ML20147C739
| ML20147C739 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 12/08/1978 |
| From: | Gilinsky V, Hendrie J NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 7812180385 | |
| Download: ML20147C739 (82) | |
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OR8NAL NUCLE AR REGULATORY COMMISSION -
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IN THE MATTER OF:
PUBLIC MEETING BRIEFING ON TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF WUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE PER.'INENT.TO MATERIAL DIVERSION
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Ptace - Washington, D..C..
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i DISCI. AIMER -
This is. an unofficial transcript ofgl,etjngegegiied States in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on Commission's offices at 1717 H Street, ti.
W., Wasnington, D. C.
The meeting was open to public attendance and observation.
Th'is transcript 1
has not been reviewed, corrected, or edited, and it may contain inaccuracies.
(
The transcript is intended solely for general infoma'tfonal puiposes.
As provided by 10 CFR 9.103, it is not part of'the femal or informal record of decision of the matters discussed.
Expressions of opinion in this transcript 'do not necessarily reflect final de~ terminations or beliefs.
to pleading or other paper may be filed with the Commission in any proceeding as the result of or addressed to any statement or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may authorize.
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. UNITED STATES'OF AMERICA' CR1632
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
PUBLIC MEETING 3
BRIEFING.ON TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 4
,ERTINENT TO MATERIAt DIVERSION 3
6 7
Room 1130 8
1717 H Street, N. W.
j Washington, D. C.
9 Friday,.8 December 1978 10
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The Commission met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m.
I 12 BEFORE:
DR. JOSEPH M. HENDRIE, Chairman 14
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RICHARD T. KENNEDY, Commissioner 1
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15 VICTOR GILINSKY, Commissioner 16 PETER A. BRADFORD, Commissioner 17 18 19 20 21 22
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CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
That. brings us to the main 3
subject of this morning's meeting.
We have had some interest, 4.
obviously, over time in ways in which nuclear fuel cycles
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might be made mor's resistant to material diversion to illegal 6
purposes.
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There have been various schemes suggested.
One of i
8 these is called "CIVEX," and Chauncey Starr is one of the 9
original proprietors of that scheme.
He has come to brief the l
'10 Commission on the general proposition.
I think it is not
.11 specifically that scheme,. but a broader area s What, indeed, 12 are ways that are reasonable to get.a handle on that?
And we 13 do have the possibility of some materials diversion in various
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14 fuel cycles.
15 Chauncey.. why don't you come fo rward?
Why don't 16 you bring as many of your party to the table as the seating 17 will acconmodate, and 'I would just ask you, as a first element 18 in your briefing, to go down the line and introduce people ' for 19-the benefit of the audience and the record.
'l 20 Yes, and you need to 'all clip those tie mikes on 4
21 because the people in the back can't hear what you are saying.
s 22 By the way, is the system reasonably picking up i
l 23 what I am saying at this level of voice?
It is sort of j
24, touch-and-go in-the back o f ' the' room.
All right, I wLilipull 25 my microphone in a little closer.
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2.01.2 pv' 1 Chauncey, please go ahead.
2 DR. STARR Chairman Hendrie and members of the 3
Commission, we _are very pleased to respond to the Commission's 4
interest in this subject.
I might say that we have begun to 5
show a long. series of slides and maybe members of the audience 6
who want to see the screen might want to move to the 7
right-hand side of the seating arrangement so they will be 8
able to see it a little better.
9 In any event, let me first introduce the group.
I 10 am Chauncey Starr, and I am the vice chairman of the research institute, and I will just go down the seating here.
We have 12 karl Cohen, who was formerly with the General Electric Company 13 and now a consultant in areas of enrichmenti Floyd Culler, who 14 is the present chief executive officer of the Electric Power 15 Research Institute, formerly deputy director of the Oak Ridge 16 National Laboratoryl Milt Levenson, who is the director of the 17 nuclear programs for the Electric Power Research Irctitutet 18 and Joe Dietrich, who is a vice president of Combustion 19 Engineering and has worked in all areas of nuclear power 20
- cycles, e
21 The group as a whole, all of the members of this 22 group, have over 30 years in individual experience in this 23 field, and we f elt that it might be useful to distill out of 24 that experience the kind of basic information which the 25 Commission might want to have in its background as it reviews ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS,.INC. (202)347-3700
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its responsibilities in this area of materials diversion and 2-nuclear power cycles.
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'The presentation, even~ though you have given us the 4
. remainder of the' morning, is going to be very condensed j
5
~because it is a very large subject.
I am, therefore, going to 6
suggest that if you agree that, we hold the fact questions du.ing the presentation -- that is, questions of fact and-7 r
8 elucidation of f act and general discussion of the topics --
l-9 you might want to make notes, and then we can discuss the 10-topics 'af ter the presentation is concluded.
11
.With that preamble, let me start off with the first 12 slide.
13 (Slide.)
14
' To sort of. define what it is we're going to be s
15 talking about, we are really going to be discussing the role 4
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16 of technology.in limiting nuclear weapons proliferation; and 17 the objective, as we see it, of technology is to optimize the IS effectiveness of the combination of technology and to focus 19 it.
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20 Can'I be heard in the back of the r.com?
2!
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
I s ee nodding heads.
22 (Slide.)
23 DR.iSTARR:
I want.to have a f ew quick definitions,
.24 to.make sure we don't get mixed up on our words.
~25 By aprolif eration," we're' talking about - nuclear
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weapons acquisiticn by a non-nuclear state.
2 By " dive rsion,"- we're talking about taking material 3
intended for civilian' nuclear power purposes or for other 4
peaceful purposes for. weapons.
5 And the third definition is " latent prolif eration,"
6 which is the acquiring of skills and facilities easily convertible to weapons production on short notice by a 7
8 non-weapons state.
9 (Slide.)
10 This is an elementary chart to indicate that 11 neither diplomacy and institutions by itself nor technology 12 by itself can handle the international problem. that we are 13 concerned with, that it really requires the overlap.of the 14 two.
15 (Slide.)
16 This chart is' intended to distinguish betw~een the
.17 problem of terrorist activities and the problem of some 18 non-weapons nation deciding to go into the weapons business.
19 And in.this overlap area of diplomacy and technology, there 20 are two technical areas.
One is -- two operat.ing areas.
One s
21 is the civilian nuclear cycles, and the other is the alternate 22 material sources'such as enrichment plants or something of 23 that' sort.
24 For a nation.that wants to divert material for 25' weapons purposes, it can do this because it has ample' tine and' ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC..(202)347-3700
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resources, and diplomacy plays a major role in that one.
2 The terrorist, however, with limited tine and 3
resources, is not easily the subject of diplomatic actions, is 4
outside this densin.
And it represents a separate problem 5
because of the f act that that problem is one of diversion from 6
civi.lian nuclear cycles.
7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Why de you say "a nation 8
has ample time"?-
9 DR. STARRs. Simply because any nation the size of 10 going into the weapons business can decide either openly or Jl not openly.
If it decides not to do it openly, it can do this 12 months or years in advance.
It can start preparing for it.
13 So, it has got ample time,.and it can take all of its 14 resources to do this.
And I w1.ll be discussing this - or the 15
-group will.be discussing this later on as we go down.
That 16 is, we will be discussing the difference between the overnight 17 decision and the predetermined dec'ision.
IS
.The principcl point of this slide, as I say, is 19 that the terrorist pr6blem is not the same as the problem of 20 national activities.
?
21 (Slide.)
22 If you look at the nuclear power cycle and you try 23 to give a rough magnitude feel for where in that cycle are the 24 sensitive portions, we have given - prepared this chart, and
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of the cycles to diversion, and you will see that we have 2
.taken as our, measure of ' unity spent fuel storage as taking the 3
spent f uel and converting it or extracting f rom it weapons 4
material.
5 If you consider thtt as having a certain range of 6
difficulty or certain sensitivity, then as you go through the 7
cyqle, you will see that -
of course, you can start with 8
uranium ore, in any case, and enrich it if you wish, and that 9
has a sensitivity, but certainly not as much as that in 10 special storage.
11 An isotopic enrichment plant, as you will hear 12 later on, can be manipulated to give you enriched materials, 13 and so that we think that has about twice the magnitude of 14 sensitivity as spent-fuel storage.
15 The outcome of UF6 is about --
16 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Can you explain what you 17 mean by "sensi.tivity"?
18 DR. STARR The concern or attention one has to 19 give to prevent diversions the esse with which one makes 20 diversion in terms of resources and time.
21 The f abrication plant is about the same as a 22 diversion from the spent-f uel storage.
The fresh fuel is 23 about the same.
Th e -- now, as you go into the reactor, you 24 have, of course, spent f uel coming out o f the reactor, and 25 that is more difficult to handle, the fresh spent fuel than
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stored spent fuel.
And that can go into the PUREX-type plant 2
which produces pure materials and pure plutonium as one of its 3-ex.it materials, and that, from our point of view, is one of 1
4 the most sensitive parts of the whole cycle, is the remote and 5
the remote refrabrication facility for taking that material 6
and putting it back into the reactor is somewhat less 7
sensitive, but it is still sensitive.
And the recycled fuel 8
is quite sensitive.
9
.COMMIS3IONER GILINSKY:
What do you mean when you 10 say " remove"?
11 DR. STARR This is a recycle system.
12 DR. LEVENSON:
Geographically remote, not remote in 13 the sense of radioactivity.
14 DR. CULLER:
It may be on recycled plutonium, as 15 the stsndards are lowered, that all fabrication will now be 16 behind channels.
That is almost now the decision, not only 17 those which we intentionally leave' radioacti re in the partial IS decontamination process, but also the main line of plutonium 19 recycle.
Indefinitely, prob'aoly, the br eeders.
20 DR. STARR: - This refers here to physically remote, j
I 21 separate from the PUREX plant.
22 Alternatively, spent fuel can go to something liks 23 the CIVEX concept, which is, really, as you will hear later, 24
- a. category of plants that do not separate pure material but do 25 prepare fuel for recyclying purposes.
And that fuel. In our J
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l o pinio n, is about as sensitive as the spent-fuel storage.
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2 Well, what this says to us, that the areas of 3
concern in terms of attention which one has to give are the 4
isotopic enrichment plant, the reprocessing cycles, and any 5
recycle that goes with'that reprocessing.
And each one of 6
these things will be covered in the later talks.
7 (Slide.)
8 Now, I want to mention quickly what it is, the 9
proliferation threat that we are talking about.
This is very 10 elementary, but just to clear tne airs the threat is the J1 increase'in numbers of weapons-states.
We are not taking the 12 terrorist issue as a proliferations threat -- and for quite 13 separate reasons.
de believe that this is not a substantive 14 issue, the terrorist part.
Many non-weapons states will be 1
15 discharging spent ' commercial f uel.
The many non-weapons 16 states have experimental reactors and reprocessing 17 laboratories.
Diversion, threat from existing small 18 laboratories f acilities is independent of anything we do 19 commercially in the way of reprocessing or recyclying.
20 The proliferations threat from commercial nuclear a
21 cycles does not occur unti'l after the next decade, and I will 22 show you why in a moment.
I am excluding now the European 23 Community, Japan, India, the Communist Dioc, and Canada, and 24 that is a big exclusion.
But I believe our concern is that 25 that bloc,- if you wish, requires special handling rather than - "
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an umbrella-type of handling.
2 (Slide.)
3 If you l'ook at.the number of non-weapons states, 4
excluding that block, that will be discharging' fuel as a 5
function of time, the numbers that have experimental reactors 6
of. reprocessing laboratories, you wi.11 see that there are 7
quite a number that have small facilities now but that at the 8
earliest that any commercial plant, even if they were to order 9
one now. could give you commercially produced separated i
10 material, would be probably about 1990.
11 So, we have, really, two separate problems one 12 problem having to do with the small-scale experimental 13 facilities that exist internationally now in many countries, i
14 and the other which has to do with a decade or more in which 15 we have some time to arrange systems.which will handle the 16 commercial fu.11 cycle.
l 17 (Slide.)
l 18 And the question is:
What can technology l
4 19 contribute to this whole problem?
It can increase the time 20 and resource required for diversion.
It can just make it more 21 difficult to divert materials from the cycle.
We can improve 22.
the accountability of what goes on in the cyclei we.can 23 increase the warning time which outside countries might wish, 24 the international community might wish, that diversion is l
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materials.
