weapons. Military bombardment or sabotage of nuclear facilities, ranging from operating nuclear power plants and their spent fuel storage pools to large accumulations of high level radioactive wastes in temporary or long term storage, could release large quantities of radioactive materials that could seriously endanger huge land areas downwind. Electric power plants and stored petroleum have often been prime targets for tactical and strategic bombing, and sometimes for sabotage. In the case of operating nuclear power plants, core meltdowns and physical rupture of containment structures could be caused by aerial or artillery bombardment, truck bombings, internal sabotage with explosives, or by control manipulations following capture of the facility by terrorists. For orientation to the scale of potential radioactive contamination, consider strontium-90 and cesium-137, two especially troublesome fission products with half-lives of about 30 years. The inventories of these radionuclides in the core of a typical nuclear power plant (1,000 electrical megawatts) are greater than the amounts released by a 20 megaton H-bomb explosion, assuming half the explosion energy is accounted for by fission.

    Inventories of dangerous radioactive materials can be considerably greater in a waste or spent fuel storage facility that has served the needs of many nuclear power plants for many years. In some cases it may not be credible that chemical explosives could release large fractions of such materials and cause them to be airborne long enough to contaminate very large areas. In such situations, however, the explosion of a relatively small nuclear explosive in the midst of the storage area could spread the radioactive materials over huge areas.

    Perhaps the greatest extent of latent proliferation of nuclear weapons is represented by nuclear power fuel cycle facilities that can become enormously destructive nuclear weapons by being bombed by military forces or terrorists.

    Can the Nuclear Power-Nuclear Weapon Connections Be Broken?

    Given the rapidly increasing rate of worldwide latent proliferation of nuclear weapons, what can be done to assure that it does not lead to considerable surges in active proliferation of nuclear weapons?

    Shifts from latent to active nuclear weapon proliferation may be detected or discouraged by application of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) nuclear diversion safeguards. IAEA safeguards are applied to parties of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that are not nuclear weapons states. But the IAEA has authority only to inspect designated (or in some cases suspected) nuclear facilities, not to interfere physically to prevent a government from breaking its agreements under the treaty if it so chooses. Furthermore, a major function of the IAEA is also to provide assistance to countries that wish to develop nuclear power and use it. Thus the IAEA simultaneously plays two possibly conflicting roles-one of encouraging latent proliferation and the other of discouraging active proliferation.

    As we have seen, a nation’s possession of plutonium, whether in spent fuel or chemically separated, or its possession of highly enriched uranium or of facilities capable of producing it, need not depend on a government’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons. Such a decision might be made secretly or openly at any time government leaders conclude that threats to their security or ambitions of conquest warrant breaking safeguard agreements; at that point they can quickly extract the key nuclear materials needed for a few or for large numbers of nuclear weapons.

    Various proposals have been made for developing nuclear power in forms that are less prone to diversion of nuclear materials for weapons than present nuclear power systems. None of these proposals avoid the production of substantial quantities of neutrons that could be used for making key nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, however. And none avoid the production of high level radioactive wastes, the permanent disposal of which is still awaiting both technical and political resolution. Furthermore, such concepts, once fully developed, would require decades for substitution for the present types of nuclear power systems.

    Increasing alarm about global climatic instabilities caused by continued release of “greenhouse gases,” particularly carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, has stimulated many advocates of nuclear energy to propose widescale displacement of fossil fuels by nuclear power. Such proposals would require building thousands of new nuclear power plants to achieve substantial global reduction in combustion of fossil fuels. This would greatly compound the dangers of destructive abuse of nuclear energy.

    In short, the connections between nuclear technology for constructive use and for destructive use are so closely tied together that the benefits of the one are not accessible without greatly increasing the hazards of the other.

    This leaves us with a key question: If nuclear power technology is too dangerous – by being so closely related to nuclear weapon technology – and fossil fuel combustion must be reduced sharply to avoid global climatic instabilities, what can humans do to meet their demands for energy worldwide?

