Russia cancels agreement to reprocess plutonium in the USA (World Nuclear Association)

Link: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-tz/usa-nuclear-fuel-cycle.aspx

US Nuclear Fuel Cycle (Updated October 2016)  

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The USA has nuclear fuel production capacity insufficient for domestic needs. A new enrichment plant is licensed to expand.

Currently, almost all the uranium used in US commercial reactors is imported. After reaching a peak in 1980, domestic mining now accounts for only 10% of the fuel used in US reactors.

Between 1977 and 2005, government policy did not allow reprocessing of used fuel for commercial reactors.

Note: The following is an excerpt regarding the now failed agreement between the USA and Russia to reprocess Russian weapons grade plutonium into Mixed Oxide fuel, MOX, for use in US commercial nuclear power plants. The failure is due in part to US unilateral decisions, contrary to the 2000 Russia-US Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement to not reprocess the Russian plutonium into MOX fuel, but simply dilute it and put it into very long term storage in the ground. This kind of US action is consistent with the government’s 40 year policy of doing as little as possible to promote use of nuclear energy. The actions by the US contradict intentions of many other countries to use nuclear power to its fullest potential. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have taken steps to reduce the use of nuclear power, most recently in favor of wind and solar.

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Science Advisor to the White House, John Holdren, has not done much to support nuclear power and has stated: nuclear power can’t compete with other energy sources.

See history of energy in France for actual facts, website: ecolo.org

White House Science Advisor to President Obama 2009 - 2016, John Holdren Canadian Farmer, Mechanical Engineer, and Lecturer in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Toronto, Eric Jelinski says: “Yet while the US, Canada and parts of Europe waste trillions of dollars to subsidize essentially useless wind technology we buy almost all consumer goods from countries that have the economic advantage of nuclear power.”

Eric Jelinski, Canada Mechanical Engineer, Lecturer in Nuclear Engineering

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France, Russia, China, India and South Africa are proceeding with nuclear power. The USA is resting on the nuclear plants licensed, designed and built starting in the 1970s.

There are no plans to replace nuclear power plants when they reach the limit of operating license. France, from the beginning, has had plans to build new nuclear power plants at the sites of the original plants. If a site was intended to operate two units, it was licensed to have four, so that once the original two reach their operating limit, two new plants would be ready to continue operations.

WORLD NUCLEAR ASSOCIATION 7 October 2016 Russia pulls out of nonproliferation agreement Russia’s President Putin has unilaterally announced cancellation of the 2000 Russia-US Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement to reduce each country’s weapons-grade plutonium by 34 tonnes. He cited US proposals to dispose of the US plutonium in other ways than by completing the Savannah River MOX plant, which is behind schedule and over budget. A draft bill was introduced to Russia’s parliament, with an explanatory note saying that there were both political and technical reasons to cancel the deal, even thought it could be renewed under certain conditions related to relaxing sanctions and reducing US military presence in Eastern Europe. The presidential decree said the main reason for cancellation is "the emergence of a threat to strategic stability as a result of U.S. hostile actions against Russia."

The US Nuclear Energy Institute has called on Congress to provide money for completing the Savannah River plant, since "Allowing Russia to forgo its international obligation has significant national security implications for the United States and its allies.”

At the opening ceremony for Russia’s MOX plant at MCC Zheleznogorsk in September 2015, Rosatom had compared its achievement in building its plant for military plutonium in four years for RUR 9.3 billion ($142 million), with the US Savannah River plant costing $7.7 billion over eight years up to then, and still only 70% complete.

Rosatom says that so far its MOX plant and the BN-800 reactor running on fuel from it have been "working with civil[ian] materials only," but if the agreement were renewed, Rosatom "can begin to fulfill Russia's international obligations under the deal" with weapons plutonium which has higher fissile content.

Subsequently the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has terminated a 2010 implementing agreement between Rosatom and US DOE’s National Nuclear Safety Administration "concerning cooperation on feasibility studies of the conversion of Russian research reactors to use low-enriched uranium fuel.” The NNSA said that under Page 3

this agreement “NNSA and Rosatom successfully completed conversion of one reactor and confirmed that it was technically and economically feasible to convert the remaining five.� However, the USA had already suspended that agreement in 2014 on account of military activities in Ukraine. Russia also announced that it was suspending a 2013 bilateral agreement on Cooperation in Nuclear- and Energy-Related Scientific Research and Development because of the continuation of US sanctions imposed in 2014.

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