This is a very important point.
Reduce-potential 2
usability.of fuel materials for weapons.
Technology can make 3
the output materials from commercial processes less and less 4 -
valuable for weapons purposes.
And we can provide a secure 5
civilian reprocessing option; that is, we could provide a 6
reproce ss.ing option which removes the connection with weapons 7
material.
8 And we can also increase fuel-supply options.
9 There are various things technology can do about increasing 10 the options for fuel supply.
.11 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Then, you can sum up a.11 of 12
-- other than your last item -- by saying we could do this --
13 DR. STARR Even if you_have warning of diversion, 14 the f act that if diversion takes place that you can detect 15 where the material has gone, phys'ically detect where it has 16 gone, it may be almost as important 'to the international 17 community as the fact that it has had some warning time.
18 And the reduction of the potential usability of 19 fuel material is quite different than warning time, which says 20 that people that get the materials may have a greater and e
21 greater difficulty.in using it for weapons.
22 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, it will just take 23 them longer to do anything with it.
24 DR. STARR:
Not nece ssarily.
If the Commission 25' wants a classified. briefing on the difficulty of making ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. (202)347-3700
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weapons and some of these things, we can arrange that, too.
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There will be some in the discussion later on.
There will be 3
a point made which is unclassLfied, which addresses this, and 4
makes one of.the points which is relevant.-
5 CONNISSIONER GILINSKY:
By the way, has your group 6
gotten into the weapons side of.this?
7 DR. STARR Officially, not.
Unofficia.11y, we have 8
all had over the years --
9 DR. CULLER:
We have had extensive exposure over j
10 t im e.
11 DR. STARR*
Well, the next presentation will be 12 Karl Cohen's, and he will talk about the enrichment 13 f acilities, what the alternatives are and what is likely to be 14 the situation there.
2ndol 15 Karl, if you want to take over.
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DR. COHEN:
My assignment is to review the character-2 istics of isotope separation that pertain to the diversion l problem.
3 I
4 (Slide.)
5 It is very flattering to those of us who worked in the 6
isotope separation field that everybody thinks it is so hard.
7 On the other hand, let me observe that most of the people who 8
have tried to separate isotopes have perfe'ctly well succeeded.
9 Isotope separation is not a rare phenomenon.
In fact, the hard 10 thing to do is to stop it.
It occurs during practically every 11 chemical or physical or biochemical process.
12 I have a list of some of the things that do that.
13 You know, for example, that a tree takes up Carbon-12 instead 14 of Carbon-13 when it grows.
And you can tell not only -- you 15 can often tell the temperature by the degree to which it does it) l 16 And you can separate deuterium from hydrogen by distilling i
17 water, and it happens naturally.
There are many dif ferent i
la processes, including dif ferential ndgrations and so forth, which l
19 do separate isotopes.
I 20 (Slide. )
21 Now, in an industrial process for concentrating 22 Uranium-235 or, for that matter, any other isotope, it requires 23 a consideration of the elementary separation factor, which l
24 determines the number of repetitive operations required.
There !
4=,w rummn. im-25 is a simplistic idea that a large separation factor automatically i
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15
' ensures an easy and cheap method.
For example, the lascr' is 2
supposed to have a large separation factor.
History shows that 3
gaseous diffusion, which has a notoriously small separation f actor, was about a factor of ten cheaper than the electromagne-j 4
5 tic process, which had a very large separation factor.
There are a number of other factors which must be 6
considered, such as the ease of recirculating and handling large 7
volumes of material, the energy expended in the process.
And j
8 one particular thing which is of interest to the diversion 9
10 question is the amount of material in the process stream, as 11 that determines the time required to begin production.
(Slide. )
12 33 Despite the long. list of requirements that I have J
jg given here, the catalogue of methods for separating U-235 from j
15 U-238 which have serious potential is very large, and I've 16 listed just a few over.daere:
gaseous diffusion, of course; j7 the Becker nozzle process; the South African vortex; gas centri-18 fuge; chemical exchange.
19 I won't read the rest of the list for you, but there are quite a few of them.
20 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
That Becker nozzle, what is the 21
'22 the principle there?
DR. COREN:
ItLis really a centrifugal principle.
23 24 They accelerate the gas around a corner and' the heavy material
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And then they have a divider I
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which just takes the heavy from the light, and they do this over 2
and over again.
3 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
And again, you have to cascade?
I 4
The separation is small?
5 DR. COHEN:
In this case, the separation is rather l
6 small.
It is larger than, gaseous dif fusion, but you still need 7
quite a large number of stages, yes, sir.
8 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Isn ' t that also -- wouldn ' t that 9
also serve as a tolerable outline of the South African process, l
10 to the extent we know it?
11 DR. COHEN:
Well, the South Africans will deny it, but 12 I think the answer is yes.
There is a difference.
I think the 13 South Africans carry it out in three dimensions and we carry it 14 out in two dimensions.
We do know that the South Africans 15 spent a lot of time in Becker's laboratory.
16 Now, all of these methods can result in different 17 kinds of plants.
For example, you can build either large or 18 snall centrifuges.
You can have modular compound stages or you 19 can have large single stages.
And there are different scale 20 plants.
21 Rerember that we used gaseous diffusion to make weapons 22 material, and it is obvious that we must have small stages as 23 well as very large stages.
So each of these methods can make 24 either small or large stages.
l a.a.<a omomm. ix.
25 Now, I've got a couple of diagrams in here which you l
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-1 can look at, look~ at at your leisure, showing dif ferent kinds of 2
cascades to make the thing..
3 (Slide.)
4 This is the one-step, which is a laser, or it might be 5
electromagnetic.
l 6
(Slide. )
7 The next one over here is a cascade of simple stages, 8
such as a gaseous diffusion plant or the Becker nozzle process, 9
which, as the Chairman pointed out, likewise is a repetitive 10 process.
This chart is not -- the artist has taken some 11 liberties that I did not quite intend, but I am sure you will 12 be able to get it corrected.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
We will avoid trying to go directly 13 14 to process design from that sketch.
l 15 (Laughter.)
16 DR. COHEN:
Excellent idea.
17 (Slide.)
18 This is a typical cascade of modular compound stages, i
19 or what might be the same thing for chemical exchange.
20 Generally, you have the large separation factors Letween the 21 stages, and - the. reason for that is you have compounding stages 22 internally.
They are characterized by rather small inter-stage 23 flow and rather small pumping energy.
24
- ( Sli de. ) -
1 Sews rowwn. im 25 This chart gives a horseback overview of this.
If you L
18
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1 have a low separation process such as diffusion or nozzle, th en 2
you have a high throughout per stage, you have large inter-stage 3
connections.
It is not easy to modify it because there are 4
great big pipes.
And it is rather easy to detect from these 5
two cas es, because they have very high heat outputs and they can 6
be picked up in various ways.
7 You can see the power coming in and I suppose you can 8
see it coming out, too.
9 Now, in the centrifuge process, which is a relatively 10 high separation factor, by internal compounding the throughout 11 per siage is low.
The inter-stage connections are small in 12 size.
The ease of modification of a plant of this kind seems 13 to me to be rather high, and it has a rather low heat output.
14 So I think it woulc be quite hard to detect.
15 (Slide. )
16 No,/, most cascades which are capable of producing 17 low enriched uranium -- and that is to say, a civilian cascade 18 for producingn3 percent stuff -- is capable of producing high l
l9 enrichment, either by cascade modification or by recycling.
20 For example, a typical centrifuge cascade will have 21 separate cascades producing material of different concentrations 22 for different customers.
You can take one of these cascades l
_ h-23 and put it in series with the other cascades, and lo and behold, 24 you are now producing it at a much higher concentration.
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~ material that' you produce for a month or so and pass'~it back 2
through one of the cascades. - As I have shown over on the right 3
hand' side there, that this match matches really quite'well, and 4
the amount.of : separative -work that the cascade' is required to 5
do. to 'do that separation 'and the amount 'of feed that is required, 6
'In the case of the centrifuge, for, example, a 3 per-cenIplanthasanequilibriumtime,atimeof'delaybefore
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7 8
production, of perhaps two or three days.
So.you see, this. is 9
really - 'it.really could be done.
10 The Becker process also has a very low equilibrium Il time.
It. is not quite as low, perhaps a week.
This is ' low 12 be'cause they have very dilute uranium hexafluoride in it, and 13 they. have a high separation factor.
So'that, whereas diffusion 14 has a rather long delay before production, the Becker process is 15 considerably shorter.
16 Now, the exception, of course, of processes with 17 high uranium inventories, such as the new French process, the IB chemical' exchange process, whoce virtue is its disability, if y
I9 you. will --
20.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:.What time would you attach to 21 diffusion?'
,22 DR.:COMEN:
Well, I really don ' t think I ought to give_
23 the ' exact ' numbers.
But.it is, let's some, some months, perhaps 24 a month,. two months.
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25 (s'11de. )
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DR. COHEN:
I have a little calculation here of the 2
feed and separative work requirements to produce one nominal 3
critical mass per year, and I have taken as an example U-2 35 and 4
U-233, in the column labeled separation work units.
You see, it 5
requires considerable separation work.
And under the column, 6
number of centrifuges, taking that as an example, to produce 7
20 kilograms of U-235 in a year, and that is about a thousand 8
centrifuges.
I have taken a very small centrifuge.
I have a 9
taken a centrifuge which I might call a second generation machine.
10 I can describe its characteristics.
It is not quite as
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11 good as the one which Urenco now has.
And you see that the 12 number of centrifuges, if you begin with 3 percent fuel rather 13 than natural uranium, comes down by a factor that is quite 14 considerable.
If you begin with so-called denatured U-23 3 fuel, 15 you see, you really don't need very much to do it.
16 I have made this calculation rather transparent.
I 17 have divided the fourth column by either 4 or 11 to get the 18 number of centrifuges.
I have therefore taken no account of 19 cascade efficiency.
It is plain if you had a very small cascade 20 it would not be 100 percent efficient, and you may have to 21 increase that number that 7. have shown by 20 or 25 percent.
22 But I think the orders of magnitude aren't changed at all.
l
. y-23 The important thing to remember when you look at the j
24 U-2 33- - U-2 38 s eparation is, it has got 5 mass units difference!
u-21
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. amount' of separative work which a machine will produce is 2
-proportional to that difference squared.
Consequently, a 3
machine which could be rated at 4 separative work units per 4
year, 4 U-2 35 - U-2 38, would be rated at 11 for U-23 3 - U-238, 5
Since, in addition, you need only about half as much U-233 as 6
U-235, you see, this has been highly overadvertised as a 7
solution.
8 (Slide. )
9 Now, I have given here a rating, if you will, of the 10 difficulties of the various separa' ting techniques, and I have 11 compared these with, let's say, an ordinary chemical separation.
12 and with radiochemical separation, just to get an order of 13 magnitude of the difficulty of doing these quite different 14 things.
1 15 Now, any such ordering, of course, is subjective, since i
16 it depends upon one's expertise and experience.
One tends to 17 thing that what one has worked in is usually easier than what 18 somebody else does, because we don' t understand that.
I h ave i
19 some f amiliarity with all of these, I must say.
My rating i
20 system, I have rated a low number to those things which have 21 been done by many people successfully.
I tend to give a high 22 number to those things that few people have done, whether they
- l 23 have been entirely successful if they did it.
And this gives l
l 24
,,the numbers that you see over there.
l Hwww Quemn.i=J j
25
' You will notice that I have rated the macnetic l
l-I b
l
4 4
(9' 22 separation and laser as 4.
A lot of people think laser is very 2
easy, but it has not been done yet.
And I have a tendency to think that anything you can' t do is hard.
Well, I know there are 3l I
4 a lot of people in the laser field who say it is very easy and 3
very cheap, and maybe they don't understand the problem.
6 (Slide. )
' ow, in rating the proliferation hazards from N
7 8
separation,, first of all, a free-standing military enrichment 9
facility using advanced technologies can be dif ficult to detect.
10 The diversion from a civilian facility plus a small topping 11 plant will be even harder to detect and give even less warning 12 time.
13 It is four times easier to start from partially 14 enriched fuel than from natural uranium.
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
You are going back to your 16 example, on your last point, when you say it is four times 17 easier?
I 18 DR. COHEN:
Yes, I am going back to that chart, yes, j
19 I have already given that number I ' m j us t summing up now.
I 20 am about at the end.
