The future of Russia's plutonium cities

International Security

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 126-158

  Bukharin, Oleg ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0031479212     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.21.4.126     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. The new names of the previously nameless cities are Ozersk (Chelyabinsk-65), Seversk (Tomsk-7), and Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26).
2. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards, HEU is defined as uranium enriched in the isotope U-235 to greater than 20 percent. Higher levels of enrichment are required to use HEU for fabrication of a practical nuclear explosive device. The critical mass (the bare mass of uncompressed material required to initiate a neutron chain reaction) of 50 percent enriched uranium is a factor of three greater than that of 93.5 percent enriched uranium. Plutonium of any isotopic composition (with the exception of Pu-238) can be used to manufacture a nuclear explosive device. However, weapon designers prefer to use plutonium with high contents of Pu-239. Plutonium containing more than 94 percent Pu-239 is termed "weapons-grade". The IAEA uses 25 kg U-235 in HEU and 8 kg plutonium as its standards for "significant quantities" required to make simple explosive devices of the implosive type.
3. A 3-cm thick layer of tungsten shield surrounding an HEU weapon component would not be detectable by practical gamma-ray monitoring means; Steven Fetter et al., "Detecting Nuclear Warheads," Science and Global Security, Vol. 1, No. 3-4 (1990), pp. 225-285. Effective shielding against active neutron interrogation would be provided by 20 cm of dense borated polyethylene with a thin cadmium layer between the polyethylene layer and HEU metal.
4. The DOE spends approximately $115 million each year on nuclear material protection, control, and accounting programs. Of this amount, approximately $58 million is spent on physical security and $55 million on material control and accounting. In addition, each year DOE spends approximately $320 million on the guard force, $69 million on personnel security, $46 million on research and development, and $21 million on construction. Discussions with U.S. safeguards experts, February 1996.
5. Plutonium is produced in a uranium-fueled nuclear reactor. Its separation from irradiated uranium and fission products is carried out in a chemical separation process known as reprocessing.
6. L.B. Preobrazhenskaya and E.K. Gorlova, "On Problems of Russia's Atomic Industry under Conditions of Structural Change," Bulletin of Atomic Information (Moscow), April 1993, pp. 5-11.
7. The Institute of Energy Technologies (VNIPIET) in St. Petersburg had responsibilities for the architectural design of the production installations and associated townships. The Institute of Chemical Machine-Building (SverdNIIKhimMash) in Yekaterinburg designed and manufactured chemical processing equipment. The Institute of Inorganic Materials in Moscow and the Radium Institute in St. Petersburg provided support in science and technology.
8. Statement by Vasili Petrovsky, Deputy Head of the Soviet Delegation to the 44th UN General Assembly, October 25, 1989.
9. The agreement to stop the operation of the graphite-moderated plutonium production reactors by the year 2000 was signed by Vice President Albert Gore and Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin in June 1994; "Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation Concerning the Shutdown of Plutonium Production Reactors and the Cessation of the Use of Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons," June 23, 1994.
10. Because of corrosion, discharged aluminum-clad uranium metal fuel cannot be kept in storage for more than several months and has to be reprocessed.
11. Remarks by Evgeni Mikerin, Head of the Minatom's Fourth Main Directorate, at the workshop on "Termination of Production, Accumulation, and Utilization of Plutonium in Russia: Economic, Political, Ecological, and Social Aspects," April 27-28, 1995, Academy of Management, Moscow.
12. In the past, the regions sent their production output to Moscow, which re-distributed the wealth back to the regions. In the era of regional separatism, the regions have scaled down their contributions to the federal government.
13. The assodation (in Russian, NPO PM or Reshetnev OKB) is the primary design bureau and fabrication facility in Russia for the production of military and civilian communication, navigation, geodesy, and early warning satellites, including Molnia, Ekran, Tsikada, Glonass, Luch, Raduga, and Gorizont; "Prime Contractor Profiles," Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 8, 1996, p. 232.
14. "Information," Yaderny Control (Nuclear Control, PIR Center, Moscow), No. 2 (February 1995), p. 1.
15. Russia's stockpile is expected to decline from approximately 25,000 operational warheads in the late 1980s to about 10,000 deployed and reserve warheads as a result of the implementation of the INF and START arms control agreements and of the unilateral decisions by Russia to eliminate many tactical weapons.
