What to do with the surplus uranium?

What to do with the surplus uranium?

This is one of a series of special reports on the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in the post-Cold War era. — The Editor.

During the Cold War, the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies — including the Atomic Energy Commission — sometimes calculated the value of bomb-grade uranium to impress newspaper reporters and curious others.

In 1982, officials at the Y-12 weapons plant said a 10-pound button of enriched uranium was worth four times its weight in gold — or about $200,000 at the time.

The hefty price tag presumably took into account the government's cost to produce and process the discs of nearly pure U-235, a critical element in nuclear weapons.

It's doubtful, however, that figures adequately reflected the many billions of dollars spent over a half-century on the uranium side of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. The true price tag would include construction, operation and, yes, cleanup of dozens of facilities in Oak Ridge and around the country.

From a financial viewpoint, the costs have been staggering, but national policy has always assumed that benefits to the citizenry were even greater, maybe incalculable.

At issue in the 1990s is what to do with the surplus amounts of highly enriched uranium, much of which is stored at Y-12 in Oak Ridge.

The vast stockpile is no longer needed in the post-Cold War period, and the United States is committed — as is Russia — to dramatically reduce the availability of fissile materials to ease proliferation concerns.

Following a lengthy study, with public input, DOE decided the best option is to "downblend" up to 200 tons of the bomb-grade material by mixing it with other uranium stocks to lower the level of U-235 and make it unusable for weapons.

Even with that decision on record, the debate likely will continue over the ultimate disposition of the uranium.

DOE's goal is to sell most of the downblended material for use as nuclear reactor fuel.

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary said the sales could return as much $770 million to the U.S. Treasury.

While that won't come close to balancing the ledger on the nation's uranium investment, O'Leary has characterized it as a DOE contribution to the federal deficit battle.

Some critics, including the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, don't really argue with the decision to downblend the enriched uranium. However, they believe it is best to bury it as waste rather than use it for nuclear fuel and create other dangerous products — including plutonium — in the process.

Whatever the case, the surplus uranium isn't going to disappear anytime soon. It took decades to create the bomb material, and it is expected to take at least 20 years to get rid of it.

Policy is one thing, process is another, and there are barriers to cross before springloading a new uranium program.

Y-12, the principal storage site, is also one of the facilities likely to participate in the downblending activities. It's a busy time there, particularly because the enriched uranium operations at Y-12 have been shut down for nearly two years as part of a stand-down related to the plant's conduct of operations. Restart is still a year away, maybe longer.

Plus, much of the uranium is not ready for downblending, either because of its current chemical form or location. A recent audit revealed that enriched uranium at Y-12 was stored or ensconced in an astonishing 29,000 containers.

The Savannah River Plant, another DOE operation in South Carolina, also was identified as a facility capable of doing the downblending work, as were two commercial operations — Babcock & Wilcox in Virginia and Nuclear Fuel Services at Erwin, Tenn.

Interestingly, Babcock & Wilcox recently signed a memorandum of agreement to lease some casting furnaces at Y-12's uranium-processing complex. If the company wins the contract, it apparently would do the downblending at Y-12 instead of its nuclear facilities in Lynchburg, Va.

It's important to many in Oak Ridge to keep the uranium work at Y-12, even if someone new has the reins. Part of that attitude is pride, but mostly it's about jobs.

"We'll work with whoever has the work," said Carl "Bubba" Scarbrough, Oak Ridge union leader.