21 It is 50 times easier to start from U-233 fuel than 22 from natural uranium.
23 (Slide.)
24 The diversion potential by enrichment options is, in j
.Few C.conm, inc.
25 my opinion, similar to diversion potential from reprocessing l
i 4
Ti 23 mts 10 1
'l facilities with co-processing or. CIVEX.
And I might point out, I
2 incidentally, it makes available~ a material which is easier to 3
make a weapon out of, and it makes a better weapon.
'4
- COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
This is something that needs 5
sous - discussion.
6 DR. COHEN:
In order to prevent _ proliferation from, t
7 let$s say, civilian isotope separation plants, you might try to 8
design. hardening.
And above all, I think you're going to need 9
continuous surveillance on-line instrumentation.
You can't go-10 away over the Christmas holiday and expect to find out what went 11 on during that week.
12 That is the end of my prepared presentation.
13 DR..STARR:
Thank you, Karl.
14 The next presentation will be given by Joe Dietrich.
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:-
Can I just ask one brief 16 question?. You mentioned the French process.
Is there any more 17 you can say about it?.
-18 DR.. COHEN:
Well, it is a chemical exchange process.
19 They haven 't 'said ' exactly what the pair were.
They have 20 revealed that 'it has -- which would not: be surprising, has i
~
i N
21 probably a.very small. separation factor.- And since it is a 22' li~ uid -- a' liquid phase,. asfI understand it, it will l require a q
23 lot-of, material in" process..
That is. characteristic of liquid ~
2'4
.as7 opposed to ; gaseous.
W Resorwes, ins, L25-
= DR..I CULLER: : I'have.some'guessesgas.'to what it might t
fh 1-.be, because of 'a sort of parallel discussion that went on with 2
"themT during the ' early 60s on another process.
Over a. period of s
- 3 three or four years, their interest in a particular area of 4
chemistry sort of tipped off what it might be.-
That'is, a liquid-liquid chemical exchange where one phase is reduced and 6
the other is ionic in solution, I think.
l' 7
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Why is it intrinsically 8
difficult to get that, oor is it?
9 DR. COHEN:
First of all, diffusion p.
is 10 slower in liquid than in a gas.
To transport the a
't of I
11 material in a gas than in a liquid is perhaps an order 12 tude less, ' number one.
And therefore, it takes a large s 13 and a' lot of material.. Therefore you have a large amount o 14 material. in process and you can ' t turn it.over quickly.
Ittmay 15 take as much as a year before you can cet that plant into 16
' operation.
17 It.would then take another year if you wanted to 1
.I 18 change this way of' operating.
j J
L19 DR. STARR:
Our next presentation is by Joe-Dietrich.
]
20 He is. going-to discuss the alternative cycles other than conven-21 tional light water recycles, and he will be summarizing work 22 that has been done from various groups, including the Department 23 of-Energy.
- 24 DR.'DIETRICH
- 'Thank you.
O awa cea mn, Inc.
25 I'm going.to stand here so I.can point.-
1 t
G 12 '
25 (Slide. )
2 My starting point is that the options for alternate 3l fuel cycles are quite limited because of the small number of 4
pos'sible fissile and fertile materials.
There fore, it is not 5
difficult to look at all of the possibilities.
And in order 6
that you can see where i am headed, I am giving away my major 7
conclusion at the beginning.
But to elaborate a little bit on this --
g (Slide. )
9 10
-- these are the materials that are available to work 11 with. ~ Among the fissile isotopes, you have U-235, which occurs 12 naturally; the manmade isotopes, U-233 and plutonium; the 13 natural fertile materials are only U-238 and Thorium-232, and, ja of course, U-238 is converted to plutonium in the reactor and 15 thorium i's converted to U-23 3 in the reactor.
16 Now, there just aren't many combinations that you 17 could make of those materials.
But we will look at the conbina-l 18 tions that are possible.
j 19 (S lide'. )
20 First of all is the once-through uranium cycle that 21 We are using today.
In the light water reactors, natural 22 uranium is fed to the enrichment plant, it is enriched to about l 23 3 percent U-2 35 content, goes to the reactors, and the spent 24 fuel is stored.
Spent fuel contains U-235, residual U-235, I
Fede,ss recorters, Inc. I 25 most of the original U-238, plutonium, and fission properties.
mta 1+3 26 1
Now, on these slides which represent cycles, in 2
parentheses I have given the' quantities of fissile materials 3
at isotopic enrichments substantially above natural that are 4
associated with the operation for one year of a 1,000-megawatt 5
light water pressurized water reactor plant.
So you see here 6
we are feeding in 809 kilograms per year of U.-235 and coming 7
out :we have 178 kilograms of plutonium, which is put in storage.
g Remembering that it takes 'a bit less than 10 kilograms to make a 9
weapon, that represents a substantial number of potential 10 weapons; and the cooling, the storage pools that are increasing
~
11 rapidly in number and capacity throughout the world, therefore 12 represent a potential mine of weapons material.
13 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
When you say alternative 14 cycles, that is alternative to what?
15 DR. DIETRICH:
Alternative to this.
j 16 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Joe, when you get to normalization, 17 I assume from 808 or 809 kilograms, we have got a 1-GWE capacity l i
18 plant per year at 80 percent?
f 19 DR. DIETRICH:
75 percent.
20 Okay.
Now, what we like to do is recycle this spent i
21 fuel.
22 (Slide. )
23 In that case, the cycle looks like this.
Again, we 24 feed in enriched' U-235,- but not as much.
The spent fuel from
[
e.o.rw r..oonm, inc.
25 the reactors contains your residual U-235, your U-238, plutonium
.u
etc* 14 27 1
and fission prdducts.
And the reprocessing plant, the uranium, 2
plutonium and fission products are separated into three different 3
streams.
4 The uranium is recycled to the enrichment plant.
5 The plutonium is recycled directly back to the reactors.
And 6
here you see that we have somewhat more plutonium involved than 7
in the once-through cycle.
But the point is that this plutenium 8
dces not accumulate.
Plutonium formed in this particular year 9
is recycled back to the reactor and is burned up in the succeed-10 1 ing year.
11 (Slide. )
12 Now, there are economic and resource advantages to 13 the uranium cycle, particularly with recycling.
The fissile and 14 fertile materials exist together in nature.
Therefore, you needs.
15 a minimum of enrichment for peaceful uses.
The reprocessing 16 chemistry has been proved over many years of practice in full-17 scale plants.
l 18 The plutonium produced in light water reactors is an j
19 existing fuel source for breeders, and plutonium is the most 20 effective breeder fuel by a large margin.
l 21 (Slide. )
22 But, going on to another alternate, we have the l
I 23 thorium cycle.
In this case the enrichment plant turns out i
}
24 highly enriched U-235, 90 percent or better, which is mixed with '
sees r.nenm. ine.
l l
25 thorium to make fuel for the reactors.
The spent fuel contains
\\
l
ttf 16 28 1
U-235, U-233, thorium and fission products.
In the reprocessing 2
plant, we separate out the uranium and recycle it back directly 3
to the reactors, taking some makeup feed from the enrichment i
4 plant.
5 Now, both U-235 and U-233, of course, are perfectly 6
good weapon material, in fact, better than the power reactor-7 generated plutonium.
So this is not a very good cycle from the 8
proliferation point of view.
9 i
(Slide.)
10 Some comments on the characteristics of it.
It is 11 unattractive unless you do reprocess.
With recycling, it will 12 reduce slightly the uranium requirement in light water reactors 13 by about 16 percent.
But it requires the mining of both uranium 14 and thorium, so that you don't gain very much on the -- you c-2 15 don't gain at all on the recuired mining of fuel.
16 17 18 o
19 20 21 22
[
23 l
24
.JewW Roomn, loc, 25
. CR,'16 32 E'EER: jwb 29
- 3 1
It uses both U 235 and U 233 at high isotopic purity.
2 Both are weapons-usable materials.
The recycled material is 3
contaminated by a gamma ray source, which is U 232.
4 In the large and long, drawnout processes of peace-5 ful recycling, this is a real impediment, and the expensive 6
part of the deal.
But in the small-scale processes that can 7
be rapid in the case of weapons manufacture, it is not an effec-8 tive material at all.
9 So much --
10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Can you speak a little more 11 about the U 232 and what sort of hazard that poses?
12 DR. DIETRICH:
The U 232 do~es not in fact produce 13 the gamma rays, and there are a number of daughter products of 14 the thorimm 228 which do produce gamma rays.
I 15 The point is that one can separate the thorium 228 j
i 16 from the uranium and can get a material which is, for several j
17 days, not particularly gamma active.
i 18 As the thorium builds up, the radiation builds up.
l 19 After about 10 days, the radioactivity level from weapon l
20 quantities is 'still on the order of 1 R per hour, and it is 21 not really hard to work with radiation at that level.
I 22 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
You say it is more effective, 23 down there?
You say it would be f abricated during that period? !
l 24 DR. DIETRICH:
Yes.
remi smomn. ix, j
25 DR. CULLER:
The fuel that was made for the test of l
l
l-l 3 4 jwb-30 g
U 233 fuel cycle in.the Shippingport; Reactor.just recently, and j
is now there, was made in partially shielded facilities.
It is 2
. essentially weapons-grade material by solid-extraction.
They 3
got daughters from the U 238 chain.
-4 Precipitating an oxide in preparing it as oxide, 5
it was shipped to Schenectady 'and fabricated.'into fuel elements j
6 1
before the fabrication procedure was significantly interrupted 7
by the radiation buildup from the U 232 decay daughters.
8 When that occurred, the unprocessed fuel, or 9
unfabricated fuel, was recycled.to the solvent extraction plant,
'j 10 11 and it went back.to ' the same cycle.
For long-term weapons sitting around on the shelf, that 'is reasonably high.
And in 12 a slide, later, I will give you the relative difference between,
-13 say, a fuel element and U 233 in equilibrium with the decay 14 daughters.
15 The problem is:
That there is a little way,around 16 i
it, but it is a deterrent only in a specifically defined way.
l 37 DR. COHEN:
If you want to make uranium hexafluoride 18 i
for an isotope separation, you fluorinate the material.
You 39 can't fluorinate the thorium and leave it behind in its product, 20 so you also have'to do that step.
_ And that step also cleans up
- g y ur backlog.
22 DR. CULLER:
It makes the plant a little bit hot
~
~
23
-2; with thorium onL the walls.
s.o.rm c.corwr, inc.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Does this pose a. problem with j
< 25 e
L
F L
,3.3 jwb-31 L
1 the isotopes that you were discussing before?
l.
2 DR. COHEN:
I think the way around it is, as I 4 '
3 indicated, that when you make a UF-6, you begin with' relatively 4
clean material.
If you leave it in the plant for a long time, 5
it will' foul it up and be uncomfortable.
6 DR. CULLER:
May I expand that a little?
But yes it 7
is 'a problem, because the thorium is a' constant decay daughter 8
of the U-232 which is in the UF-6, and it does sit down, then, 9
and slightly activate the separation process over a long period i
10 of time.
11 No one knows exactly where it is going to go down.
12 There is real uncertainty about the degree of difficulty, but i
13 there is' significant concern about the quantity of thorium 228 14 that might be 'in the cascade, or in the centrifuge.
l 15 DR. LEVENSON:
That is for a civilian application i
16 over a long period.
17 DR. COHEN:
Yes.
It depends upon what you want'to 18 do with it.
If you just want to make a bomb and get out, it I
19 won ' t bo ther you.
j i-20 (Slide.)
1 P
21 DR. DIETRICH:- Now on the denatured thorium cycle, l
l.
you can do this by -adding U-238 to the fissiled uranium iso-l 22
.p 23 topes.
This renders them unsuitable for weapons used directly, l I
i 24
'but as-Dr. Cohen:has pointed out, it is not very difficult to l
LFewc dwonm, lac L
' 25 remove that U-238.
So the cycle looks like this.
l _-
f3.4fjwbL 33 1
The enrichment plant now does not enrich'the U-235 2
' feed to 90 percent, say, but only to about 20 percent, which 3
is considered to be denatured.
That is fed into the reactor, 4
along with thorium, as-the fuel.
5 The' spent fuel contains U-233, U-235, U-238, pluton-6 ium, and thorium.
In the reprocessing plant, you separate.out 7'
the;uraniums and recycle them, and you adjust the' enrichment 3
of what comes to the enrichment plant so F.that you keep just -
9 enough U-238, an admix, with the fissile isotopes so they are 10 not directly usable as weapons.
