Disposition of separated plutonium

Berkhout, Frans; Diakov, Anatoli; Feiveson, Harold A.; Hunt, Helen M.; Lyman, Edwin; Miller, Marvin M.; Hippel, Frank von

doi:10.1080/08929889308426383

Cited by 20 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In 1993, before I joined the Clinton Administration, seven of us, including a Russian colleague, Anatoli Diakov from the Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology, published an article in Science & Global Security on the options for plutonium disposal (Berkhout et al 1993). We winnowed the options down to two:…”

Section: Plutonium Disposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen Scientist: Frank von Hippel’s Adventures in Nuclear Arms Control PART 4. Soviet Nuclear Transparency, the Collapse and After

Hippel

Kurokawa

2020

Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

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von Hippel describes a transparency tour during the summer of 1989 to the Soviet Union's first plutonium-production complex in the Urals and to the Soviet test site for anti-satellite lasers in Kazakhstan. In December 1991, immediately after Ukraine declared independence, he participated in a mission to persuade it to return its nuclear weapons to Russia. He describes the thus far unsuccessful effort to dispose of the weapons plutonium that the US and Soviet Union declared excess at the end of the Cold War. The discussion then turns to the US-Russian lab-to-lab program in which the US nuclear-weapon laboratories helped Russia upgrade the security of its plutonium and highly-enriched uranium for the new and more open environment and to the failed US Government attempts to help Russia downsize its huge nuclear weapons complex. Also, in 1991, a summer school was hosted at the Moscow Physics and Technology Institute (MPTI) for young scientists interested in nuclear arms control that has been an annual event ever since and also led to the creation of an arms control center at MPTI. In 1988, von Hippel was involved in a first seminar on nuclear arms control with China's nuclear-weapons establishment. Finally, he describes a 1993 meeting with President Clinton's new Secrtary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary, that laid the basis for the president's decision that the US could sustain its nuclear weapons without testing. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Plutonium Disposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen Scientist: Frank von Hippel’s Adventures in Nuclear Arms Control PART 4. Soviet Nuclear Transparency, the Collapse and After

Hippel

Kurokawa

2020

Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

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“…31 The fuel cycle could be "once-through" (whereby part of the weapon material is fissioned and part remains embedded in the spent fuel together with highly radioactive fission products), or it could entail fuel reprocessing with recycle of the recovered fissile materials (which, depending on the reactor/fuel combination, the number of cycles, and how the fuel cycle is operated, may be able to fission a higher fraction of these materials than a once-through cycle). Burning the material as fuel in nuclear reactors.…”

Section: Reducing Stockpiles Of Excess Fissile Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 This article draws heavily from several studies in which both of the authors have been involved (Holdren as chairman or participant, Bunn as study director or executive secretary), including a two-volume study of management and disposition of excess plutonium conducted by the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on International Security and Arms Control and its Panel on Reactor-Related Options for Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium, published in 1994 and 1995 (8, 9), hereinafter the NAS reports; a secret 1995 study of cooperation to improve security and accounting for weapon-usable nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, prepared by a panel of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) (the PCAST report, summarized in 10); and the ongoing US-Russian Independent Scientific Commission on Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium, which provided its Interim Report to President Clinton and Russian President Yeltsin in September of 1996 and its more detailed Final Report in June of 1997 (11,12) (the Bilateral Commission reports). For disposition of excess material see (31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37) remaining to be done in the following areas: (a) preventing theft and smuggling of nuclear warheads and fissile materials, (b) building a regime of monitored reductions in nuclear warhead and fissile material stockpiles, (c) ending further production of excess fissile materials, (d ) reducing stockpiles of excess fissile materials, and (e) avoiding economic collapse in the nuclear cities. For particularly useful summaries of the range of issues covered in this article see (13)(14)(15)(16)(17).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Military Uranium and Plutonium in the United States and the Former Soviet Union

Bunn

Holdren

1997

Annu. Rev. Energy. Environ.

