For nearly 20 years, the Energy Department has been seeking to destroy plutonium recovered from surplus nuclear bombs by converting it to fuel for civilian reactors. Most of it would be destroyed by fission, and the remainder would be embedded in highly radioactive fission products.
Anti-proliferation groups are eager to see the plutonium destroyed as part of a Russian-American agreement because as long as it exists, it can be refashioned into nuclear bombs. But some of those groups oppose accomplishing that through use as fuel in civilian reactors because that would involve a form of commerce in which it could go astray, they say.
Now the Energy Department is building a factory to turn the plutonium from bombs, which is in metal form, into fuel for reactors in a ceramic form. Simultaneously, the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking for ways to relax the security rules on plutonium, which were drafted for the material in bomb form, not fuel form. But opponents are gearing up to fight its use as fuel, focusing on the way it will be transported.
Plutonium is a “special nuclear material,” a government term for bomb fuel, and under Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules, if the quantity is large enough and it is defined as “category 1,” it can be moved only in special trucks and with a variety of security precautions similar to those used for transporting a nuclear weapon. According to a document obtained from the commission by the Union of Concerned Scientists under the Freedom of Information Act, that is what the commission’s staff is considering trying to change.