11
~'
Nowlagain you see that there are very substantial.
12 amounts of potential weapons material, which would have to be 13 separated from the slight amount of U-238, or the relatively 14 small amount of U-238 that is to be mixed with them.
15 But there is still.a substantial amount'of plutonium' 16 which is formed from the U-238 that is used as. denaturing.
So 17 you still are making plutonium with this cycle.
l 18 Now here I have shown it with U-235 feed.
l I
-19 (Slide.)
j I
l 20 A' variant that is sometimes talked - about is to feed ;
I 21 with U-233.
Now'of course this U-233 would have to come from 22 some other reactor, possibly from the blanket of a breeder.
23 While I won't-go through this'in detail, the
~
"24
' quantities of' fissile materials involved are comparable to fweret Cuorwrs, Inc.
]
L
'25' thoseJin the previous slide.
t l
~3/.,5 jwb-33 (Slide.)
So what we can sum up on the denatured thorium 2
3 cycles:
Again, they are unattractive, unless you have reproces-sing and recycling.
The U-233 and U-235 are rendered unsuitable 4
f r direct-weapon use by admixture of U-238.
Relatively small 5
quantities of separative work are required to undo that.
Sub-6 stantial qukntities of plutonium are formed from the U-238, and 7
some slight uranium savings are possible, comparable to the 8
thorium cycle if you recycled plutonium relative to the uranium 9
10 cycle.
ij But the reprocessing and refabrication are more 12 e mplex,.and they have not been developed.
L j3 So that covers the possibilities of alternate cycles, L
14 and I think clearly the world is headed toward alternatives to 15 the once-through uranium cycles.
16 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Why do you say that?
DR. DIETRICH:
I'm coming to that.
37 (Slide.)
18 39 Let me sum up quickly here:
The annual quantities j
i I
of fissile isotope handled do not vary greatly from one' fuel 20 21 cycle to another.
All fuel cycles yield chemically separable weapons usable materials in multiple-weapon quantities per year'~
22 fr mL1000 megawatt plants.
i 23 24 The. denatured, thorium cycles reduce the quantity of I
bee.,e n.oonm, Inc.
25 chemically' separable weapons-usable materials by about a favor i
}~
i
.t.3-6Ljwb1 34 1
of 5, relative to the uranium cycle; but they yield a large 2
quantity _ of high-quality weapons-usable materials that is
- 3 really -- that is relatively easy to separate isotopically.
4 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
You are using " weapons-usable" 5
aclittle-loosely, there.
1 mean, 20 percent material for which 6
it doesn't-take a lot of separate work.
DR. DIETRICH:' What I.mean is, it is not. practically 7
8 usable until you go through the separation process.
9 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
When you say "high-quality 10 weapons-usable,' that sounds like it is directly --
~
11 DR. DIETRICH:
Well, it is higher quality. Once you 12 have separated it, it is higher quality --
13 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I'think I know what you 1
14 mean.
{
I 15 DR. DIETRICH:
-- than power-reactor plutonium, 16 because it doesn't have plutonium 240.
l 17
- (Slide. )
l l
18 Okay, getting onto the question you asked:
The 1
1 19 pressures for fuel recycling.
20 Resource-poor nations recognize the breeder with 1
- 21 ifuel recycling as the only available route to electrical' energy 22 independence, and fuel reprocessing is alnecessary prelude to j
23
.the breeder.
i l
24 Even in the U.S. where we have substantial uranium l
Am ma ne w wn.is,
l j
- 25
. resources, the rising cost'of U-308'as' poorer ore deposits are !
.3M jwb 35 used will lead to economic pressures for recycling, even in 3
the lightwater reactors.
2 (Slide.)
3 To illustrate this, I have made -- calc 21ated these 4
curves.
Now it has been estimated that recycling of fuel is 5
marginally economic at a uranium cost of about $33 a pound.
6 7
Now clearly, whatever our uranium resource --
8 DR. DIETRICH:
That was an analysis, I believe, 9
made at Oak Ridge in about '76.
10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Of course, reprocessing 3j prices have gone up.
12 DR. DIETRICH:
So has everything else.
But I think, 13 in constant dollars, they don't.
jg
~
DR. CUILER:
Spot prices for a while were up to
[
15 044*
16 I
DR. DIETRICH:
Whatever they are today, I think the j7 history of every mineral that is mined shows that, as the 18 l
mineral gets scarcer, it gets harder to. get and the price goes 39 I
20 up.
Now I have assumed that we have 3.6 million tons of 21 U-308 in the price range between $33 and $100 per pound; and 22
_e that reactors operating on the once-through cycle would be l
23 i
24 competitive with fossil plants at costs up to $100 a pound.
(rwersnoonmsnc.!
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Where are the uranium 25 I
I
r
- 8'; jwa,..
36 figures. coming from'a 3
DR.'DIETRIL..
.. ell, 3.6 is the optimistic figure 2
in'my mind that.comes,from DOE estimates of uranium resources.
1 3
For planning' purposes, I' agree with the Conaes. Report that you 4
should use l'.8 million, but I'm being a little optimistic here.
5 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
We really don't know very 6
much about the stocks.
7 DR. CULLER:
We know quite a; bit.
And we can discuss 8
. tha t.. Unfortunately, for three studies, I have spent four or-9 so months with the raw materials people, and we don't know for 10 sure itbout any' actual resource.
But we do know what our jj reserves are, and have reasonable indications by over-flight, 12 by water analysis,'by drilling to depths of up to about 600 13 feet --
ja l
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Where?
In the United States?!
15 DR. CULLER:
In the United States.
16 i
I COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
That is something else.
j7 DR. DIETRICH:
As a matter of fact, the bigger you 18 39 assume the resource is, the bigger the savings turn out to be 20-in. this analysis.
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are these U.S. numbers?
21 DR. DIETRICH:- Yes.
22 DR. CULLER:
The'world is about'twice, or 7 6 --
23 l
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
That 3.6 or 3.7 million tons of
-24 peown riesomes, Inc.
j U-308Uhas been sort of'-- has been represented as the classic 1
25 1
1
'.l3,9.jwb 37 government wisdom, at any. rate, of the total available for some j
j i -
years now.
2 DR. CULLER:
There should be another qualification.
3 i
.DR. STARR:
If I might interrupt, I don't think this 4
i is the appropriate place to argue about the estimates on 5
uranium ore resources.
That is a whole subject all by itself.
J 6
. I think the point that Joe wants to make is indepen-7 dent of those estimates.
8 DR. DIETRICH:
However big they are, the price is 9
bound to go up as you use them up.
10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
The question is:
When?
11
.DR. DIETRICH:
Well, people are going to be just as i
12 short of money 50 years from now as they.are today, I think.
13 COMMISSIONER KENNEDY:
But the savings will increase.
j, 15 DR. DIETRICM:
Well, let me go through it, and I will make.this point at the end'.
g Now if you operate with the once-through cycle and 17 use up all of this 3.6 million tons, you will generate about 18 13 million megawatt years of electricity.
39 On de other hand, if you recycle and indeed you are 1
20 tuarginally ' economic at this point, as soon as the price begins 21 to' rise you; start to save money.
22
.. p -
And furthermore, you will ~ generate -that 13 million j
23 megawatt years of energy using only 2.4 million tons of the 24.
i
- ederet Reportws, inc.
And' calculating the. price savings, it turns out to l
rescuce.,
25 l
3-10 $1db 38 1
be about $150 billion.
2
.Now if I continued thi.s curve out, you see this-3
- is an intregal of something derived from this curve.
So the
. farther'I. carry this curve out, the bigger the savings becomes.
4 5
So the amount doesn't affect, assuming a larger 6
amount -of uranium, doesn' t decrease the savings.
It just puts 7
'it,in a different tbne frame.
8 DR. STARR:
Let's focus on the topic we are 9
addressing, which is, namely, the non-weapons states, and the 10
_ push.outside the United States.
11 For many' of these to go to recycling -- and the 12 point that Joe is trying to make -- using the numbers that we 13 have' most validly,' which' is the U.S. numbers, is :
That as you 14 get to higher-cost uranium ore, the economic pressure to go to i
15 recycling builds up.
16 It is more so in countries that don't have 'any l
37 indigenous ora resources.
And the. only point he's trying to I
18 make is:
Not to argue these numbers. relative to the topic we I
19 are discussing, but to point out that there will be economic
~
d 20 presstres, visibly, to those countries already that they. will 21 want to. push, at come future date -- what. that date is, we 22 don't.know -- into recycling.
I h.
23
' COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, I think what you say ]
I 24 is probably right.
But the crucial point is:
When is that s.o.rw n n m,inc.
23 date?'
i
, 3-11.jwb cs i
39-
.In.other words, if it is far off in the future, it j
puts.a completely different light on the whole subject.
2 DR. STARR:
If you want an analysis on that, there 3
are agencies of the government -- we can do it for you -- that 4
can make that kind of analysis, but all you have to do is look 5
at the. uranium ore resources and their distribution, and like 6
coal and oil, nature was not even handed, and there are some 7
untries that have 'more. than others.
8
.And the result.is:
that many countries that don't 9
have it, the pressure.for moving in these directions will be 10 high.~
11 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, it depends on what the 12 dollars-and-cents, or yen, tell them.
13 DR. CULLER':
The dollars and cents, we usually say:
34 recycle.
15 i
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I don' t think that 'is clear'. '
16 DR. STARR:
Well, I don' t know why you say it's not 37 clear.
It is clear to us.
I think, unless you think the price 18 of uranium ore is going to drop with time, it is clear to every Ih 39 country in'.the world -- including the nuclear industry in the 20 1
United States.
g The issue of timing is an issue of ore availability i 3
and foreign trade, and other issues.
It is no different than g
ur oil-import issue, and it is no different -- take a country 24 sworm neomm, Inc.
J
'like Japan'.
It is no.different than their problem of getting 25 ii
~.
. 121jwb-.
,'y.-
40
)
i*
1-j So the principal point that Joe is making is that we have to face the problem that the non-weapons states 3
perceive down the road as a need to recycle.
4 Now when that need is going to arise, and when that 5
i pressure is going to become very hard on them, we don't know.
6 It is' going to be different for every non-weapons state.
But 7
\\
I don't see how anyone can deny that that pressure will 8
develop.
9
'l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I know, but it is crucial to.
10 this discussion when that point is.
11 DR. STARR:
I'm sorry, Dr. Gilinsky.
We are not 12 discussing nat.ional policy, export' policy -- what we're trying 13 to establish is the technological issues that have to be-34 considered'in examining that policy.
15 And of course. the timing is going to be dif ferent 16 f r every country, and the issues have to be examined for everyl 17 i
country,. and there will be a lot-of factors of a non-technical {
18 I
nature that will get involved.
19 And of course it is crucial.
Just like the inter-20 national diplomatic' arrangement for handling prolifferation are 21 j
' crucial.-
But from the: point of view of the trend, there is no 22 question in our mind about the-pressure developing as a function 23 of~ time; 24 I
?.o m commm;inc.
DR. CULLER:
Let me suggest, I think it is a subject 25 1
l
3k,13j.wb 41 1
1-worth review some time, and if you would like we could prepare 2
one.
3 There is a report that was prepared for the President 4
on April 6th of 1977 before the announcement that analyzed this 5
very thoroughly.
It was part of the blue-ribbon panel that 6
was never published.
7 It is available, and it sums up the case ' reasonably 8
well, but we will review it for you at some point.
The argument 9
is cogent.
The tbning is, of course, crucial.
10 But whether or not reprocessing can occur in a
~
11 matrix of pr.otected -- by protection with various barriers is j
12 the subject we are talking about now.
13 We think that no matter what the concerns, that the 14 diplomatic arrangements that must be made will protect any one i
15 of several recycles; and that the agreements must exist; and i
we can provide a technology that essentially reduces, as far as l
{
16 17 the technology will allow, the risk for diversion and prolif-18 eration.
19 That is the subject.
Now the timing of when the 1
20 breeder is necessary, or when. recycle is necessary, is another i
21 subject.
And we will be delighted to do that.
22 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Why don't we move on.
23 (Slide.)
j l
24 DR. DIETRICH:
Well, I'm at the end of mine.
I l
WewsRoomn.6.
