Given the current military and territorial disputes between China, Japan, and South Korea, the last thing anyone should want is to have these states make more nuclear explosives that could blow the whole region apart. Yet, that is precisely what the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is encouraging in a misguided effort to develop new types of “fast” reactors offshore.
DoE is actively collaborating with these countries on fast-reactor research and commercial fast-reactor demonstrator programs to get around its own lack of funding to conduct such programs in the U.S. Unlike power reactors now operating and being built, these new fast reactors require large amounts of plutonium fuel to start with. This entails prior production and stockpiling of quantities of plutonium enough — in the cases of Japan and China — to make tens of thousands of bombs.
The good news is that there is still time to sideline these programs before they do any lasting damage. To accomplish this, though, the Hill, the White House — and China, Japan, and South Korea — must recognize now just how frightening, and unnecessary, a plutonium-based energy future would be.
In Japan’s case, this ought to be easy. After Fukushima, it is unlikely that more than half of its 48 reactors will return to service. Japan’s atomic energy commission stated this number would be too few to justify the costly process of separating plutonium from the spent fuel (by means of “reprocessing”). This is bad news for any future fast-reactor program, especially considering these reactors would themselves be very expensive.
Japan’s fast-reactor demonstrator, called Monju, has experienced so many technical difficulties (including debilitating accidents and the discovery that it sits on seismic faults) that it is unlikely ever to operate. Japan still hopes to have another fast-reactor demonstrator plant by 2028 (with pledged U.S. DoE and French assistance) but has put off deciding on construction until next year.
Still, Tokyo already has amassed 9 metric tons of weapons-useable plutonium –roughly enough for as many nuclear weapons as the U.S. has. Right now, Japan has no reactors to burn this plutonium as fuel. It also has constructed a large, commercial-sized reprocessing plant at Rokkasho, one designed to separate 8 metric tons of plutonium annually. So far, Tokyo has wisely delayed starting up this plant.
The security implications of operating Rokkasho are obvious. In June 2012, during the previous supposedly “anti-nuclear” Kan administration, Japan’s Atomic Energy Basic Act was amended to stipulate that a key aim of the law would be “national security.”
This raised the hackles of Japan’s neighbors, especially when combined with Japan’s 9-ton plutonium stockpile and its plans to start up Rokkasho. After passage of Japan’s amended nuclear-energy act, Korea’s leading newspaper complained that Seoul was now sandwiched between two nuclear-weapons-arming states — North Korea and Japan. South Korea’s president further warned that continued North Korean nuclear testing could prompt “a nuclear domino effect in the region” – a not-so-veiled threat that her country and Japan would themselves go nuclear.
China also was unhappy. While it applauded Washington’s March announcement that the U.S. would take back a small amount of weapons-usable plutonium from Japan, Beijing complained that much more needed to be done. Chinese officials were emphatic that Japan’s 9-ton plutonium stockpile and planned operation of Rokkasho “went against the grain of international nonproliferation.”
None of this is making it any easier for the U.S. to persuade Seoul to drop its demand that Washington treat it on a par with Japan and allow it to reprocess and enrich U.S.-origin nuclear fuel (of which South Korea has plenty). This is the sticking point in current negotiations to renew a U.S.-Korea civilian nuclear-cooperation agreement. It has forced these talks to be extended an additional two years to 2015. So far, South Korea is not backing down.
Although the economic case for Seoul to gear up to make plutonium-based fuels for a fast reactor of its own is hardly pressing (Seoul is thinking about bringing such a reactor online around 2030 and initially fueling it with low-enriched uranium), it is easy to understand why it is chafing at Washington’s opposition to South Korea making its own plutonium-based fuels. The U.S. DoE, rather inconsistently, just reaffirmed its 2010 agreement to help South Korea develop and build a U.S.-designed Generation IV fast reactor before 2030, and this cooperation includes work on the fuel cycle this reactor would require.
Seoul also has quietly grumbled that the U.S. is treating it very differently from Japan. The U.S. civilian nuclear-cooperative agreement with Japan allows Tokyo to reprocess to extract plutonium from U.S.-origin spent fuel. Additionally, the State Department could have, but didn’t, call for the U.S.-Japan nuclear-cooperative agreement to be renegotiated before 2018 to force a debate in Japan about its plutonium plans. None of this seems fair to Seoul, particularly as it must deal with a North Korea that is reprocessing to extract plutonium and enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the United States is collaborating with China on fast reactors, which also has bizarre security ramifications. As if dealing with the safety challenges of tripling China’s nuclear-power-reactor capacity in the next six years wasn’t daunting enough, the U.S. DoE is also cooperating with China to develop fast reactors and the plutonium fuels to support them. It’s unclear what specific technology has been shared, but Beijing has gotten DoE’s message: Never mind how bad the economics might be, fast reactors are hot.
Accordingly, China has ambitious plans. It is negotiating with France for AREVA to build by 2025 a copy of Japan’s Rokkasho plant. China plans to operate this plant for at least 15 years. It will be designed to produce 8 metric tons of nuclear-weapons-usable plutonium a year — again, enough to make roughly 2,000 nuclear warheads each year. By 2040, when China hopes to load some of this plutonium into its first commercial fast reactor, it will have amassed roughly 30,000 weapons’ worth of plutonium (compare this with the 200 to 400 warheads most experts believe China now has and the nearly 2,000 warheads the U.S. currently has deployed).
Complicating matters, China plans to extract plutonium by reprocessing spent fuel coming from, among others, 12 U.S.-designed reactors that Westinghouse hopes to build in China. These U.S. reactors could contribute up to 600 bombs’ worth of plutonium each year they operate.
Why would the United States want to encourage such a plutonium-rich future in East Asia? Senior officials outside the pro-fast-reactor clique at DoE should make inquiries. Congress should also ask this question, as it oversees the renegotiation of the U.S.-China civilian nuclear-cooperation agreement. It must be finalized and be brought before Congress before the end of next year.
Meanwhile, our diplomats would do well to speak more openly about the regional security risks of opening Rokkasho, of Japan keeping its 9-ton plutonium stockpile as a security hedge against China, and of continued Chinese coyness about its own holdings of nuclear-weapons-usable material. Finally, and above all, it would help if our own DOE backed off its urgent promotion of fast reactors and joined in persuading Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul to do likewise.
— Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (forthcoming).