    Efficient Use of Renewable Energy

    The economically attractive opportunities for using energy much more efficiently for all end uses in any of the wide variety of human settings are now so widely set forth that they need no further elaboration here. Although such opportunities generally exist for use of all kinds of energy sources, their detailed nature can depend on the specific type of energy provided for end use.10

    Among the many possibilities for economical renewable energy is hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water, using solar electric cells to provide the needed low voltage, direct current electrical energy. Recent advances in lowering the production costs and increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic cells make it likely that vigorous international pursuit of this option could allow production and distribution of hydrogen for use as a general purpose fuel, at costs competitive with the cost of natural gas.11

    Solar electric cells can also supply local or regional electric power for general use, using generators or fuel cells fueled with stored hydrogen, or pumped hydrolelectic storage, or windpower to meet electrical demands at night, on cloudy days, or in winter. Using such energy storage or windpower makes it possible to provide and use hydrogen to meet all local demands for energy in any climate.

    A common criticism of direct use of solar energy for meeting most human demands for energy results from a belief that the areas required are so large as to be impractical. This criticism is generally not valid. An overall efficiency of 15%, in terms of the chemical energy stored in hydrogen divided by the total solar radiation incident on the ground area used by solar cell arrays, is likely to be routinely achievable with flat, horizontal arrays. At a world annual average insolation rate of 200 watts per square meter, the total area required to meet the entire present world demand for primary energy of all types (equivalent to an annual average of about 10 trillion watts) would be about 0.4 million square kilometers. This is less than 0.4% of the world’s land area-much less than the annual fluctuations in the area devoted to agriculture, and comparable to the area used for roads. Even in Belgium, with perhaps the world’s highest national energy consumption rates per unit land area and lowest solar radiation availability, present demands could be met by solar hydrogen systems covering less than 5% of the country’s land area. Vigorous response to cost-effective opportunities for saving energy could lower considerably the land area requirements for solar energy anywhere.

    A Global Shift From Fossil and Nuclear Fuels to Renewable Energy

    Consider the benefits of a rapid worldwide shift from dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power to vigorous pursuit of opportunities for using energy much more efficiently and providing that energy from renewable sources.

    If nuclear power is phased out completely, it will become possible to outlaw internationally the possession of any key nuclear weapon materials, such as plutonium or highly enriched uranium that can sustain a fast neutron chain reaction, along with any facilities that could be used for producing them. This would not require a global ban on basic research in nuclear physics nor the use of selected, internationally controlled accelerators for production of radionuclides for medical and industrial applications.

    A global ban on materials capable of sustaining nuclear explosive chain reactions would make it unnecessary to distinguish between alleged peaceful uses of these materials and uses that could be threatening. It would greatly increase the likelihood that violations of a ban on all nuclear weapons would be detected technically and by people who can report violations of the ban, without having to determine the intended uses of the materials and production facilities.

    A complete phaseout of nuclear power would help focus the world’s attention on safeguarding nuclear materials and safe, permanent disposal of all the nuclear wastes and spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium, or other stockpiles of nuclear weapon materials that had been produced before nuclear power is completely phased out. All such materials could be internationally secured in a relatively small number of facilities while awaiting ultimate safe disposal. Although the quantities of these materials are already very large, applying the needed safeguards to them would be much easier than in a world in which nuclear power continues to flourish worldwide. The job would be finite, rather than open-ended. The costs of safe, environmentally acceptable, permanent disposal of nuclear weapon materials and nuclear wastes-costs that are now unknown, but are very large-would be bounded.

    Concerns about safety and vulnerability of nuclear power plants and their supporting facilities to military action or acts of terrorism would disappear.

    In anticipation of a phaseout of nuclear power and sharp curtailment of combustion of fossil fuels, research, development, and commercialization of renewable energy sources could be greatly accelerated by a shift of national and international resources toward them and away from dependence on nuclear power and fossil fuel systems that are inherent threats to human security and our global habitat.