25 would just have 'the _ following conclusions:-
l C
., 44 jwb 3
42.
That the alternative to uranium-plutonium fuel
.j cycle cannot solve the perceived problem of weapons prolifera-2 3ll tion.
The alternatives may offer some assistance to institu-tional controls, but at a substantial cost in money, time, and 4
urani a resources.
5 And this.results, because the.other cycles are not 6
as good as the breeder.
7 Now the data are available now for making decisions 8
on the efficacy of the alternate cycles when they are used in 9
e njunction with institutional controls.
10 11 I think we should stop marking time and push ahead rapidly with the decisions to eliminate one of the uncertain-12 ties that is stifling the nuclear industry today.
13 Thank you.
ja DR. STARR:
Our next speaker is Dr. Floyd Culler 15 who is going to talk about the barriers to diversion -- the l
16 physical barriers to diversion, and the small military reproces-37 l
cnd #3 sing plant.
l jg i
DR. CULLER:
My purpose here is to discuss, first l
9 bag #4 39 l
of all, those, things that can be engineered into the technologyj 20 t l
f the structures that' surround the recycle of fuel to provide l 21 22
- pr tection against diversion.
s..
And you remember Dr. Starr has differentiated between 23 i
24 proliferation and diversion.
And I am going to talk about the !
1 s.owa r:.conm, inc. I b'arriers that exist, or can be engineered to exist, in the fuel 25
. 3-15 jwb' 1
cycle.
2 The first question that one must ask, however --
3 (Slide.)
4
-- are what general barriers might be available in 5
conceptual form.
6 Delay time equal to that required for a quick and 7
secret chemical plant or the terrorist action should be avail-8 able.
So national policy should not necessarily be made on 9
the time required to build a reprocessing industry, but the 10 time required for covert construction and operation of a small,
~
11 quick, chemical plant aimed at military fissile material only.
12 We are using that definition as a standard for 13 judging the delay time available from a d4 version-resistant 14 fuel cycle.
I 15 The second category are those built-in characteris-l 16 ties that will make fuel dangerous to diverters:
the physical :
1 17 danger; the additional physical deterrence and protective 18 systems that might be added to prevent access to materials.
19 one of the characteristics of the whole system of l
.20 a diversion-resistant fuel cycle is that the cost should be at :
f 21 near " commercially acceptable."
Although this is not an f
22 absolute requirement, the utility of a system that did not I..
23 provide reasonable economics would be questionable.
24 (Slide.)
l NederW Recorwes, Inc.
[
l 25
'I am going to make comments on a study that many of
,4-1f-jyb 44 you have heard about that was prepared for quiet discussion with the State Department peopler and the Arms Control Agency
.2 n how long-it might take to build and put into operation a 3
'small, chemical reprocessing plant; and to what degree it could 4
be accomplished.-
5 The memorandum was prepared'in october of -- or in 6
August of 1977, and it was published inadvertently.
The con-7 lusions of that memorandum, under the following assumptions --
8 were with the' assumptions ' that I will state -- was tha t:
It 9
~10 was probably possible'to build, and to put into operation a chemii::al' plant sufficient to extract plutonium that could be 11 fabricated into a weapon in much less than six months, 12 l-probably on the order of four; and that the plant would be g
14 small enough to reside inside of a large warehouse.
i 15 And that the conclusion, in many respects, could be done without detection.
And we believe that it is conceivable !
]
16 that the operation could occur without detection.
37 18 Let me define the characteristics of the system:
j9 First,-that.for determining time, the fissile concen tration' determines the quantity of fuel that must be diverted.
j 20
. We assume that approximately two to three fuel elements 21 e ntaining.approximately 10-killograms of plutonium would be 22 k.
.requiredper' week;andthatthechemicalplantwouldbe. designed l 23 g
=to produce about 10 killograms of pure plutonium per week.
- I peo
- s cea.nw..ine.
Fuel from a breeder system, incidentally, would havel!
25 i
1 i
'I
4 i 4 '17 jwb
- to be. stored in sodium, or a thin-walled,: cooled. canister.
I j
The breeder fuel, as a side issue here, would be more difficult, 2
j to divert than LWR fuels, because LWR fuels are stored in water filled. canals where access is easier.
4 And. note that the large chemical plants, such as-5 those at Barnwell, and the Commission plants at.Hanford and 6
Savannah River, would require now longer than four years to-7 build.
At the time the military plants were constructed,.they 8
required on:the order.of three years or so.
9
. COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
You are assuming that you 10
~
jj could operate this plant without ever having tested it?
4 DR. CULLER:
No.
Wo.have run it in.
It is included 12 in the four months, or two weeks of startup.
13
- 4 The processes -- I'm not going to describe the i
15 pr cess.-
I will, in another session.
We are somewhat chas-16 tized for discussing material condensed in an odd way, totally l 1
l 37 available material, for this quick-and-dirty plant.
l I
The people who did this used information that was j
.18
{1 available in 1956.
We assumed that there were four or five 39 1
chemical engineers who read the reprocessing literature; and 20 that there was,a_ medical community who understood shielding; I
21 and that the skills involved would be people who could run 22 bulldozers,' pour concrete, and weld stainless steel, to the 23 2g quality;that would be required in a dairy, or a winery.
i s e n s neo n m,inc.
~ Radiochemical processing; 125:
Now the plant 'is. so simple.
i 1
,,4'fB=jwb 46 a
i
~
has to be.very simple in-its operation, otherwise it could not' j
be worked behind the shields.
.2 The plant is' characteristic of some of,the'very 3
early experimental work that went on in the early separations 4
f plutonium.
I point out to you that a half-ton per day --
5
. uranium half-ton per day plant in Oak Ridge was built as' the 6
first pilotfplant in less than nine me.nths, in the. absence of 7
data, and was operated nine months after it was started.
8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
When.was this?
9 DR. CULLER:
In 1943.
10 11 It makes very little difference -- now we are defining, for this discussion,.then:
that the desirable time, 12 the warning time that a diversion-resistant fuel cycle must 13 provide, should be equal to that provided by the once-through 9
15 fuel cycle, with a simple, secret, quick-and-dirty chemical plant, which is less than six months.
16
.It is important that-you understand the definition.
j7 f
(Slide,)
18 39 With these definitions, then, what are the barriers that are available-for diversion?
20 I
First, the. bulk or weight-of the fuel element, 21
- 22 including - 'in the-case of shipping -- the weight of the o
L shielding in the carrier.
23 Second, radiation.
Radiation that can provide ---
24
%oord Newniinc. !
I DR.gSTARR:-
Excuse me.-
If you are looking in your 25 l L
1
' 4 49
>'b.
47 l
book, the chart is several pages beyond.
3 DR. CULLER:
It is about nine pages beyond'.
I'm 2
3
- Y*
Radiation that is allowed to accompany the process 4
and fuel materials; and that which might be added.
A " barrier" 5
is a lack of purity, a denaturant in uranium.or thorium, or 6
with uranium or thorium in U-233, or there is no dilutant for 7
plut nium except one that will provide for head: production.
8 Plutonium 238 can be produced in sufficient quantity 9
in lightwater cycles so that weapons quantities of plutonium 10 11 will melt in metal state if they are stored for a long time in an uncooled condition.
12 The number of recycles that are required to produce 13 plutonium 238 in this concentration naturally in the LWR cycle ja is slightly in excess of 3, assuming that neptunium, which is l
15 16 a small product in the recycle stream, is concentrated and that
.all of the uranium 236 in the cycle goes back to the reactor l
j7 and is not separated in the diffusion plant.
l jg The next barrier is " ease of detection."
-ie 19 An ther barrier that can be provided is " hardening 20 the. structures and the process so that intentional intervention li 21 t
remove fissile material at interstages in-a reprocessing 22 plant r a fabrication. plant becomes relatively difficult:. "
l 23 24 Physical isolation by walls,l barriers, monitored
- b. owc a.conmiinc.
i facility which receives and ships fuel elements.
And that says ;
25 l
i L
i
- 4'2'O,j$b
'l -
48 that we are proposing - a-system in which the code decontamination j
and co-location occurs.
2 3
Reprocessing and ' fabrication are sited together.
E'uel elements are received, processed, refabricated, and fuel 4
elements are shipped.
i 5
Guards and physical security.
There must be a means 6
fortan inspector to intentionally disable certain portions of 7
the plant -- a point that will require some discussion.
8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you going to come back 9
to that?
10 jj DR. CULLER:
Yes.
I am going to come back to this at the end.
12 j3 And last of all, we assume all of these operations ja to occur in a systes of accountability and safeguards that i
15 pr vides a full-time resident inspector with an accountability i
16 system capable of giving a real-time signal in case diversion 17 l
occurs.
(Slide.)
18 l-To give you some iciea of the bulk and quantities of
'e i
19 20 material that are involved, and the quantities that move through, the fuel cycles of different kinds -- a different way of 21 summing'up with Dr. Dietrich has said -- in an LWR once-through 22 23-cycle,'a reprocessing plant, per gigawatt year, will, handle i
24 approximately 150 killograms', or 170 killograms-of plutonium federd Cooorwn, Inc.
25 with plutonium recycle, the plutonium will disappear.
i
.l
L.4-2,14 jwb 49 J
l i
Per-gigawatt-year, then, the total fissile material that is consumed is on the order of 300 killograms, including the plutonium that is recycled.
With a CANDU natural uranium 3
i I
i reactor, the quantity of material per gigawatt years of fiss'ile 4
material plutonium is on the order of 380 killograms per giga-j watt year.
In CANDU with denatured thorium, a theoretical reactor 7
not designed, the quantity is as indicat'ed.
With an HTGR with highly enriched uranium, about 200 killograms'of fissile material U-233 is available.
10
~
HTGR with the denatured thorium cycle, a slight excess of plutonium is indicated by the bar. - The LMFBR in full recycle modes --
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I want to make sure I under-14 1
stand this.
Obviously you are burning this stuff up, but you i
15 i
are also producing it.
What does the minus mean, there?
17 i
DR. CULLER:
The minus says that most of the materiali 18
/
produced is in the reactor and being burned; and in the year's i
19 i
- cycle, this quantity of fissile material will be consumed by the reactors.
21 j
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
But someone else is producing!
22
.j' it.
23 DR. CULLER:
It depends.
It could be a closed 24 e
"C'**"'"*' recycle.. The net cycle has to be that the plutonium U-235'or_
25 i
l.
4-24 jwb 50 U-233 is consumed.
So that the available material outside of
)
the reactors is of the order --
2 3l DR. STARR:
All this does is show you the amount of I
i material coming out of a chemical plant that pulls out the 4
fissile material.
5 DR. COLLER:
Of a closed cycle in which a eflemical 6
plant is involved.
7 For those of you who are following, the next slide g
I'm going to skip..
Another piece of background information 9
that is necessary, perhaps, is the minimum amount of material 10 that may be required to be diverted for one weapon equivalent.
11 (Slide.)
12 These estimates are shown in this slide.
For pure 13 U-233, approximately 4 to 5 killograms.
Pure plutonium 239, j4 i
perhaps 5 killograms.
Reactor-grade plutonium, on the order i
15 i
i of 10 killograms, with co-processed uranium plus plutonium in 16 l
CIVEX --
j7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Where do you get these 18 l
2 numbers from?
39 DR. CULLER:
These are taken from testimony given 20 before the House and Senate by the Los Alamos and 'Livermore I
21 I
people, and from a report prepared to the GAO on proliferation l 22 11-8 ** Di"* "9
- 23 There is a similar OTA report.
They are not from 24 sas.c %nm inc.
the classified literature.
l 25
3
,.,4s23-jwb-51 The significant items, I suspect, are that approxi-3 mately ne LMFBR fuel subassembly must be diverted, two to 2
three LWR fuel assemblies, and 40 CANDU assemblies, as a starting 3
point to producing one weapon in a small quick-and-dirty 4
chemical plant, or in an operating -- the material diverted froro 5
an parating commercial reprocessing assembly..
6 (Slide.)
7 These fuel elements weigh approximately a half ton 8
per fuel element, and would require in multiple array probably 9
shields on the order of 40 to 60 tons.
So the diversion 10 11 process _itself is not an easy one.
The next deterrent is the inherent radiation of the 12 fuel element.
A fresh fuel element, will provide the doses 13 shown in this slide in rem per hour.
