In news related a previous story we wrote about concerning Russia’s growing acquisition of uranium, there’s a new article out of Washington from the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. The United States and Russia have reaffirmed their commitment to disposing of at least 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium. This quantity is enough, says the International Atomic Energy Agency, to create over 4,000 nuclear weapons. This reaffirmation comes on the heels of this last July’s Moscow Summit at which Presidents Obama and Medvedev reached an agreement to continue forward with the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA).
The PMDA calls for--among other things--the United States to assist Russia with its plutonium disposal efforts. Both countries plan on using a strategy that calls for converting weapons-grade plutonium into a form of plutonium that is similar to that found in commercial nuclear power generation waste. This plan has a double benefit in that it both disposes of potentially dangerous nuclear material while at the same time creating a fuel source for domestic power generation. The National Nuclear Security Administration’ (NNSA) Fissile Materials Disposition Program is assisting the effort in both the United States and Russia.
In the United States, the disposal and conversion efforts will take place at the newly proposed Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina. Construction of the MOX facility is set to begin in 2016 and it is expected to remain operational into the 2030s. The plan is based on European MOX facilities, which have functioned at a high level for the last 30 years. The process at MOX will have three primary steps:
- To disassemble the cores of nuclear weapons
- To turn fissile material into MOX reactor fuel
- To dispose of the liquid waste created during the process
The NNSA Administrator, Thomas D’Agostino, has been quoted as saying that he will focus the agency’s efforts on “secur[ing] all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world within four years, expand[ing] our cooperation with Russia, [and] pursu[ing] new partnerships to lock down these sensitive materials,” which is a truly pragmatic goal that goes a long way toward establishing a more secure and safe world, both with regard to energy production and nuclear weapons. D’Agostino is working off of President Obama’s four-year plan for reducing the threat of nuclear warfare, which includes
- Expanding nuclear security cooperation with Russia and other key partners;
- Securing nuclear material at the most vulnerable sites worldwide;
- Removing and eliminating weapons-usable nuclear materials where possible;
- Strengthening international nuclear security standards, practices and safeguards;
- Improving international capacity to stop smuggling of nuclear materials, and preventing terrorists and proliferators from using the international market to access dual-use and nuclear weapons-related equipment and technologies.
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