    Global Nuclear Abolition

    It troubles me more deeply than I can express that my country continues to be prepared, under certain conditions, to launch nuclear weapons that would kill millions of innocent bystanders. To me, this is preparation for mass murder that cannot be justified under any conditions. It must therefore be considered as human action that is out-and-out evil. The threat of nuclear retaliation also is a completely ineffectual deterrent to nuclear attack by terrorists or leaders of governments that need not identify themselves or that are physically located in the midst of populations that have no part in the initial attack or threat of attack. In short, we humans must find alternatives to retaliation in kind to acts of massive and indiscriminate violence.

    These alternatives must focus on ways to deter use of weapons of mass destruction by determining who is responsible for such attacks or threats of attack, and bringing them to justice.

    One hangup that many people have with global nuclear weapon abolition anytime soon is that nuclear technology is already too widely dispersed to allow accurate and complete technical verification of compliance, using currently available verification methods. Another widespread hangup is that malevolent national leaders might threaten to use secretly withheld or produced nuclear weapons to force intolerable demands on other countries if they did not face certain devastating nuclear retaliation to carrying out such threats.

    I agree that no conceivable global verification system or international security force for identifying and arresting violators of an internationally negotiated and codified legal framework for globally banning nuclear weapons and nuclear power can be guaranteed to deter violation of the the ban. But this is a property of any law governing human beings. The question is not about achieving perfect global security against nuclear violence. The question is: Which would be preferred by most human beings-a world in which possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is allowed for some but forbidden for others, or one in which they are completely outlawed, with no exceptions?

    I believe the time has come to establish a global popular taboo against nuclear weapons and devices or processes that might be used to make them. The taboo should be directed specifically at any action – by governments, non-government enterprises, or individuals – that is in violation of international laws specifically related to nuclear technology.

    I also propose that as the taboo is formulated and articulated vigorously worldwide, both informal and formal negotiations of an international nuclear abolition treaty start immediately in the relevant United Nations organizations. Why not adopt a formal goal of completing the negotiations and the codification of the associated laws and regulations before the start of the next millennium? I would also join others now pressing for actions that would complete the process of actual global nuclear abolition no later than 2010.

    As is the case for many examples of bringing violators of popularly supported laws to justice, there should be frequent official and popular encouragement, including various kinds of major rewards, of “whistleblowers” who become aware of violations and report them to a well-known international authority. Such whistleblowers should also be well protected against reprisals by the violators, including even authorities of their own country’s government. Such actions may be even more important in filling verification gaps than technical verification procedures implemented by an international authority.

    In conclusion, I now have new and strong feelings of hope about the future of humankind. We are collectively facing new choices. We can continue to apply those cosmic forces -which we discovered how to manipulate 50 years ago-to feed the destructive competitive power struggles among humans. Or we can join together to reject those immensely powerful forces-that are much easier to use to destroy than to build-and reach out together to embrace the energy from our sun, which has for a very long time sustained all life on Earth.

    REFERENCES

    1. Harold A. Feiveson and Theodore B. Taylor, “Alternative Strategies for International Control of Nuclear Power,” in Nuclear Proliferation-Motivations, Capabilities, and Strategies for Control, Ted Greenwood, H. A. Feiveson, and T. B. Taylor, New York: McGraw Hill, 1977, pp. 125-190. 
    2. J. Carson Mark, “Explosive Properties of Reactor Grade Plutonium,” Science and Global Security, 1993, Volume 4, pp.111-128. 
    3. J. Carson Mark, Theodore B. Taylor, Eugene Eyster, William Merriman, and Jacob Wechsler, “By What Means Could Terrorists Go Nuclear?” in Preventing Nuclear Terrorism, Paul Leventhal and Yonah Alexander, eds. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington
    Books, 1987, pp. 55-65. 
    4. See, for example, David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1992, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 25-35. 
    5. Ibid, pp. 71-83. 
    6. Ibid, pp. 196-209. 
    7. Ibid, p. 90. 
    8. Ibid, p. 148. 
    9. Lars Wallin, chapter in Security With Nuclear Weapons? Regina Cowen Karp, Ed., Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, London: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 360-381.
    10. See, for example, Thomas Johansson, Henry Kelly, Amulya K. N. Reddy, and Robert Williams, eds. Renewable Energy, Washington: Island Press, 1993.
    11. See, for example, J. M. Ogden and R. H. Williams, Solar Hydrogen: Moving Beyond Fossil Fuels, Washington: World Resources Institute, 1989.