Surface dose, as indi-y 15 cated in 3 feet in air, after discharge, of approximately one 4
16 year, 10 rem, in 3 feet of water, as indicated.
The horizontal bars are to indicate the range in 37 which physical impairments can occur.
At about 100 R, the 18 39 onset of sickness and such, in several hours may be indicated; l
surely at 150.
And as most of you know, the lethal dose for 20 50 percent of the people exposed is on the order of 450 R.
21 The next criteria for a barrier would be the degree 22
.r to which materials diverted could be detected.
The pure U-233 23 l
24 the actual field' strength in rem per hour is given.
se-w neoonm, ine, (Slide.)
j 25
.,4-G4 jwb 52 There is a transposition of the pure U-238 and the 3
reactor grade PUREX purified plutonium.
The pure plutonium 2
3 239 is always less active and less easily detected than reactor I
4l grade materials.
Co-processed uranium plus plutonium from CIVEX for 5
one year decay, the field is shown for three-year decay.
The 6
second bar, LMFBR, is two spent assemblies and 40 CANDUs, the 7
relative radiation levels.
3 (Slide.)
9 10 I The next chart sums.up this radiation hazard.
~
11 First off, the dose-rated 2 feet in R-per-hour, and the time 12 required to disable to an exposure of about 150 rem, has been calculated.
13
'14 Pure plutonium:
very long period of time, perhaps i
15 on the order of 10 years or more.
For U-233, an equilibrium i
16 for commercial grade U-233, an equilibrium with its decay l
l daughters.
Decay periods of a week to several days, 37 i
And with partial shielding, probably two weeks to a 18 I
With CANDU subassemblies fresh, appr5ximately one hour- ;
month.
j9 i
I'm sorry.
With one-year cooling modified CIVEX, five-year 20 cooling of the order of --
21 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What is " modified CIVEX"?
22 DR. COLLER:
Milt Levenson will be describing
- 3. 3 24
" modified CIVEX" to you.
i Soderet Reco,ters, Inc.
j 25 With CIVEX, one year cooling, essentially one minute,l I
4-AS jwb j
53 1
and a PWR assembly,.several seconds.
j This gives you a relative hierarchy of hazards.
So 2
3 l our CIVEX plants are being conceived of with a built-in, or 1
allowed radioactivity in a range from requiring physical 4
exposure hazard of times of one minute, to an hour or so.
5 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Where would you put, say, 6
one;of your old, spent fuels -- 20-year-old spent fuel?
7 i
DR. CULLER:
That would be in the range of the 8
9 I return to the plutonium 238 --
10
~
11 (Slide.)
-- f r illustration here.
The plutonium 238 produc-12 tion for isotopic dilution of commercial-grade plutonium with p
34 lightwater cycles is an interesting. possibility for additional degradation.
It is an annoyance for anyone who presumably 15 i
16 w uld divert plutonium as a terrorist diverter, because the l
built-in heating potential from plutonium 238 in the concen-
- 7 l
18 tration ranges of 2 to 6 percent will change the metallurgical'j l
39 properties of metalic plutonium to such an extent that critical l "l
l mass. could not be achieved in a normal working weapon by the l
20 built-in heat potential.'
21 I
Concentrations of the order of 6 to 9 percent of 22
.h-23 plutonium 238inplutonium239canbeachievedinnormalopera-j i
24 tion of the normal LWR cycle with minor modifications.
The D.o.rw r.oor m s,Inc.
c anium cannot return to the diffusion cascades.
And most of 25
,4-2q j,wb l
54 I
the neptunium should be recovered to follow the plutonium in 2
recycle.
3 So that this option of isotopic dilution adds an 4
additional barrier potential for a CIVEX-like diversion resistan:
5 cycle.
6 I have suggested, then --
7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Where does the 238 come 8
from?
9 DR. CULLER:
From a radiation during the normal 10 burnout period to, say, 33,000 megawatt days per ton of fuel 11 elements in a reactor.
If plutonium is recycled, and if U-236 12 is allowed to remain in uranium which is recycled back to the 13 reactor, then it is possible to naturally build in plutonium 14 238 in 239 to the extent that I have shown in that slide to 9 15 percent in 2-1/2 or 3 cycles.
16 DR. STARR:
The. principal point here is that 238 17 is a substance which decreases and makes very marginal the 18 availability of this material for weapons purposes.
And it is 19 a technical parameter that has to be taken into consideration.
~
20 DR. CULLER:
I have listed, then, nine-or-so 21 barriers that are potentially available for protecting recycled 22 chemical and fuel fabrication plants from diversion.
i 23 The one point to which I wish to return is the idea 24 that, in spite of all of the physical barriers that can be 4.o.rw n. con m,inc.
25 built into the plant, if one is to achieve a delay time
4-27:jwb
'd.
i.
55 1
equivalent to that, that would be provided by a once-through
.1 2
fuel cycle and a simple quick-and-dirty chemical plant in ene 3-
. set of conditions in. a reprocessing facility that will be 4
necessary to disable the salt, the chopper, or the dissolver 5
for the following reasons:
6 If a chemical plant exists, one that is operating 7
commercially, and fuel has been placed into solution, uranium 8
and plutonium are dissolved, it is possible to gain access to 9
that stream and, with a carefully prepared ion exchange system, 10 to move that into place in approximately 10 days.
11
~
So in order to allow for the contingency of having 12 an existing chemical plant from which the diversion of a 13 dissolved stream into a preprepared purification system for 14 plutonium, 13 is probable that we would provide a mechanism for 15 disa ing some of the equipment, or making it impossible to use.
16 Not to the point of destruction, but 'so that it would take time 17 to repair.
18 We would probably be punching a hole in the dissolver, 19 or making the ram that drives the chopper inoperative, or 20 destroying some piping that connects one system to another so 21 that decontamination and repair would be required.
22 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
How would you do that?
23 DR. CULLER:
There' are systems that are available.
24 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you talking about an s e e s C = = n m.inc i
25
' automatic system?
a v
j',4~E4 $FD-56 1
.DR.. CULLER:. No, not automatic.
It would have to
[2 be activated by an inspector as' he leaves, or by other 3
mechanisms that could be operated remotely.
4 (COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What do you mean, "as he 7
5 leaves"?
Is he going to press a button?
6 DR. CULLER:
Yes.
7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What, and set off an 1
8 explosive?
9 DR. CULLER:
Perhaps.
10 DR. STARR:
Well, there is a whole category of 11 thing's-that can be done to disable commercial operations, but 12 there is a-policy problem involved.
And there are of course i
13 diplomatic _ problems involved in those things, i
{
14 But the key point, I think'from a technical point i
15 of view, that has to be remembered is:
What you are'really t
16 talking about is modification, or. bleeding of material'from 17 commercial processes into something that has been preestablished 18 to take care of that material.
And it depends upon when you 19 measure what warning time.
The warning time from the time you 20 tamper with the commercial operation?
Or from the time that l
21 the nation starts preparing to get into that case?
i 22 And there are a whole set of scenarios that can be-
-l 23 run, and -there are remedial measures.
But it is a question of-i 24 howl much any nation would permit an international inspection.
j and'#4
- WwW Meo,ws lM.
]
25
.,s j - =,
MC'R-16 3 2 '
57
- HEE R '
t-5 mte.11.
- These are very important points, but they real..y get 2
very - complicated.
3 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
I would be surprised-if an 4
equivalent of NRC would permit you. to attach explosives.
-5 DR. CULLER:
It may be just. a guillotine shear that 6
drops in place, 7
DR. STARR:
On the contrary, anything that stops an 8
operation, I don't know why a regulatory agency would object.
9 COMHISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, there are certain health 10 and safety consequences.
+
11 DR. CULLER:
No, none.
12 DR. LEVENSON:
We're talking about the equivalent of 13 NASA explosive bolts, which is a proven, stabilized technology, 14 and these 'are on a capsule with people in it.
15
.DR.1 STARR:
I think.we're on a very delicate and 16 sensitive subject.
And if you will permit me, let's skip this.
l 17 And we are running out of time.
And I prefer to have Milt 18 Levenson pick up with what you can do with a reprocessing plant.
19 DR. LEVENSON:
Basically, reprocessing sometimes has i
l 20 been'losthas to what it really is.
There are many, many systems 21 for separating various products from mixtures.
- The individual l
22.
steps are allL what chemical engineers call standard unit
?23
. operations, s involving' extraction precipitation.
24 It.. has : also become' lost in history that PUREX isn ' t.
Omeb Cowwn. In L25 the L only i process', and that,' :indeed,. it came pretty f ar along f
.t L
.~
. c'.
+
12 '
58 a
j the system' and the idea of ~ tailoring schemes to-meet a new set 2
of. criteria did not start-with CIVEX.
3 (Slide. )
4 The lists here are all processes which have operated 5
in production plants l on large scales.
The original BiPO-4 6
process was to require plutonium during the war.
It recovered-7 most of the plutonium, 90 to 95 percent, The waste was fission 8
products and large ancunts of miscallaneous salts.
9
- You go on through there.
PUREX came along rather 10 later to get a better waste stream and some higher efficiencies;
~
11 bomb recycle project plants which continue to run today to 12 separate americium from. plutonium.
13 (Slide.)
14 Fuel processes for various reactor fuel el'ements:
15 The teTR, the nuclear propulsion reactors;' the last two, which 16 shouldn't be classed as productions, but have been. clearly.
17 demonstrated.
j 18 (Slide.)
19 There are special. processes that make the U-238:
20 Pursnap, as Floyd. mentioned; the U-233 for Shippingport, the 21 last-list there, have all operated for long periods of time.
22 Basically, the idea that if you want a new objective
'23 you'can tailor a process to meet it.
It is pretty well s.tandard 24 and accepted and proven - technology._
sans namnm. irt 25 (Slide. )
1 i
.. a mto 3' 59 1
1 I think you have all probably seen our one set of 2
CIVEX criteria.
There can be other sets, and I think it is 3
f airly clear that one can. tailor processes to meet the criteria 4
that you want to set.
5 (Slide.)
6 CIVEX should not be considered as: single flow sheet.
7 There is a whole set of technical options.
They include the 8
last one here, as was mentioned, the PU-238.
There are 9
non-aqueous _ pr'ocesses.
10 The modification to CIVEX that Commissioner Gilinsky
~
11 asked about includes the recycle of Cesium along with the other 12 things recycled.
Exxon,:as a matter of fact, has a patent that 13 has now been issued on doing that.
So that is slightly beyond 14 just paper considerations.
15 (Slide.)
16 Classically, the PUREX plant, which is what most people l
17 are talking about today -- I include the reprocessing part of the 18 plant in a shielded facility, and certainly at the left-hand i
19 end of that material' becomes more accessible than the rest of 1
20 it.
21 There is accessiblity in shipping, there is fuel 4
22 fabrication when you recycle, and ' there are f uel elements.
. b-l 23 (Slide. )
l I
24 The basic concept of t6e CIVEX was to eliminate what sene caemn. is 25 were considered the sensitive areas.
Everything, including the i.
t
9,
- c. -
6d 60 I
fuel fabrication, is inside the highly-shielded radioactive 2
areas, and even the fuel elements which have to be returned to 3
the reactor are in that same category.
And there is basically 4
nowhere where material is easily or readily available.
5 (Slide.)
6 This Floyd previously showed -- the radiation from 7
spent fuel.
This compares the CIVEX and modified CIVEX fuel l
8 compared to the PWR spent fuel element in the range of four or 9
five years.
The unmodified CIVEX moves down toward the lR per 10 hour1.157407e-4 days <br />0.00278 hours <br />1.653439e-5 weeks <br />3.805e-6 months <br /> range.
By leaving the Cesrc.m in, you certainly run out
~
11 past '20 years above the 500R.
12 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you leaving it in or are 13 you adding it?
14 DR. LEVENSON:
You are leaving it in.
The original 15 CIVEX did not leave it in, and this requires no outside source 16 of anything.
In fact, we assume you lose half of it during 17 the reprocessing.
We are assuming relatively low efficiency 18 for the keep-it-in operation, just 50 percent of what is there 19 naturally.
20 DR. STARR:
For fuel element reasons, why, tradi-21 tionally Cesium is undesirable in the fuel elements, and the 22 Exxon patent removes that difficulty as a technical issue of the 23 chemical nature' of the binding of the Cesium.
l 24 DR. LEVENSON:
-Basically, the Exxon patent reduces l
ca n e Q u = n m inc.
