Of Mox and Men
Plutonium fuel on the northern highways

HighGrader Magazine November/December 1999
by Charlie Angus
It reads like the plot for some b-grade Stephen Siegal action movie; a truck heading out of Los Alamos with nine vials of weapons' grade plutonium bound for a deserted highway in the north. At the same time, a ship containing nine similar vials from the former Soviet Union is making its way up the St. Lawrence. Hell, you can almost see the terrorists with the balaclavas rappelling down from black helicopters after the truck has been hit by a spike belt or the ship has been jumped by speed boat pirates.
Thankfully, however, this is Canada a land that wouldn't know how to make an action movie for all the petticoats on Prince Edward Island. Relax then, dear readers, and accept the wisdom of the Feds who tell us to look upon this journey as just another ho-hum day along the Trans Canada highway. Just another business-as-usual affair in the lives of the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
If the Feds have their way, sometime before Christmas, drivers along Highway 17 from the Sault will share the road with a truck containing MOX fuel (mixed-oxide fuel --weapons' grade plutonium cut with uranium oxide). The truck is bound for the AECL plant at Chalk River. There scientists will see if the plutonium can be used as fuel in a CANDU reactor. The Feds say it is part of a great plan to rid the world of nuclear bombs. Critics say it could be just the start of using Canada as a dumping ground for up to 100 tonnes of bomb-making plutonium.
Either way, the planned shipment has elicited an ever-increasing chorus of naysayers. Town Councils in North Bay, West Nipissing, Sudbury, Nairn, Thessalon, Sault Ste. Marie and Cornwall have written letters of protest. Native communities in Garden River, Serpent River and Manitoulin Island have said forget it. The Mohawks in Akwesasne and Kahnawke have been more blunt; they've vowed to stop the shipments.
Police and firefighter associations in Ontario have spoken out against what they say is the lack of preparation surrounding the plan. And over the border in Michigan, residents and politicians are equally as upset.
Sault Michigan Mayor Verna Lawrence, has told the US Department of Energy to take a hike. "We don't have `stupid' written on our foreheads," she said. "We'll figure out a way to stop it. We're very resourceful and they better not underestimate us. They can put it under the White House. They can take it wherever they want, but keep it away from our Great Lakes."
Lawrence was reacting to the fact that a route through northern Michigan was chosen after the US. Department of Energy decided not to antagonize the more populated regions lying along the lower Great Lakes region.
This decision has meant a major detour away from the Golden Horseshoe and through rural Michigan and Northern Ontario. Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch says northerners on the Canadian side share the same anger.
"People are very indignant about the way this has been thrust upon them. It's the old North-South thing again. They squawk louder so we get stuck with it. Our municipalities have been downloaded, they are given no resources to deal with things and they are told simply to `trust us'. Its another case of the north being dumped on by the nuclear south."
Larry Sewchuk, who speaks for the AECL, has been trying to distance the planned experiment from the ever-growing backlash.
He says the problem isn't with the safety of the shipment but with how it was handled by the Feds. "There have been communities that have passed resolutions against the shipment. They have passed the resolutions because they are angry at the way the Federal government handled the announcement; that communities were not given enough notice. All these communities have told us behind the scenes that they are not concerned with the safety of the shipment. It's a political squabble with the government."
Sewchuk points out that the test involves "an incredibly small shipment" of plutonium. The shipment will be accompanied by a police car and a radiation protection crew from Chalk River in case of a truck accident.
Says Sewchuk, "We have briefed all of the municipal police along the route. All of them have expressed no concerns about having to travel with the shipment. They recognize that it is an incredibly safe shipment that doesn't cause any health or safety concerns even if a traffic accident were to occur."
Sewchuk's optimism isn't shared by Paul Bailey, spokesman for the Police Association of Ontario.
"This plutonium wasn't designed to make the grass grow green. It was designed to kill people and it has a long lasting and profound effect. I don't want my members coming to me 20 years from now saying they started glowing green in the dark."
Bailey maintains that the police are not trying to set public policy, they are simply pointing out the need to train local police if the shipment is to come through.
"It's a health and safety issue for us. The government, by its own admission, can't handle a nuclear disaster. Our members would be called in as frontline service providers and we don't have the equipment or the education and training to deal with something like this."
Bailey says he recognizes that the shipment represents a very small shipment of plutonium ( a number of grammes) but he says the precedent it sets could have major ramifications.
"I don't want to get into whether its right or wrong (to accept shipments) but if this is just a prelude of things to come, there could be 50 more tonnes coming. They certainly aren't going to be bringing in battery-sized shipments. They'll be bringing in big shipments and I'm just saying we need to be ready for it."
The Chretian Boogie
The plan to haul this plutonium to Chalk River was first made public during the Clinton Yeltsin Summit in Moscow in 1996. The two leaders, in an attempt to show their commitment to ditching their nuclear arsenals, agreed to each dispose of 50 tonnes of plutonium. The issue is particularly strong in the former Soviet Union where there are concerns about breakaway republics or terrorist groups getting their hands on very highly-coveted weapons' grade plutonium.
Prime Minister Jean Chretian, ever the salesman for Canada's CANDU reactors, offered to take the shipments and dispose of them in Canadian reactors a very symbolic turning swords into moveable ploughshares.
The only hitch for Canada was that the CANDU reactor wasn't designed to handle plutonium. And Canada, with its huge stocks of highgrade uranium in Northern Saskatchewan certainly wasn't in need of the experimental MOX fuel.
Converting MOX fuel for use in a CANDU reactor would require a major capital investment to cover the cost of the fuel which could be three or four times greater than regular uranium from Saskatchewan.
Critics of the plan say the Feds weren't being altruistic about the taking the plutonium, they were interested in the serious dineros that would have to be paid in subsidies to make this fuel usable as a civilian source of energy.
Paul Sewchuk agrees that subsidies would have to be paid in order to make the MOX fuel attractive to a power utility. "If you are Ontario Power Generation why would you want to use it (MOX fuel) if there is cheaper fuel to use in the first place? Clearly they (Ontario Power) are saying to the superpowers, `yes, we could use your fuel but we'd expect a fee for that.'"
The potential fees has caught the attention of Ontario's nuclear industry which has been enduring a long and protracted mid-life crisis. No new nuclear reactors have been built since Darlington. Cost overruns, poor performance and serious wear and tear at the existing plants left the former Ontario Hydro crippled in debt (and led to the creation of the new Ontario Power Generation, with much of the nuke debt left `stranded' for the taxpayers to pick up).
Of particular concern to the utility is the fact that the Bruce Bruce A, which makes up four out of the eight reactors at the Bruce nuclear station, have been mothballed long before its planned expiry date. Estimates for the retooling of the Bruce reactors range from anywhere from $300 million to over a billion dollars.
And yet, initial plans seems to be gearing the Mox fuel for use in the defunct Bruce A reactors.
Irene Kocks speaks for the Nuclear Awareness Project.
"The full program to take up to 100 tonnes of plutonium was first set up in the mid-1990s by Ontario Hydro in an internal newsletter in which they said, `this is the ticket for restarting the Bruce A reactor.'"
Irene Kocks says that rebuilding Bruce A is part of the nuclear industry's long-term survival strategy.
"In their proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy, Ontario Power Generation said the Bruce A would be retubed because there would be a demand for its electricity and they would be able to run it at 80% capacity. We wrote to the the Department of Energy and said, `if you believe that, you'll believe anything.'"
It is very doubtful that subsidies from MOX fuel could come anywhere near to paying the cost for retubing the Bruce A reactors. If the reactors were to be restarted, the cost would most likely be born by the consumers of Ontario.

