The Plutonium Genie

George Perkovich

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993

Article preview: first 500 of 3,972 words total.

Summary:  If nation states continue to make and use plutonium, they risk nuclear weapons proliferation, environmental devastation and lost lives. Through the International Atomic Energy Agency or a new institution, a regime should be set up to manage storage, reduction and disposal of this costly carcinogen. Pressure to join the regime could come from tightening the purse-strings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But a new regime would also require precedent-setting behavior and support from the United States and Russia.

PUTTING IT BACK IN THE BOTTLE

Plutonium is one of the most dangerous materials on earth. Ten pounds are enough to make a crude nuclear weapon; one-thirty-thousandth of an ounce will cause cancer if inhaled. Plutonium's lethality is measured in millennia, not decades or days. Its most prevalent form has a half-life of 24,000 years.

With plutonium, the odds are against humankind. If nation states continue the costly production and use of plutonium, they risk weapons proliferation, environmental devastation and human health damage. These odds should banish plutonium as too dangerous to continue being produced. Building on the international nonproliferation regime and current practices in the nuclear industry, a more comprehensive and specific regime must be constructed to manage plutonium and speed its elimination.

All forms of plutonium can be made into weapons, although some mixes of isotopes are less desirable to weapons designers. The release of plutonium into the environment poses health and environmental risks. These risks might be more tolerable if plutonium held unquestionable economic value in the foreseeable future. But no proven technology exists to generate electricity from plutonium at economically competitive costs.

Countries determined to remain on the commercial nuclear path need not use plutonium; fuels made of low-enriched uranium suffice. Unlike plutonium or highly enriched uranium, these fuels are not weapons-usable. Nor do they pose comparable health, environmental and security hazards. The lodes of low-cost, low-enriched uranium accessible worldwide may run out, but not before the late 21st century, and then only if nuclear energy use increases markedly without eliciting increased supplies from either more efficient uranium handling or new reserves. Such an outcome is unlikely for economic reasons. Plutonium for long-term research and development programs will always be available in the form of spent fuel, even after the large surpluses of separated plutonium are reduced.

Plutonium has proliferated since its creation as a war child of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Twenty-two countries possess or control separated plutonium in various forms and amounts, either for military or commercial use. Roughly 1,000 metric tons of the material exist today.€ Approximately 260 tons of that stockpile are in deployed or surplus nuclear weapons. American and former Soviet arsenals account for almost 90 percent of those weapons. Of the roughly 650 tons of plutonium that exist in commercial programs, approximately 530 tons are contained in untreated spent reactor fuel, while roughly 120 tons are stored in weapons-usable form or recycled as fuel awaiting potential future use.

Of course, history hovers over any proposal to get comprehensive international control over plutonium. The ghosts of the Acheson-Lilienthal Report of 1946 and the failed Baruch plan haunt the discussion. In the 1970s, the Carter administration stumbled in its ill-conceived effort to wean the international community from plutonium. Today, however, different conditions prevail. The nuclear arms race is not accelerating as it was in the late 1940s and again in the late 1970s; rather, it is being reversed. The Cold War is not dividing and closing off countries from each ...

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