25 the volatility of the Cesium to the point where it doesn 't t
6 Eta 5 61 distill out when you fire the pellets.
It makes it more of a 3
2 ceramic material, and it just stays with the oxide.
But as 3
important as perhaps physically disabling is the matter of 4
when you get warning, what do you do with the time.
And we feel 5
an important part of that is the detectibility or locatability of diversion or theft.
6 (Slide.)
7 Now, this shows detection probability of the diverted 8
fuel.
The line on the left is the standard, currently conceived 9
10 idea of portal monitors.
And what can you detect if somebody 11 takes it out a door or gate or what have ynu?
We have gone one l
12 step further and said there 'may be doors and gates you don't 13 know about, so you would really like to monitor from outside 14 the plant, in fact, outside the fence; per.imeter monitor.
And 15 of course, that moves sWastantially, over an order of magnitude 16 to the right, the probability of detecting one gram of material 17 being removed.
I 18 Now, highly purified materials, of course, fall some-19 wh,at in between those two curves, and some things even might 20 fall to the lef t of the lef t curve.
There's a serious question 21 whether you really can detect one gram of highly purified 22 material being taken out.
But the minute you move the radiation '
. l:
23 level up to the level of CIVEX or spent fuel, which are indexed j 24 at the top, then it becomes fairly clear that even as small a i
-femi nummn. ix.
25 quantity as one gram is very close to 100 percent probability I,
0$ '
a6 62 1
of detection.
And when you talk about kilograms or subassemblies,
2
'you are way of f the chart to the right.
And if somebody steals 3
it, you can probably overfly a city in a plane and find out 1
4 where it has gone.
5 And we believe that the certainty ' f detection of o
6 diversion is a very important part of this total picture, and 7
that that is something you gain substantially from leaving i
8, radioactivity with the fuel.
9 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you talking about the i
10 new CIVEX?
11 DR. LEVENSON:
That is the unmodified.
12 DR. STARR:
The key po' int on this detection issue that 13 comes back to the question you asked before, Dr. Gilinsky, is l
14 the f act that if one of the international diplomatic arrangements 15 is one of sanctions in response to a visible thing, the time 16 elecent involved is not just the time element of taking the j
17 material out of the plant, the time element essentially of 18 getting it to a weapons del'ivery capability.
And if you are 19 able to follow the flow of that material and know where it is, 20 your ability to internationally handle the problem is enhanced 21 from a technical point of view substantially.
And that -is why 22 detectibility is so important.
23 Well, I'm going to try to close as rapidly as - I can, i
l (Slide. )
24 Wens C=orwn,1=.
25 We have. some just surmary points which we would like i
L l
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48*
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i$ts:7f 63 s
1 to make ' out' of the whole thing, f rom - our point of view relative L o - the problem of how the technology is made to interact with 4 t
2 3
the diplomacy, if you wish.
All reactor cycles have similar I
l
-4 diversion sensitivity.
There are technical details that are 5
different, but the issues of conceirn are all of roughly equal 6
concern.
i 7
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
If I might stop you there, on 8
your first chart you had dif ferent numbers of doubts.
9 DR. STARR:
For different parts of the cycle.
But all j
10 of the. cycles-have similar parts.
11 C'OMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
All 'the cycles are recycling 12 material?
' 13 DR. STARR:
Yes.
And as a matter of fact, if you 14 take out the recycling, then you drop almost all of the alterna-15 tives except the once-through cycle, of which there are only 16 two, the heavy water cycle and the light water reactor cycle.
. 17 So as 'soon as you start looking at alternatives to what you l
18 have commercially, they are. equally sensitive.
The technical 19 barriers can minimize diversion risk from terrorist or sudden 20 national' decisions.
In other words, if you make things so l
21 difficult that an overnight action cannot take place, and you' re 1
=22-going to have to take weeks or conths or s'emething to do some-23 thing.
24 Premeditated _ national, diversion is the principal risk.,
t-s.a e r:.oonm, Inc.
.y, 25 Technology. cannot' prevent premeditated national diversion.
We 1
~
o,.
I 8'
64 1
are saying now there is no technical way to stop it.
Technology 2
can aid inspection.
Technology can increase warning time.
i I
3 Diversion from enrichment facilities is an independent,
I i
4 threat.
Plant operating skills are not suitable for engineering 5
design and development.
This is a different topic, but it is a 6
technical topic.
Teaching a man how to run a purchased installa-7 tion will not teach him how to design it or how to change it or a
how to manipulate it in terms of diverting material.
It is a 9
different set of skills.
10 To put an extreme case, an extreme analogy, the p'ilot
~
11 of an airplane is hardly in a position to design an aircraf t.
l 12 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What is the thought there?
13 DR. STARR:
Thei. is a big issue on the export of 14 know-how, and I want to come to that.
The plant operating 15 skills are not suitable for engineering design and development.
16 Nuclear cycle design information is widely disseminated.
There 17 are books on all of this stuff.
l i
18 (Slide. )
l let me come to -- the nub of this is that practi-l 19
- Now, j
l 20 cal know-how comes from direct development experience.
Just i
21 reading a book on airplane design isn't going to make an airplane I
22 that won't crash.
You really have to be involved in the develop-h 23 ment of one of these things to know what to do.
f 24 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
This squares with what Floyd Femi namnen, inc 25 was saying earlier..
l
s.
69 65 1
DR. STARR:
Well,- it turns out that there are a bunch 2
of guys all over the world in every country that we have given 3
some know-how experience to.
But there is a big difference 4
between the export of technology in a book sense t..a the export 5
of f abricated equipment that has high technology in it and 6
teaching people, essentially, how to carry through and develop 7
that technology, and that difference is something that I'm sure 8
you're going to be concerned about in some of your deliberations.
9 The commercial availability of a recrocessing plant 10 would remove the need for independent national developments.
11 We feel very strongly, because of the point that was made by 12 Joe Dietrich, daat many countries perceive a future need for 13 recycling fuel.
They will start developing their know-how on 14 their own with experimental installations.
And there may be a 15 very serious issue of whether you may at some point wish to 16 make commercial plants available on a purchase basis to avoid 17 their going into their own independent development.
l 18 We have history already.
The British development after l
19 the war and the French development af ter the war, that was the 20 direct result of the U.S. not making such things available.
21 The light water reactor fast reactor CIVEX system 22 reduces diversion risk from recycling to the level of stored 23 spent ' fuel.
I 24 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
When you refer to CIVEX here, www neoonen, inc.
25 are you' referring to a. specific process?
Eto 10' 66 I
1 DR. STARR:
To that category of process that we will 2
describe, namely, processes that never separate pure plutonium, 3
that never go to concentrations above that needed for fuel, 4
that carry radioactivity with them all the way through the 5
process.
6 COMHISSIONER GILINSKY:
But it seems to me there are 7
differences among those processes.
8 DR. STARR:
Oh, ye s, s ure.
But they all have that 9
same general characteristic.
They all meet the same -- roughly 10 the same criteria.
11
~
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, just looking at your 12 chart, it seems to me there is a' big difference whether you kept 13 the Cesium in there or you didn't.
14 DR. CULLER:
It does, but that is an option.
That is 4
15 an option to the degree of difficulty.
16 DR. STARR:
There are technical dif ferences on all 17 of these things.
But Dr. Levenson made several points.
One 18 was, he designed the process to meet almost any set of criteria i
l j' 19 in a reasonable way that you want to achieve.
And secondly, 20 the thing that separates the CIVEX concept from the PUREX 21 concept was the difference between producing pure materials, 22 which is what is created, which is our concern with the commer-cial CIVEX plants and plants which do not separate pure materiai[
,23 24 and leave them in an impaired -form, from the point of view of w n.oon.n. inc.
25 accessibility'for weapons.
i
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I g, y y *. ' -
67 1
COMMISSIONER' GILINSKY :
'But presumably you're now 1
.1 2
talking.about a family of options.
J
-3 DR..STARR:.
Yes, within CIVEX as a family of options,
f' 4
The specific proposah that.we gave as an example for CIVEX wa;.
5 what we thought' would be the cheapest and quickest way to meet
]
6 these criteria, because they represent a minimum moditication 7
fro:4 the PUREX process, of which there is big industrial develop-8 ment..
9
'DR.'
LEVENSON:
Let me point out that a PUREX plant j
10 built' in France would be optimized dif ferently than one built 11 in the U.S., because the one in France only has to handle PWR 12 fuel, which is significantly different from BWR fuel; 'whereas a 13 plant in this country has to handle two.
In all cases, we're 14 talking about families of things.
15 COMMISSIONER ' GILINSKY :
Of course, they would want to 16
' reprocess for exports.
1 17 DR. STARR:
That is not why they. built it originally.
j 18 DR. CULLER:
The question that you ask, there are 19 differences, but they probably make. relatively minor differences 1
20 in. cost, because the big costs are involved in tge fabrication 21 step because of the quality of uranium that follows with the 22 hot plutonium, or' the hot uranium that follows.
The other 23 changes are technical changes-that' can be ' made to work chemi-24-
~cally. 'or metallurgically _ in the plants that are set up.
They are Nws m.oo,w,,,1 ne.
t (25
'not great problems.; They require,a little development.
l I
.g.
mto 12 68 I
COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
A point that concerned me 2
about your original proposal was that, given the length of time 3
most of the. fuel would be. in storage, it wasn't applicable to 4
the stock of fuel that we now have or will have for some years.
5 Now, that may be-affected by going to a different process.
6 DR. CULLER:
It is not different.
All we did was to 7
taks one fission product and allow it to stay in.
8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
What I'm saying is, if you 9
say generally CIVEX, I wondered what you have in mind.
10 DR. STARR:
I would like to go on with this point.
Il Ti.e sp :ific point is that there is a category of plant -- we 12 gave the CIVEX concept as illustrative of that category -- which 13 represents, from our point of view, the maximum technical har-14 dening that you can get out of a complete cycle, and that is 15 achievable.
And the fact is, you can go a certain distance on 16 technical hardening of the system and it is achievable; and that 17 we proposed something that wasn't achievable now or isn't i
18 achievable now, based on technology now, but there'is a whole J
I9 family that will fit this.
20 That last point is very important, that reasonably 21 achievable technical hardening can substantially reduce the 22 probability of the fuel cycle as a source of weapons material.
23 Because, you see, there'are a lot of things that countries can 24 do independently.
They can build small enrichment;-- separating a.o.re n. con.n, inc.
25 enrichment' facilities.-
They can build a small production
-l 5
t
mt3 13 '
69 1
reactor and a small separation plant.
)
2 But we are talking here about commercial plants.
3 (Slide. )
4 Now, these last two charts -- and these are the last 5
two -- are, to our point of view, just as important as anything 6
we've said about the technical options.
We don't believe 7
technology can work alone.
It needs international political 8
agreements and institutions to be ef fective.
There is no use 9
giving you warning time detectability if you don't use it.
The 10 1 key to cooperation with any nation with international arrange-11 ments is confidence in the availability of the fuel supply not 12 subject to external political decisions, in the efficacy of 13 international inspection procedures, in the international 14 sanctions in response to disclosed diversion activities.
15 If these things don 't exist, all of the assets of the l
16 technology aren't going to get us ed.
17 (Slide. )
I 18 And there are certain things at the International I
C' 19 Atomic Energy, which has responsibility in inspection, will have 20 to do which they are not yet gearing up to do.
They will need 21 to promulgate safeguarding and accountability rules, strengthen 22 the international inspectorate, establish technical criteria 23 for inspectability of nuclear cycles, power and research 24 reactors, establish real-time international flow patterns of JewW Rmo,wes. Inc, 25 nuclear materials.
i l
I
.mta 14.
70 1
You could visualize a wall chart the way you see in 2
all of the war movies, where, instead, of the airplanes and the 3
fleets being marked, you've got batches of nuclear material and 4
you have real-time information on where they are in the world 5
and where they are moving.
And they need to provide mechanisms 6
for unambiguous determination of diversion based on technical y
signals.
If the technical signals come out of the system.and 8
somebody in some office doesn't know what to do with them, it 's 9
not going to help you very much.
10 There has to be some very real consideration as to 11 what are unambiguous signals.
12 Well, those are the things that we feel have to be 13 done internationally in the diplomatic area, in the international 14 arrangement area, to make the technical capabilities fully 15 utilized.