Paying the Piper
Since 1995 it has remained very unclear exactly who will pay to make this MOX fuel scheme a reality. To begin with, both the U.S. and Russia would have to put a great deal of money into building plants that could transform weapons grade plutonium into MOX fuel. Secondly, there would be the ongoing security costs surrounding shipping the fuel. Then there would be the subsidy that would have to be paid to the generating utility that agrees to accept the fuel. On top of that, Canada would have to deal with the cost of storing the remaining plutonium after the fuel has been spent. If for example, Canada took the whole 100 tonnes of plutonium, we would be left with at least 50 tonnes of highly toxic plutonium at the end of the process.
The cost of paying for these expenses is unlikely to come from the Russians. As recent converts to capitalism, they apparently expect to be paid full market value for any MOX or plutonium they agree to unload. This would leave the U.S. to pay the Russian and Canadian piper. Clearly with numerous nuclear stations in their own country, subsidizing the use of air-conditioners and blow dryers in southern Ontario will be a hard sell to Congress.
Krista Osling of the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout believes that if MOX fuel becomes a reality, Ontario residents will once again end up subsidizing the nuclear industry. "The U.S. isn't going to pay to refurbish a closed down reactor like the Bruce A. They aren't going to pay for all the security on our side of the border to move the fuel and they aren't going to pay to deal with the waste.....We would be importing the cold war leftovers from the U.S. and Russia and then be responsible for storing it."
Larry Sewchuk, however, believes that people are overreacting to hypotheticals.
"The U.S. will likely deal with all their plutonium in their own country. Right now Canada is only an option and there are no guarantees that any of the plutonium other than this small amount for the test shipment will be brought in. There are a lot of steps that would have to occur before any of this would be possible."
First and foremost in Sewchuk's mind is to see whether or not the CANDU reactor could even accept the MOX fuel.
"Our focus now is on doing the test. Its useless to waste time thinking about other items when we need to find out if it works."
Irene Kocks, however, is worried that the test is more important to the AECL than any future use of MOX fuel. She believes that if it can be shown that the CANDU can handle MOX fuel, it will increase its saleablity to countries like China and South Korea.
"I think (selling the reactor in the Third World) is precisely the reason AECL is proceeding with this test. If they are able to show with this test, and a test is all that it would take, that you can use mixed plutonium fuel in a CANDU reactor it would become another line in their sales pitch. We're very concerned about that. If you're working with MOX fuel you're dealing with separated plutonium which can very easily be converted into bombs."
She points to the example of India, which was able to build up a nuclear arsenal from the seemingly benign CANDU.
"Part of the risk that we run when we use civilian nuclear technology is that the technology will slip into military technology."

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