Reprocessing is DANGEROUS because it makes weapons-grade plutonium plentiful and easy to steal. Good news for terrorists. Bad news for the rest of us.

Easy to Steal

Reprocessing separates plutonium from other materials, leaving it in a concentrated powder form that is not highly radioactive. It’s therefore easy to steal without exposing yourself to lethal gamma rays. By contrast, spent fuel from nuclear reactors is dangerously radioactive, and therefore difficult to steal.

According to Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel, writing in Scientific American:

“Separated plutonium, being only weakly radioactive, is easily carried off – whereas the plutonium in spent fuel is mixed with fission products that emit lethal gamma rays. Because of its great radioactivity, spent fuel can be transported only inside casks weighing tens of tons, and its plutonium can only be recovered with great difficulty, typically behind thick shielding using sophisticated, remotely operated equipment. So unseparated plutonium in spent fuel poses a far smaller risk of ending up in the wrong hands.” MORE

Theft Hard to Detect

Not only is reprocessed plutonium easy to steal, the theft would be very difficult to detect. The Union of Concerned Scientists says:

“Less than 20 pounds of plutonium is needed to make a nuclear weapon….. Moreover, commercial-scale reprocessing facilities handle so much of this material that it has proven impossible to keep track of it accurately in a timely manner, making it feasible that the theft of enough plutonium to build several bombs could go undetected for years.” MORE

In other words, we would have no idea that the ingredients of a nuclear bomb had been stolen until the bomb exploded.

Plenty Available

Currently, separated plutonium is not particularly useful. That’s because the only way to use it in today’s nuclear reactors is to convert it into mixed oxide, or “MOX” fuel. MOX fuel is more expensive to use than uranium, which will be abundantly available for decades to come. Therefore, as Princeton’s von Hippel puts it, “there is no commercial demand for plutonium as a fuel and large stockpiles have accumulated.” MORE at page 9.

A new U.S. reprocessing program would just compound this problem. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists,

“A U.S. reprocessing program would add to the worldwide stockpile of separated and vulnerable plutonium that sits in storage today, which totaled roughly 250 metric tons as of the end of 2005 – enough for some 40,000 nuclear weapons. Reprocessing the U.S. spent fuel generated to date would increase this by more than 500 metric tons.” MORE

In other words, reprocessing the spent fuel generated to date would increase the international stockpile of separated plutonium to 750 metric tons, enough to make 120,000 nuclear weapons.

Reprocessing will continue to expand stockpiles of plutonium until – maybe, someday – we design and build a whole new generation of “fast” nuclear reactors. This is easier said than done:

Reprocessing is good news for terrorists; bad news for the rest of us.

“Fast reactors which are essential to ‘re-use the plutonium’ are not developed and have been failures worldwide. Without fast reactors, the U.S. will end up in the same place as the other reprocessing countries: spending hundreds of billions of dollars to end up with separated weapons-usable material…without any permanent and effective solution to the nuclear waste problem. Countries, including the United States, have been trying unsuccessfully to develop fast reactors for 50 years and the results have been technical and economic failures.” MORE

Not “Proliferation Resistant”

Finally, if someone tells you that reprocessed plutonium can be made “proliferation resistant,” don’t believe it.

Several schemes have been proposed to deter theft by keeping more radioactive substances mixed with the separated plutonium. However, according to Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel, the radiation would still be at least one-hundred times less intense than needed to meet international standards for being “self-protecting” against theft. Other schemes to increase radioactivity and prevent plutonium theft, says von Hippel, are equally flawed. MORE at pages 21-22