Russisch uranium verwarmt Americanen

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Past wel een beetje bij de aandacht voor het vallen van de muur ;)

Groet / Cees

November 10, 2009
Power for U.S. From Russia’s Old Nuclear Weapons
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.html

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
MOSCOW — What’s powering your home appliances?

For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from
dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.

“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an
analyst at Renaissance Capital and an expert in the Russian nuclear
industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the
cold war.

But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn’t secured soon, the
pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as
some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.

Already nervous about a supply gap, utilities operating America’s 104
nuclear reactors are paying as much attention to President Obama’s
efforts to conclude a new arms treaty as the Nobel Peace Prize committee
did.

In the last two decades, nuclear disarmament has become an integral part
of the electricity industry, little known to most Americans.

Salvaged bomb material now generates about 10 percent of electricity in
the United States — by comparison, hydropower generates about 6 percent
and solar, biomass, wind and geothermal together account for 3 percent.

Utilities have been loath to publicize the Russian bomb supply line for
fear of spooking consumers: the fuel from missiles that may have once
been aimed at your home may now be lighting it.

But at times, recycled Soviet bomb cores have made up the majority of
the American market for low-enriched uranium fuel. Today, former bomb
material from Russia accounts for 45 percent of the fuel in American
nuclear reactors, while another 5 percent comes from American bombs,
according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade association
in Washington.

Treaties at the end of the cold war led to the decommissioning of
thousands of warheads. Their energy-rich cores are converted into
civilian reactor fuel.

In the United States, the agreements are portrayed as nonproliferation
treaties — intended to prevent loose nukes in Russia.

In Russia, where the government argues that fissile materials are
impenetrably secure already, the arms agreements are portrayed as a way
to make it harder for the United States to reverse disarmament.

The program for dismantling and diluting the fuel cores of
decommissioned Russian warheads — known informally as Megatons to
Megawatts — is set to expire in 2013, just as the industry is trying to
sell it forcefully as an alternative to coal-powered energy plants,
which emit greenhouse gases.

Finding a substitute is a concern for utilities today because nuclear
plants buy fuel three to five years in advance.

One potential new source is warheads that would become superfluous if
the United States and Russia agree to new cuts under negotiations to
renew the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires on Dec. 5.

Such negotiations revolve around the number of deployed weapons and
delivery vehicles. There is no requirement in the treaty that bomb cores
be destroyed. That is negotiated separately.

For the industry, that means that now, as in the past, there will be no
direct correlation between the number of warheads decommissioned and the
quantity of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, also used in weapons,
that the two countries declare surplus.

(This summer, Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia
agreed to a new limit on delivery vehicles of 500 to 1,100 and a limit
on deployed warheads as low as 1,500. The United States now has about
2,200 nuclear warheads and the Russians 2,800.)

Mr. Medvedev has reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to a 2000 agreement to
dispose of plutonium, and both countries plan to convert that into
reactor fuel as well.

An American diplomat and an official with a federal nuclear agency in
Washington have confirmed, separately, that the two countries are
quietly negotiating another agreement to continue diluting Russia’s
highly enriched uranium after the expiration of Megatons to Megawatts,
using some or all of the material from warheads likely to be taken out
of the arsenals.

The government officials were not authorized to publicly discuss these
efforts.

This possible successor deal to Megatons to Megawatts is known in the
industry as HEU-2, for a High Enriched Uranium-2, and companies are
rooting for it, according to Jeff Combs, president and owner of Ux
Consulting, a company tracking uranium fuel pricing.

“You can look at it like a couple of very large uranium mines,” he said
of the fissile material that would result from the program.

American reactors would not shut down without a deal; utilities could
turn to commercial imports, which would most likely be much more
expensive.

Enriching raw uranium is more expensive than converting highly enriched
uranium to fuel grade.

To make fuel for electricity-generating reactors, uranium is enriched to
less than 5 percent of the isotope U-235. To make weapons, it is
enriched to about 90 percent U-235.

The United States Enrichment Corporation, a private company spun off
from the Department of Energy in the 1990s, is the treaty-designated
agent on the Russian imports. It, in turn, sells the fuel to utilities
at prevailing market prices, an arrangement that at times has angered
the Russians.

Since Megatons to Megawatts has existed, American utilities operating
nuclear power plants, like Pacific Gas & Electric or Constellation
Energy, have benefited as the abundance of fuel that came onto the
market drastically reduced overall prices and created savings that were
ultimately passed along to consumers and shareholders.

Nuclear industry giants like Areva, the French company; the United
States Enrichment Corporation and Nuclear Fuel Services, another
American company; and Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation,
are deeply involved in recycling weapons material and will need new
supplies to continue that side of their businesses.

In the United States, domestic weapons recycling programs are smaller in
scale and would be no replacement for Megatons for Megawatts. The
Nuclear Fuel Services, in Erwin, Tenn., in 2005 began diluting uranium
from the 217 tons the government declared surplus; so far 125 tons have
been processed. It is used at the Tennessee Valley Authority plant.

The American plutonium recycling program is also well under way at a
factory being built at the Energy Department’s Savannah River site in
South Carolina to dismantle warheads from the American arsenal; a type
of plutonium fuel, called mixed-oxide fuel, will come on the market in
2017.

In total, the 34 tons to be recycled there are expected to generate
enough electricity for a million American homes for 50 years.

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