     

  • Denuclearization of the Oceans: Linking Our Common Heritage with Our Common Future

    Introduction

    The oceans were nuclearized shortly after the era of nuclear weapons began in 1945. On July 1, 1946, while still negotiating the internationalization of atomic energy at the United Nations, the United States began testing nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. Nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific continued through January 1996, when French President Jacques Chirac announced an end to French testing in the region.

    In the 1950s, the United States again led the way in nuclearizing the oceans with the launching of a nuclear powered submarine, the Nautilus. The Nautilus and other nuclear submarines could stay submerged for long periods of time without refueling and cruise throughout the world. During the Cold War the U.S., former USSR, UK, France, and China developed nuclear submarine fleets carrying ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Some of these nuclear powered submarines with their multiple-independently-targeted nuclear warheads were and remain capable of single-handedly attacking and destroying more than one hundred major cities. These shadowy creatures of mankind’s darkest inventiveness remain silently on alert in the depths of the world’s oceans, presumably ready and capable, upon command, of destroying the Earth.

    Our oceans are a precious resource to be shared by all humanity and preserved for future generations. It carries the concept of “freedom of the seas” to absurd lengths to allow those nations with the technological capacity to destroy the Earth to use the world’s oceans in so callous a manner.

    Accidents aboard nuclear submarines have caused a number of them to sink with long-term adverse environmental consequences for the oceans. In addition to accidents, many countries have purposefully dumped radioactive wastes in the oceans.

    With regard to proper stewardship of the planet, it is time to raise the issue of denuclearizing the world’s oceans. To fail to raise the issue and to achieve the denuclearization of the oceans is to abdicate our responsibility for the health and well-being of the oceans and the planet.

    Nuclearization of the Oceans

    Nuclearization of the oceans has taken a variety of forms. The primary ones are:

    1. the oceans have served as a medium for hiding nuclear deterrent forces located on submarines;

    2. nuclear reactors have been used to power ships, primarily submarines, some of which have gone down at sea with their nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons aboard;

    3. increasing use is being made of the oceans for the transportation of nuclear wastes and reprocessed nuclear fuels;

    4. the oceans have been used as a dumping ground for nuclear wastes;

    5. atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, particularly in the Pacific, has been a source of nuclear pollution to the oceans as well as the land; and

    6. underground nuclear weapons testing, such as that conducted by France in the South Pacific, has endangered fragile Pacific atolls and caused actual nuclear contamination to the oceans as well as risking a much greater contamination should the atolls crack due to testing or future geological activity.

    The problems arising from nuclearization of the oceans can be viewed from several perspectives.

    From an environmental perspective, issues arise with regard to nuclear contamination in the oceans working its way up through the food chain. The biological resources of the oceans will eventually affect human populations which are reliant upon these resources.

    The threat of nuclear contamination has diminished with regard to nuclear testing, which has not taken place in the atmosphere since 1980. Moreover, the nuclear weapons states have committed themselves to a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which they have promised to conclude by 1996. This treaty, if concluded, will end all underground nuclear testing.

    The dumping of high-level radioactive waste material was curtailed by the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by the Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, which entered into force in 1975. A later amendment to this Convention prohibited ocean dumping of all radioactive wastes or other radioactive matter. However, exemptions authorized by the International Atomic Energy Agency and non-compliance remain a concern. Problems can be anticipated in the future when radioactive contaminants already dumped in canisters or contained in fuel or weapons aboard sunken submarines breach their containment.

