WORLD stockpiles of civil plutonium will triple over the next 12 years,
according to a secret report by a leading nuclear company in the US. Antinuclear
campaigners claim that this level of plutonium鈥攚hich could be used to make
huge numbers of bombs鈥攚ill seriously undermine international efforts to
reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
NAC International, based in Atlanta, Georgia, which transports spent nuclear
fuel, predicts that by 2010 the amount of fissile plutonium separated by the
world鈥檚 nine commercial reprocessing plants will have risen from 140 to 400
tonnes. NAC鈥檚 report is being released this week by Greenpeace, which says it
was leaked a copy by 鈥渋ndustry sources鈥�. It details when and where spent fuel
from individual reactors is due to be reprocessed鈥攊nformation that the
nuclear industry regards as commercially confidential.
An atomic bomb can be made from less than 5 kilograms of fissile plutonium.
Shaun Burnie, nuclear campaign coordinator for Greenpeace, is critical of
electricity companies in Britain, France, Germany and Japan for allowing their
spent fuel to be reprocessed into plutonium. 鈥淭his report reveals the dangerous
game they are playing,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here is no conceivable justification for
producing such a huge amount of plutonium.鈥�
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Most of the world鈥檚 reprocessing is carried out by British Nuclear Fuels at
Sellafield in England, and by Cogema at La Hague and Marcoule in France. The
leaked report, which is dated March 1995, estimates that by 2010, Sellafield
will have separated 119 tonnes of plutonium, while the French plants will have
separated a total of 208 tonnes. The remaining 73 tonnes, it says, will come
from smaller reprocessing plants in Russia, Japan and India.
At the same time, however, the report highlights the growing 鈥渦ncertainties鈥�
facing the international reprocessing industry. The availability of cheap
uranium, the alternative to plutonium for fuelling reactors, has made
reprocessing uneconomical, and the operation is opposed by politicians and
environmentalists.