16. At a tritium content of 3 g per warhead, 30 kg of tritium would be required for a 10,000-warhead arsenal. To compensate for the radioactive decay, approximately 1.7 kg tritium would have to be produced every year. The capacity of the Chelyabinsk-65 reactors is classified, but many experts believe that it is approximately 1,000 megawatt thermal (MWt). At 80 percent of capacity, one 1,000 MWt reactor is capable of producing 3.4 kg of tritium per year.
17. As of January 1991, the arsenal included an estimated 11,000 strategic and 14,000 non-strategic warheads; SIPRI Yearbook 1991: World Armaments and Disarmament (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], 1991), pp. 18-21.
18. Special requirements of HEU and plutonium processing facilities include: criticality-safety (that is, measures to prevent an inadvertent chain reaction) and fire safety provisions; 100 percent containment of plutonium releases from processing equipment; capabilities to process fissile material scrap and wastes; and stringent safeguards and security.
19. The warhead component production rates could have been lower if some fissile materials components from disassembled warheads were reused in new warheads.
20. According to the official plans, the number of SS-25s will increase from 318 in early 1995 to 800-900 by 2003. This corresponds to a deployment rate of 60-80 missiles per year. It is, however, estimated that the missile plant in Votkinsk can produce only 10-40 SS-25 missiles per year; Evgeni Myasnikov, The Future of Russia's Strategic Nuclear Forces: Discussion and Arguments (Dolgoprudny: Center for Arms Control, Energy, and Environmental Studies, 1995), p. 5.
21. Plutonium-241 comprises several percent of weight of the weapons-grade plutonium and decays with a half-life of 14.3 years.
22. For example, there has been no industrial production of plutonium pits in the United States since 1989. The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the only U.S. facility with complete plutonium handling capabilities, can manufacture 50-200 pits per year. This capability is generally viewed as sufficient to meet future U.S. requirements.
23. Assuming a stockpile of 10,000 warheads and a pit life of 15 years, the plutonium recycling requirements are approximately 650 warheads per year and could be much lower. Of course, the recycling requirements would be lower for a smaller nuclear arsenal.
24. Valerii Menshikov, "On the Situation with Storage of Plutonium and Enriched Uranium in Tomsk-7," Yaderny Control, No. 2 (February 1995), p. 3.
25. According to the plans, a faculty for 25,000 fissile material containers is scheduled for operation in 1999.
26. Minatom's concept of plutonium disposition was first presented by Victor Mikhailov in 1992 in Rome. For a more recent presentation see Victor Mikhailov et al., "Plutonium in Russia's Nuclear Power Program," paper presented at the workshop on "Termination of Production, Accumulation, and Utilization of Plutonium in Russia: Economic, Political, Ecological, and Social Aspects," April 27-28, 1995, Academy of Management, Moscow.
27. In addition, MOX fuel would be loaded into two fast neutron reactors, BN-600 (in operation) and BN-800 (under construction), at the Beloyarskaya nuclear power plant.
28. Donald Bradley, Clyde Frank, and Evgeni Mikerin, "Nuclear Contamination from Weapons Complexes in the Former Soviet Union and the United States," Physics Today, April 1996, pp. 40-45.
29. 3. There are also large amounts of solid waste - contaminated equipment, construction materials, and soil.
30. "Passport of the Federal Program 'Management of Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Materials, Their Utilization and Disposal for 1996-2005'," approved by Victor Chernomyrdin, Decree No. 1030, October 23, 1995, Moscow.
31. Lake Karachai in Chelyabinsk-65 already has been a major source of accidental contamination due to dispersion of radioactive dust from the lake's surface during the drought of 1967. Radioactivity from the lake also has contaminated the groundwater. A plume of underground radioactive water is spreading from the lake and is a threat to surface waters.
32. Plutonium recycling, the basis of the so-called closed nuclear fuel cycle, assumes reprocessing of spent reactor fuel and reuse of separated plutonium to make fresh fuel. In contrast, in a "once-through" fuel cycle, spent fuel is not reprocessed and is disposed of directly.
33. "Presidential Decree on State Support of Restructuring and Conversion of the Nuclear Industry in Zheleznogorsk of Krasnoyarsk Krai," Decree No. 72, January 25, 1995, Moscow.
34. Storing spent fuel in water pools at reactor sites is presently the most common approach to spent-fuel management. Pool re-racking (replacement of old square racks by borated-steel honeycomb racks) allows reactor operators to extend the pool capacity by 150 percent. Storing fuel in concrete or steel casks without water (dry-cask storage) is another promising technology. In Russia, VVER-440 reactor fuel can be stored in the 400 t interim wet storage facility at the RT-1. A 2000 t facility at RT-1 is 70 percent complete; Donald Bradley, Radioactive Waste Management in the Former USSR, Volume 3, PNL-8074, June 1992, p. 7.5.