    Increased use of the oceans to transport nuclear wastes and reprocessed nuclear fuel (between Japan and France, for example) has substantially increased the risk of contamination. Coastal and island states that are on the route of the transportation of nuclear materials stand high risks of contamination in the event of an accident at sea. International law regarding the transportation of hazardous material must be strengthened and strictly enforced by the international community to prevent catastrophic accidents in the future.

    From a human rights perspective, inhabitants of island states in the Pacific have suffered serious health effects and dislocation as a result of atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons testing. In response to assurances by France that their underground testing in the South Pacific is entirely safe, the islanders in Polynesia and throughout the Pacific have retorted: If it is so safe, why isn’t it being done in France itself? The response of the French government has been that French Polynesia is French territory, highlighting the arrogance and abuse that accompanies colonialism.

    Human rights issues also arise with regard to maintaining a nuclear deterrent force that threatens the annihilation of much of humanity. The Human Rights Committee stated in November 1984 in their general comments on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, i.e., the right to life, that “the production, testing, possession, deployment and use of nuclear weapons should be prohibited and recognized as crimes against humanity.” The deployment of nuclear weapons on submarines, therefore, arguably constitutes a crime against humanity, and thus a violation of the most fundamental human right, the right to life.

    From a security perspective, the nuclear weapons states argue that having a submarine-based deterrent force assures their security. Thus, to varying degrees, each of the nuclear weapons states maintains strategic submarines capable of causing unthinkable destruction if their missiles were ever launched. (See Appendix.) Viewed from the self-interests of nearly all the world’s population-except the nuclear weapons states whose leaders appear addicted to maintaining their nuclear arsenals -the continued reliance on nuclear deterrence, at sea or on land, poses a frightening threat to continued human existence.

    In 1972 the Seabed Agreement prohibited the emplacement of nuclear weapons on the seabed, ocean floor, or subsoil thereof. This agreement prohibited what was already deemed unnecessary by the nuclear weapons states; placing nuclear weapons on submarines made them less vulnerable to detection and destruction than placing them on or beneath the seabed or ocean floor. The oceans continue to be used by the nuclear weapons states as an underwater shadow world for their missile carrying submarines.

    The United States alone currently has 16 Trident submarines, each carrying some 100 independently targeted nuclear warheads. Each Trident submarine has a total explosive force greater than all the explosive force used in World War II, including at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Britain, with the help of the United States, is replacing its older class of Polaris SSBNs with a fleet of four Trident submarines. France currently has five strategic missile submarines with four more of a superior class to be commissioned by 2005. Russia has over 35 strategic missile submarines with an estimated capacity of 2,350 nuclear warheads. China has two modern ballistic missile submarines. Its Xia class submarine carries twelve 200 kiloton nuclear warheads.

    The total destructive force that day and night lurks beneath the oceans is a chilling reminder of our technological capacity to destroy ourselves. That this threat was created and is maintained in the name of national security suggests a collective madness that must be opposed and overcome if, for no other reason, we are to fulfill our obligation to posterity to preserve human life.

    An ongoing responsibility resides with the nuclear weapons states to fulfill the obligations set forth in Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” At the NPT Review and Extension Conference in April and May 1995, the treaty was extended indefinitely after extensive lobbying by the nuclear weapons states. At the same time the nuclear weapons states promised to enter into a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by 1996, and to engage in a “determined pursuit” of the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

    Protecting the Common Heritage

    The Law of the Sea Treaty enshrines the concept of the oceans as the common heritage of [hu]mankind. Maintaining the oceans as a common heritage demands that the oceans be protected from contamination by nuclear pollutants; that they not be used in a manner to undermine basic human rights, particularly the rights to life and to a healthy environment; and that the oceans not be allowed to serve as a public preserve for those states that believe their own security interests demand the endangerment of global human survival.

    It is unreasonable to allow our common heritage to be used to threaten our common future. Deterrence is an unproven and unstable concept that is being tested on humanity by a small number of powerful and arrogant states that have turned nuclear technology to its ultimate destructive end. In order to link the common heritage with our common future, the large majority of the world’s nations advocating an end to the threat of nuclear annihilation should seek to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention by the year 2000 that eliminates all nuclear weapons in a time-bound framework. The prohibition and conversion of strategic ballistic missile submarines must be part of this accord. Perhaps this will be the final step in achieving a nuclear weapons free world.

