What happens to all that uranium?

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5841.shtml


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It seems a lot of the disarming process is merely paperwork. According to an article, “Where nuclear weapons go to die,” by Jeffrey Lewis and Meri Lugo, a nuclear weapon is taken off the active list and put in storage, if it is not there already, or shipped to a company called Pantex in Texas to be disassembled. The authors say that during the Clinton administration, more than 1,000 warheads were dismantled a year, but since 2000, employees at Pantex have spent most of their time “refurbishing operational nuclear warheads to extend their life.” They say there are some 4,000 nuclear weapons waiting in line to be dismantled. But this doesn’t answer the question of where the uranium ends up once the bomb has been taken apart.

I was able to find a program set up between The United States and Russia called “Megatons for Megawatts.” The program is handled in the US by the company USEC, Inc. The company’s website calls the program “a 20 year, $8 billion, commercially funded nuclear nonproliferation of the U.S. and Russian governments.”They say the “program is recycling 500 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads (the equivalent of 20,000 warheads) into low enriched uranium used by USEC’s customers to generate electricity.”

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What if the US did the same thing with our nuclear warheads? Now, get this: we already own this nuclear material. We paid for it the first time when we built the bomb. What if we dismantle our own bombs, just like Russia, and we sell it to USEC, who then sells it to the nuclear power plants? We take the profits, and invest in alternative energy development; creating an energy source to power our transition to renewable resources and the funding to pay for it.

The Pentagon says the US has 5,113 nuclear weapons, and several thousand more retired. Robert S. Norris, a longtime analyst of US and Russian nuclear arsenals, and Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, estimated in a recent Associated Press article that several thousand to be roughly 4,200 retired warheads. This gives us a grand total of roughly 9,313 nuclear warheads. The new agreement between Obama and Medvedev of Russia brings the limits to 1,550.

So, let’s forget about the 70,000 the US is said to have built since the program began, and the 32,193 the US is said to have had at its peak in 1966, and just look at the 9,313 warheads we have to reduce to 1,550. If we comply with this treaty that leaves us with roughly 7,763 bombs that will need to be “retired.” If 20,000 dismantled Russian warheads could power the entire US for two years, this gives us nearly one year’s worth of energy for the entire country, give or take a few megatons.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials says much of the world’s excess highly enriched uranium is held in reserve for nuclear submarines. The US has the largest supply at 128 tons, enough reactor fuel to keep them running for 60 years. The panel says if the US and Russia were to agree to cut their total stockpiles to 1,000 and convert their subs to run on LEU, as most countries are now doing, they could “dispose of perhaps 360 and 700 tons of weapon-grade uranium respectively,” If we could get Russia to sell us their leftovers we would have enough to power the US for over four years.

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According to “Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do It, Why Can’t Oui?” by Jack Spencer, The United States’ nuclear power industry has produced 56,000 tons of used fuel, which, if recycled, could power every US household for 12 years. He says the US developed the technology to recycle spent fuel, but banned its use in 1977 over fears of proliferation and cost effectiveness. France, on the other hand, has recycled spent nuclear fuel successfully for 30 years, and the 23,000 tons of spent fuel they have processed could power all of France for 14 years. He says the US has already created enough waste to nearly fill Yucca Mountain, and we haven’t even begun storing anything there yet. Spencer says the French have helped Japan get a recycling program going, and are looking into building a plant in China. He also says that the British, Indians, and Russians all engage in some form of reprocessing. And while recycling fuel does not render it harmless, recycling decreases the harmful levels of nuclear material, and reduces the chances of making it into an effective nuclear weapon.

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The safest way to get rid of our nuclear weapons is to use them as energy. How else can we prove that we are really disarming? The question really is, are we serious about disarming? Does the US really mean it when they say they want to see a world without nuclear weapons? If so, they should prove it and actually get rid of some, not just store them away with a few loose screws for quick access. Are we buying the converted uranium from Russia just to know for sure they have less of it? Are we not converting our subs to run on LEU so we can keep more HEU on hand, ready to make into more bombs? If we made this change, it might just help in our negotiations with Iran too. If the United States is really serious about a world without nuclear weapons, let’s take the first step. Turn our weapons of mass destruction into energy for our people, and fix both our economy at home and our reputation in the world.
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