35. The feasibility study also evaluated the options of core conversion and completion of partially constructed fossil-fuel plants; "Report of the Nuclear Energy Committee," U.S.-Russian Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation, Washington, D.C., January 29-30, 1996, p. 5.
36. According to estimates in the joint study, core conversion for the three reactors could be implemented in 32 months at a cost of $80 million to the United States and at a similar cost to Russia.
37. KgSWU (or SWU) is a measure of work expended to enrich uranium. At 0.3 percent U-235 in tails, approximately 7 and 200 SWU is required, respectively, to produce 1 kg of 4.4 and 90 percent enriched uranium.
38. The total Western requirements in enrichment services are approximately 30 million SWU/y. An estimated enrichment capacity of 51 million SWU/y will be available in 2000 to cover these requirements; Julian Stein and William Magwood, "Commercial Materials Supply: Current Status and Outlook," presented at the "Future of Foreign Materials Symposium," Monterey, Calif., December 8, 1993.
39. Reprocessed uranium contains the reactor-made isotope U-232, whose decay daughters are strong gamma-emitters, as well as trace amounts of alpha-emitting plutonium and other transuranium elements. Most uranium fuel fabricators do not accept uranium with elevated levels of U-232 or with alpha-emitters.
40. Under a contract with the French company Cogema, Tomsk-7 re-enriches up to 500 t uranium per year. (Assuming that the tails and feed assays are 0.3 and 1.2 percent U-235, Tomsk-7 returns to Cogema approximately 110 t/y 4.4 percent uranium.) The contract will be in effect until the year 2000; Thomas Cochran, Robert S. Norris, and Oleg Bukharin, Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), p. 188.
41. The world demand for the conversion services is approximately 52,000 t uranium per year. This roughly matches the supply capacity of 55,000 t/y; Carol Grey, "Up Front in the CIS," Nuclear Engineering International, Vol. 39, No. 478 (May 1994), pp. 16-19.
42. In 1992, Mayak, Techsnabexport, and Amersham International (UK) formed the joint venture Reviss Services. Under the agreement, Mayak produces cobalt-60, tritium, cesium-137, carbon-14, and americium-241. Amersham International incorporates radio-isotopes in its products, and markets and distributes them worldwide. Techsnabexport assists in obtaining export-import licenses and provides transportation services; I.A. Latham, "Reviss to Market Russian Isotopes Worldwide," Nuclear Engineering International, Vol. 37, No. 461 (December 1992), pp. 38-39.
43. A $6 million contract between DOE and Chelyabinsk-65 for the purchase of 5 kg plutonium-238 for civilian space applications was signed in December 1992. The contract allows for the purchase of up to 30 kg plutonium-238; "U.S.-Former Soviet Union Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Activities," DOE/EM-0153P (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Energy, March 1994), p. 34.
44. Karoly Ravasz, "Russians Agree to Take Back Paks Spent Fuel, But Protests Abound," Nuclear Fuel, May 9, 1994, pp. 9-10.
45. "Minatom to Increase Export of Radio-isotopes," Post-Soviet Nuclear and Defense Monitor, September 22, 1995, p. 12.
46. "Tomsk Expects to Earn $80 Million in Exports," UX Weekly, October 2, 1995, p. 3.
47. Ann MacLachlan, "Cogema's Profits Up 20% Despite Stagnation in Front-End Business," Nuclear Fuel, April 24, 1995, pp. 5-7.
48. The analysis of successful defense conversion and restructuring experience is presented in David Bernstein and J. Lehrer, "Restructuring of Research Institutes in Russia: The Case of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Research Institute," Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University, November 1994.
49. L.B. Preobrazhenskaya and E.K. Gorlova, "On Problems of Russia's Atomic Industry under Conditions of Structural Change."
50. Specific projects include the construction of a fissile material storage facility in Chelyabinsk-65; shutdown or conversion of the plutonium-production reactors in Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk-26; blending down of excess weapons HEU; strengthening the security of fissile materials; and discussions regarding irreversibility and transparency of dismantlement of excess warheads, and disposition of excess plutonium.
51. "New Independent States Industrial Partnering Program - Reducing the Nuclear Danger," U.S. DOE, March 22, 1996.