    Life began in the oceans and eventually migrated to land. We must not allow the oceans to continue to provide a secure hiding place for nuclear forces capable of causing irreparable damage to all life. This is an inescapable responsibility of accepting the proposition that life itself, like the oceans, is a common heritage that must be protected for future generations.

     

    ——————————————————————————–

    APPENDIX: NUCLEAR POWER AT SEA*

    A. Nuclear Weapons

    UNITED STATES

    Strategic Missile Submarines (SSBN)

    Active: 16 Building: 2

    Trident: 16 + 2

    There are presently 16 Trident submarines in operation, eight at Sub-Base Bangor and eight at Sub-Base Kings Bay. The schedule is to complete one submarine per year for a total of 18 with the final one becoming operational in 1997.

    In September 1994 it was announced in the Pentagon’s “Nuclear Posture Review” that the Trident force would be cut from 18 to 14. The submarines to be retired are still under review but are believed to be the four oldest in the fleet. They will be preserved, however, in mothballs until the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) II Treaty is fully implemented in 2003.

    These submarines carry 24 missiles each. The submarines are armed with Trident-1 missiles (C-4) and the Trident-2 (D-5). In 1991 all strategic cruise missiles (Tomahawks) were removed from surface ships and submarines.

    The C-4 can carry up to eight 100 kiloton Mark-4/W-76 Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRV). There are currently 192 Trident-1 missiles deployed in eight Trident submarines based at Bangor, Washington with a total of 1,152 Mk-4 warheads. Four of these submarines are to be deactivated and the remaining four are to be converted to carry Trident-2 missiles. Plans are to then base seven of the 14 submarines on each coast.

    The D-4 can carry up to 12 MIRV with Mark-4/W-76 100-kT warheads, or Mark-5/W-88 300-475-kT warheads each. Under START counting rules, a limit of 8 reentry vehicles (RV) was set, but this may be further reduced to four or five if START II is implemented. About 400 Mk-5/W-88 warheads for the Trident-2 missiles were produced before they were canceled because of production and safety reasons. Two new Trident subs fitted with D-4 missiles will be delivered by 1997.

    Under the START Treaties, warheads that are reduced do not have to be destroyed. According to the Nuclear Posture Review the current plan is to remove three or four warheads per missile from Trident Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) to meet the START II ceiling of 1,750 SLBM warheads. Plans are to reduce the C-4 to 1,280 warheads and the D-4 to 400. These warheads will be kept in storage and if it is determined that the SLBMs need to be uploaded, the Pentagon can reuse them.

    RUSSIA

    Strategic Missile Submarines (SSBN)

    Active: 39 Building: 0

    The Russian navy is divided into four fleets: the Baltic, Northern, Black Sea and the Pacific. In the Northern and the Pacific fleets, the primary issue is of what to do with the estimated 85 retired nuclear submarines. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, it is believed that over half of their nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine fleet has been withdrawn from operational service. These ships are currently moored at various bases with their reactors still on board. The number is growing faster than the money available to remove and store the fuel elements and decontaminate the reactor compartments. Since 1991, there has been a lack of funds to operate the fleet. Consequently, few of the submarines listed as active have actually been at sea.

    In response to President Bush’s September 27, 1991 decision to remove tactical nuclear missiles from ships, President Gorbachev announced that six SSBNs with 92 SLBMs (presumably five Yankee Is and a single Yankee II) were to be removed from operational forces. Russian Fleet Commander Adm. Oleg Yerofeev reports that as of October 20, 1991 all tactical nuclear weapons were removed from the Northern and Pacific fleet ships and submarines.

    The January-February, 1993 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reports that Russia intends to stop building submarines in its Pacific yards within the next two to three years. Russian President Boris Yeltsin made this announcement during a November 1992 visit to South Korea.