16 That concludes our briefing.
I have some other l'7 comments, but there aren' t time for these.
Maybe on some other l 18 occasion.
-l 19 I did want to tell you what I thought you might want 20 to consider when you start asking the questions:
How safe is 21 safe enough'in the diversion area?
And when you get to that 22 question, maybe I will talk with you about it.
,.b-23 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
How do you react to the AIF I
24 report on this subject?
l I
.FMme Rmormn, Inc.
25 DR. STARR:
The AIF review of CIVEX indicated that, as
Bh 15
71 1
far as U.S.
industry was concerned, CIVEX was a feasible opera-2 tion, and they said it would probably do what we said it would 3
do.
So we look upon the AIF report as an independent industrial l
4 confirmation by the people who have to run a fuel plant, a fuel 5
assembly and a fuel plant, that these were acceptable sugges-6 tions.
7 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
These are pretty hot elements.
Is 8
there anybody on the operating side that has scratched his head 9
and stopped to think what the fuel vaults would look like and 10 the incoming trucks and casks, and how you got the new elements 11 out?
12 DR. LEVENSON :
Joe, if I might.
We don ' t have to 13 postulate anything, because they already all exist.
Every 14 operational water reactor today takes fuel out and stores it a 15 while and has provisions for putting it.back in.
And therefore 16 the technology is all there.
They are all prepared to transfer -
l 17 hot fuel elements to casks.
The stuf f coming back will be l
l 18 somewhat less hot than what they take out.
So the same casks, j
19 the same canals, the same handling the equipinent.
20 We don't postulate that it takes any technology.
It l
21 takes a slight increase in canal size, but it doesn't even take 22 that because the canal size today is choked by the fact that x-23 there is no reprocessing.
If you relieve that constipation by l
24 reprocessing, the current canals will handle it.
anw t.oomn, inc.
25 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Can you takia an element backup, thei 1
Sto 16'S '-
72 1
sort of transfer locks that are typical between the pool and the 2
reactor storage pool, without damage?
3 DR. LEVENSON:
That is-done now.
4 5
l-g 7
8 9
10 11
~
12
'13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1
20 21 22
'23 24 f.oww nosonen, Inc.
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73 32.06.1 pv. I CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
Mostly, can't you get a full 1
2 core up in the top of the pool?
I f you've got a f ull amount 3
for two months, why, you can do something down in the bottom 4
of the vessel.
I am not sure.
You would run all the way out.
5 Do you remember, Joe?
6 DR. DIETRICH2-Well, that can be done, but the 7
'transf er mechanism is absolutely reversible.
It goes both 8
ways.
9 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
We have normally regarded the 10 incoming fuel as something which is enclosed in nylon and 11 co.tton, and dealt with eyeball-close, nose-to-the-element, 12 with white gloves, and keeping people from. breathing on it and 13 not being able to pat it on the way in seems to sort of a 14 cultural shock.
15 DR. STARR That is why the industry committee of 16 the AIF was originally quite' concerned.
And what they said i
17 was whether this really represented enhanced dif ficulty.
It la turned out to be a minor issue, and that is what the AIF 19 report said.
2D COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Joe, if you assume that on 21 that chart you had with the comparison of the recycling, on a 22 once-through cycle, if you assume that recycling is based on 23 CIVEX, does that change the $33 amount?
24 DR. DIETRICH:
I have not looked at that question.-
25 DR. CULLER:
Yes, it would change.
The principal ACE-FEDERAL' REPORTERS, INC. (202)347-3700
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change _ would be in the ' fuel f abrication.. The chemical 2
reprocessing would probably be cheaper because of the number 3
of cycles and operations that were reduced.
The fabricat' ion f
4 behind the shield remotely would probably add-15 to 20 percent 5
of'the cost of the fabrication, which is around $150 or so for 6
-a kilogram.
7 Now, this.does not significantly add to the cost of 8
electricity, since the recycle or the fuel cycle is only about 9
10-12 percent of the cost of _ electricity.
So, although it is 10 significant to that part of the cycle. It is not significant 11 to the cost of electricity.
12 DR. STARR There is one other ' comment.
Nobody 13 knows what the cost of a commercial recycling system would be 14 because we have never had one.
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Well, what about the $337 16 HDR. STARR Well, these are done by the people _at 17 Oak Ridge or elsewhere who have to make the sort of 13 experienced estimate of what such a plant would cost to build, 19 what. it would' cost to operate, and assuming eouilibrium 20 operation, they come out with cost-per-kilogram.
This is' 1
21 traditional in any projection in a field in which you don't 22 have empirical evidence.
23-
.DR. CULLER:
We have pretty good big-scale costs 24 from the operation of Savannah River and Hanford and the.
-25 British.and French plants, and scaling on the changes in the l ACE-FEDERAL; REPORTERS, INC.. (202)347-3700
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pv-I head end and the different materials controls.
So, it is a 2
little. bit risky, but we know within 10 or 15 percent of what l
3 it.is likely to cost.
4 DR. STARR The GE study we had done of the total 5
system said within the ability to predict numbers today, which l
6 is somewhat limited, the increase in fabrication costs is 7
probably no greater 'than the decrease in reprocessing costst 8
and, therefore, within the accuracy of estimates, they think d#A 9
it is a wash.
<. #B 10 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Didn't GE do a cost --
1I didn't it do a study on spiking, which indicated pretty 12 substantial cost increases?
13 DR. LEVENSON:
They started out with PUREX and did 14 all of the, reprocess.ing and then back-contaminated.
And if 15 you look at the figure in here, the cartoon which shows the 2
16 PUREX conversion to CIVEX, about two-thirds of the comoonents i
17 and hardware of the PUREX plant disappear when you go to 13 CIVEX - second cycle, third cycle, solvent purification.
j 19 There is a substantial savings which GE did not 20 figure into that report.
j I
21 COMMISSIONER GILIKNSKY:
Are you saying that the l
22 savings in reprocessing compensate?
23 DR, LEVENSON3 Within the accuracy of cu.rrent 24
' estimates, they are about a wash.
They may come out five
~ !
l-25 percent more or five percent less.
You can't estimate that.
L L
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COMMISSIONER GILINSKY So, you are,<in effect, 2.
saying there isn't any increased. cost?
3 DR. LEVENSON:
We don't --
4 DR. CULLER:
I don't think it is signif icant.
No 5.
one thinks it -is significant in the reflected cost to 6
elec tr ic ity.
It may make the fabrication part of the fuel 7
cycle more expensive.
8 The other change that is occurring.is that the 9
standard cycles may now, if p'lutonium were recycled, may now 10 be required to go behind a shield.
If that is true, then the 11 differences are differences of scale, because of the uranium 12 following.
13 DR. STARR You have to understand, all of the 14 variables that we don't know the answers to, one of them, for 15-example, is the increased requiremen.t for personnel 16 protection.
If that goes into operation, then anything that's 17 going. to recycle the plutonium is going to move more and more la into automated or remote operation.
19 The. British 'have already decided this, for example.
20 In the UK they have made a decision that when they get into O
21 commercial operation with plutonium, they are in the fuel, 22 they will probably use remote handling.
If we move in that 23 direction, we don't know how far we will have to move in that 24 direction.
That increases the cost of the conventional cycle.
25 eus 'the PUREX cycle, which would be in operat ion.
iie don't
' ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS,'INC.- (202)347-3700-
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anything about-the full-scale commercial operations and what 2
usually haopens in those operations.
3 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Of what?
4 DR. STARR Well,-we don't know anything about what 5
it costs to run a f ull-scale commercial operation.
It may 6
turn out that administrative overhead --
7 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Are you talking about 8
reproce ssing or f abrication?
9 DR. STARR Actually, both.
Fabrication has been 10 piecemeal now.
11 But let's take reprocessing.
It may turn out that 12 the hard engineering and capital and manpower costs for just 13 running the plant may be tough.
It may turn out to be a l,4 fraction of the total, the administrative aspects, the 15 inspection aspects, the accounting aspects.
The overheads may 16 be a bigger uncertainty than some of these things.
17 There are a, lot of things we don't know about 18 full-scale systems because we don't have them.
19 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Your plants will presumably 20 have to meet tighte r standards.
4 21 DR. CULLER:
Well, those are essentia11y developed 22 or being developed now.
They can be built into.,the proce ss 23 without significantly increasing the cost.
24 There are some steps on gas cleanup that will add a
'l 25 scrubber or two.
And we have to add methods' to take that out. ~
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DR. STARR I think both the AIF study and the GE 2
study found no major technological or engineering basis for 3
assuming there is going to be any major cost differences in 4
the recycle part.
5 But I have to again emphasize that we don't really 6
have even a good base for comparison.
7 DR. CULLER:
To answer this, we are considering 8
quite seriously designing a fu.11-scale commercial CIVEX 9
high-quality release standard chemical plant and fuel 10 ref abrication facility in sone detail to get a fix on the 11 numbers that you are asking us about, better than we have now.
12 We will be looking for participants in such an 13 engineering design study over the next year.
Our guesses are 14 not far wrong, but you would f eel more comfortable' if we had a 15 picture and a cost estimate and said, "This costs so much, we 16 think, and the effluents are. going to" --
17 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Nell, of a specific 13 proce ss, yes.
19 DR. CULLER:
I think that we shall do during the 20 year,, but we don't-have that available now.
The d
21 uncertainties, however, are not very great in what we are 22 talking about.
It is just not that big a set of variables.
23
. COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
Mell. let me just ask one j
i 24 last thing.
There were a number of comments throughout the 25 briefing about.the relative importance of materials, and I l
AL2-FEDERAL. REPORTERS, INC. (202)347-3700
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79 22.06.7 J
l pv. I jasked!if -you have done any work.cn1 that, and you said."not-2L o ff ic ia lly. "
I don't know whether you want to say anything 3
about.it.
4 DR. CULLER:
What do you mean by the ouestion?
5 DR. STARR The question was whether 235, 233 6
plutonium. plutonium with 238 in it, how it --
.)
7 CO MMISSIONER' GILINSKY :
Where does this sort of i
8 information -- where do you draw your conclusions f rom?
9 DR.' COHEN:
dell, let me give an easy way to come 10
'to a conclusion:
When we first made a U-235 bomb, we did not
.11 test it first.
When we first made a plutonium bomb out of j
12 fairly pure plutonium, we felt it necessary to test, and that 13 was the'Alamagordo experience.
I.think that shows some sort 14 of diff erence..
15 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
But this is not f:ot 16 detailed access to information?
17 DR. COMEN I was not giving this to indicate that 13 that is the sole source of our information, but this is a 19 public meeting, and I f elt we might try to make the 20 information available on that kind of basis.
21 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
M e.11, I a m no t as k ing --
22 DR. STARRs. Of all of the things to make weapons 23 out of,- plutonium -- and particularly, this plutenium with 24 some of..these things that grow into the commercial cycle.-- is 251 probably,the most difficult.
AndlI think if you need more ACE-FEDERAL' REPORTERS,.INC. (202)347-3700~
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than-that --
2
'CONNISSIONER GILINSKY Is it based on direct 3
experience?
4 DR._STARR Well, direct knowledge of what the 5
group knows about the weapons busine.ss.
We have all been in 6
it peripherally or directly in one way or another.
7 But if you want more information on that --
S COMMISSIONER GILINSKY I am more interested in to 9
what extent you can give me information.
10 DR. CULLER:
What you are asking is what do we know 11-that we are not saying.
12 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
No, what is your access to 13 this information?
I4 DR. CUit:R:
Well, in the past, for instance --
15 DR. STARR We have enough access that if we made a 16 mistake, somebody would tell us.
17 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:
So, this is not on the 13 basis of the record.
19 DR. STARR We are not des igning weapons, and we 20 are not making weapons.
e 21.
CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
We.11, this has been a very 22 inte rest.ing morning, and we appreciate very much your coming.
23 DP. STARR We1.1, if, as a result of this briefing, 24 you f eel the Lneed.for -- or the NRC staff f eels the need for
~
25 any detailed' elucidation of any of these reports, obviously we '
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are available.
i
~2 CHAIRMAN HENDRIE:
7ie might have further 3
discussions and poke at some more points.
This-is very 4
interesting.
It has been a 'very interesting morning, and very 5
useful.
I thank 'you all.
6 (Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m.,
the meeting was 7
-adjourned.)
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