PLUTONIUM from Russia鈥檚 nuclear warheads should be turned into fuel for power stations, according to an unpublished study delivered to the German foreign ministry last week. Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, agreed to set up the study in 1992 as part of a major nuclear disarmament initiative. But antinuclear campaigners say the report鈥檚 recommendations are commercially inspired and will not make the world a safer place.
The study advocates construction of a 拢8 million pilot plant in Russia to turn out 20 tonnes of fuel a year made from mixed uranium and plutonium oxides (MOX). Because MOX fuel is mostly composed of uranium, this would use up only 1 tonne of plutonium a year from Russia鈥檚 estimated 120-tonne stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium. If the pilot plant is successful, however, the intention is to build a second plant with a much higher output.
Nuclear safety specialists from the German government, the Russian nuclear ministry, Minatom, and the German company Siemens carried out the study. Siemens has a commercial MOX plant at Hanau in Germany but political opposition has prevented it from opening.
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鈥淲e consider the pilot plant as a first step in plutonium management and utilisation, @ says Evgeny Kudriavtsev, a senior specialist at Minatom鈥檚 nuclear chemical division in Moscow. 鈥淥ur plutonium is not waste but an important fuel.鈥� Russia鈥檚 ultimate aim, he says, is to burn MOX fuel made from military plutonium in four planned 800-megawatt fast reactors.
Kudriavtsev dismisses suggestions made by the US government that the best way to stop military plutonium being used for making bombs is to mix it with highly radioactive waste. But he admits that Russia will not be able to pay for the pilot MOX plant. 鈥淢aybe it will require foreign assistance,鈥� he says. 鈥淎 lot of countries are worried about Russian plutonium. If they are worried, they need to help us burn it.鈥�
The Russo-German study suggests that MOX fuel from the proposed pilot plant could be used in the BN-600 fast reactor at Beloyarsk. But because this has been fuelled with enriched uranium, it would have to be adapted to run on MOX fuel. Also, the BN-600 was designed to 鈥渂reed鈥� more plutonium than it uses and it would have to be altered to prevent this from happening.
As an alternative, the study says that MOX fuel could be used in four modern pressurised water reactors at Balakovo on the Volga River, although they have not been licensed for this type of fuel. The most likely location for the pilot plant is the nuclear complex at Chelyabinsk in the Urals.
Siemens is enthusiastic about the scheme because the prospect of winning contracts to help build MOX plants in Russia would boost the company鈥檚 MOX business. 鈥淚 really believe that this is a good thing because it will make weapons-grade plutonium unusable in nuclear weapons,鈥� says one senior company official.
But Greenpeace argues that the plutonium in MOX fuel can relatively easily be made into nuclear weapons. 鈥淭his is neither a disarmament measure nor a solution to the plutonium problem,鈥� says Shaun Burnie, the organisation鈥檚 nuclear research coordinator. 鈥淭his is a bid by Siemens to save its MOX business.鈥�
The German government hopes that burning Russian plutonium will minimise the risk of any more being smuggled to the West. But ironically, the largest amount of black-market plutonium found in Germany last year was part of a MOX fuel mixture.