    The Russian (CIS) SLBM stockpile is estimated to be at: 224 SS-N-18 Stingray armed with three warheads at 500-kT, 120 SS-N-20 Sturgeon with ten 200-kT warheads, and 112 SS-N-23 Skiff missiles with four 100-kT warheads. Total warheads are believed to be about 2320.

    According to Pentagon officials, Russia has already reduced its patrols to a single ballistic missile submarine. In contrast, the U.S. Navy continues to patrol with a dozen or so submarines at a time.

    NATO names are used in this listing. Russian names are given in parentheses.

    Typhoon (Akula) Class: 6

    The Typhoon carries 20 SS-N-20 Sturgeon missiles, with six to nine MIRV 200-kT nuclear warheads. The Typhoon can hit strategic targets from anywhere in the world. There are plans to modernize the Typhoons to carry an SS-N-20 follow-on missile which would have improved accuracy. All the Typhoons are stationed in the Northern Fleet at Nerpichya. One was damaged by fire during a missile loading accident in 1992, but has since been repaired.

    Delta IV (Delfin) Class: 7

    The Delta IV carries 16 SS-N-23 Skiff missiles, with four to ten MIRV 100-kT nuclear warheads. These ships are based in the Northern Fleet at Olenya.

    Delta III (Kalmar) Class: 14

    The Delta III is armed with 16 SS-N-18 Stingray missiles. There are three possible modifications for the Stingray. (1) three MIRV at 200-kT, (2) a single 450-kT, (3) seven MIRV at 100-kT. Nine ships are in the Northern Fleet and five are in the Pacific Fleet.

    Delta II (Murena-M) Class: 4

    The Delta II has 16 SS-N8 Sawfly missiles with two possible modifications. The first is with a single 1.2 MT nuclear warhead, the other is with two MIRV at 800-kT. This class of submarine is no longer in production. All four are stationed in the Northern fleet at Yagelnaya and are believed to have been taken off active duty.

    Delta I (Murena) Class: 8

    The Delta I carries 12 SS-N-8 Sawfly missiles, armed with either a single 1.2 MT nuclear warhead or two MIRV 800-kT. Three ships are stationed in the North and the other five are in the Pacific. One of these ships may be converted into a rescue submarine. As with the Delta II’s, all of these ships are believed to have been taken off active duty.

    UNITED KINGDOM

    Strategic Missile Submarines (SSBN)

    Active: 4 Building: 2

    Vanguard Class: 2 + 2

    The Vanguard-class is modeled on the United States Trident submarine. It carries 16 Trident II (D-5) missiles with up to eight MIRV of 100-120-kT nuclear warheads. The D-5 can carry up to 12 MIRV but under plans announced in November 1993 each submarine will carry a maximum of 96 warheads. The U.K. has stated that it has no plans to refit their Tridents with conventional warheads, insisting on the nuclear deterrent.

    Resolution Class: 2

    The Resolution-class was initially fitted with 16 Polaris A3 missiles with three multiple reentry vehicles of 200-kT each. Beginning in 1982, the warheads were replaced under the “Chevaline Program.” The Chevaline is a similar warhead, but contains a variety of anti-ballistic missile defenses. The two remaining submarines in this class are both scheduled for decommission.

    CHINA

    Strategic Missile Submarines (SSBN)

    Active: 1 Projected: 1

    Intelligence on Chinese nuclear submarines is extremely limited. Experts disagree on whether there is one or two SSBNs in the Chinese fleet. A new class of SSBN is expected to begin construction in 1996 or 1997.

    Xia Class: 1 or 2

    The Xia carries 12 Julang or “Giant Wave” CSS-N-3 missiles armed with a single 200-300-kT nuclear warhead. Approximately 24 of these missiles have been deployed. An improved version of this missile is currently being developed.

    Golf Class (SSB): 1

    Although the Golf is not nuclear driven, it is armed with ballistic missiles. The submarine is outfitted with two Julang missiles.