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Effective approaches to the management of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)-the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons-are fundamental to controlling nuclear proliferation and providing the basis for deep, transparent, and irreversible reductions in nuclear weapons stockpiles. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ongoing dismantlement of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are creating unprecedented stresses on the systems for managing these materials, as well as unprecedented opportunities for cooperation to improve these systems. In this article, we summarize the technical background to this situation, and the current and prospective security challenges posed by military stockpiles of these materials in the United States and Russia. We then review the programs in place to address these challenges, the progress of these programs to date, and the work remaining to be done, in five areas: (a) preventing theft and smuggling of nuclear warheads and fissile materials; (b) building a regime of monitored reductions in nuclear warhead and fissile material stockpiles; (c) ending further production of excess fissile materials; (d ) reducing stockpiles of excess fissile materials; and (e) avoiding economic collapse in the nuclear cities where substantial fractions of these materials and their guardians reside.

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“…The heating processes for this application include direct electrical (Joule heating) and indirect heat from induction coils or resistance heaters, and microwaves. (Berkhout et al 1992). Glass model systems predict that glasses containing as much as 9 wt% of plutonium can be satisfactorily prepared (Lyman 1993).…”

Section: Process Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plutonium Finishing Plant. Interim plutonium stabilization engineering study

Sevigny¹,

Gallucci²,

Garrett³

et al. 1995

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The Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP), located at the Hanford Site in southeastern Washington, and operated by the Westinghouse Hanford Company (WHC) for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), contains plutonium-bearing material from 40+ years of processing plutonium for weapons production, research needs, and reactor fuel. In 1989 the plant was shut down, and DOE now wants to prepare these residues for storage. However, further processing will be required to stabilize many of these materials for interim storage (< 50 years).This engineering study was performed by the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) for WHC to evaluate the currently available and known technologies at Hanford and elsewhere for processing plutonium-bearing materials into a stable form. The inventory of plutonium-bearing materials stored in various vaults at the PFP was received from WHC in an unclassified form for use in this study. Table S. 1 summarizes that inventory. PNL staff conducted the study by compiling information on the technologies that would be considered, performing an initial screening, developing process descriptions, and subcontracting with an independent review team to evaluate and rank the processes. This independent review team consisted of representatives from the national laboratories and industry who are considered to be experts in the subject matter.Once PNL completed its analysis, the independent review team began a review of the technologies that passed the initial screening. Specifically, the goals of the independent review were to ensure that the appropriate set of technologies was considered, to identify any technologies that may have been overlooked by PNL, and to identify any significant issues relating to the technologies considered.The process for conducting the independent technical review involved the following activities: a presentation on specific technical information on each candidate technology by PNL staff to the independent review team a screening of the technologies that were initially identified to establish the applicable technologies a rating of the feasible alternatives against a predetermined set of criteria. These criteria consisted of technical feasibility, effluent and by-product disposition, worker safety, cost, and time required for implementing the technology and processing the plutonium. Note that the cost data are very, very preliminary and that a rigorous procedure for estimating costs was not applied in a consistent manner.Based upon its findings, the independent review team identified the preferred technologies for each waste stream (Le., liquid or solid effluents) as summarized in Table S.2. These technologies were, in general, preferred based on meeting the criteria of availability, flexibility, and technical maturity. 2. The preferred processes should be developed and finalized on an expedited basis. In addition, the development of the molten salt oxidation process followed by plutonium oxide recovery should be expedited. This process was the only technology identified that had multi-pu...

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Disposition of separated plutonium

Cited by 20 publications

References 6 publications

Citizen Scientist: Frank von Hippel’s Adventures in Nuclear Arms Control PART 4. Soviet Nuclear Transparency, the Collapse and After

Citizen Scientist: Frank von Hippel’s Adventures in Nuclear Arms Control PART 4. Soviet Nuclear Transparency, the Collapse and After

Managing Military Uranium and Plutonium in the United States and the Former Soviet Union

Plutonium Finishing Plant. Interim plutonium stabilization engineering study

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