    FRANCE

    Strategic Missile Submarines (SSBN)

    Active: 5 Building: 3 Projected: 1

    In 1992 France announced that it would cut the number of new Triomphant-class SSBNs under construction from 6 to 4. Robert Norris and William Arkin of the Natural Resource Defense Council estimate that France will produce 288 warheads for the fleet of four submarines, but with only enough missiles and warheads to fully arm three boats. It is estimated that France has 64 SLBMs with 384 warheads.

    Triomphant Class: 0 + 3(1)

    The first submarine of its class, Le Triomphant, recently began conducting trials in the sea and is scheduled to depart on its first patrol in March 1996. The other ships are expected to be operational by 2005. The Triomphant-class is armed with 16 M45 missiles with 6 multiple reentry vehicles (MRV) at 150-kT. There are plans to later refit the submarines with the more powerful M5 with 10-12 MRV around 2010. Testing for these new missiles were recently conducted at the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

    L’Inflexible Class: 5

    L’Inflexible is armed with 16 Aerospatiale M4B missiles with six MRV at 150-kT. The French navy has 80 SLBMs deployed on its five submarines. This class of ships is based at Brest and commanded from Houilles. They patrol in the Atlantic Ocean and the Norwegian and Mediterranean Seas. The minimum number of submarines always at sea has been reduced from three to two.

    B. OTHER NUCLEAR POWERED SHIPS

    UNITED STATES

    Attack Submarines (SSN)

    Active: 86 Building: 4 Projected: 1

    Permit Class: 1
    Benjamin Franklin Class: 2
    Narwhal Class: 1
    Los Angeles Class: 57 + 2
    Sturgeon Class: 25
    Seawolf Class: 0 + 2(1)

    The Seawolf was launched in July 1995, and is scheduled to be commissioned in May 1996.

    Aircraft Carriers (CVN )

    Active: 6 Building: 3

    Nimitz Class: 6 + 3

    Guided Missile Cruisers (CGN)

    Active: 5

    Virginia Class: 2
    California Class: 2
    Brainbridge Class: 1

    RUSSIA

    Cruise Missile Submarines (SSGN)

    Active: 19 Building: 1 Projected: 1

    Echo II Class (Type 675M): 3
    Oscar I (Granit) Classes: 2
    Oscar II (Antyey): 10 + 1(1)
    Charlie II (Skat M) Class: 3
    Yankee Sidecar (Andromeda) Class: 1

    Attack Submarines (SSN)

    Active: 51 Building: 6 Projected: 1

    Severodvinsk Class: 0 + 3(1)
    Sierra II (Baracuda) Class: 2
    Akula I (Bars) Class: 4
    Akula II (Bars) Class: 8 + 3
    Sierra I (Baracuda I) Class: 2
    Alfa (Alpha) Class: 1
    Victor III (Shuka) Class: 26
    Victor II (Kefal II) Class: 3
    Victor I (Kefal I) Class: 2
    Yankee Notch (Grosha) Class: 3

    Battle Cruisers (CGN)
    Active: 4

    Kirov Class: 4

    UNITED KINGDOM

    Attack Submarines (SSN)

    Active: 12 Projected: 5

    Trafalgar Class: 7 + (5)
    Swiftsure Class: 5

    CHINA

    Attack Submarines (SSN)

    Active: 5 Building: 1
    Han Class: 5

    Nuclear attack submarines are believed to be a high priority for the Chinese, but due to high internal radiation levels, production has been suspended.

    FRANCE

    Attack Submarines (SSN)

    Active: 6 Projected: 1

    Rubis Class: 6 + (1)

    The nuclear attack submarine Rubis collided with a tanker on July 17, 1993 and has had to undergo extensive repairs. On March 30, 1994 the Emeraude had a bad steam leak which caused casualties amongst the crew.

    Aircraft Carriers (CVN)

    Active: 0 Building: 1 Projected: 1

    The nuclear powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle was launched in 1994, it is expected to be commissioned in July 1999.

  • Attacking Power With Wisdom: The Need for Long-Term Thinking

    https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/articles/wagingpeaceseries/cousteau.pdf