In a move that could overturn a 20-year-old policy against using plutonium in commercial nuclear reactors, the Clinton administration is set to announce a plan to study the use of the military's excess plutonium in fuel for power plants, officials said Friday.
The Energy Department and White House advisers are backing a proposal to be announced in December to study two ways of getting rid of the 50 metric tons of plutonium from dismantled U.S. nuclear weapons. They are encasing the plutonium in glass or ceramic or mixing it with uranium to burn in nuclear reactors.But the government is still several years away from making a final decision, a senior Energy Department official said, commenting on a New York Times report that said the administration was prepared to use plutonium in power plants.
"It would require about two years to confirm some of the costs and technical issues associated with both options," a senior Energy Department official said.
The department estimates that either route for disposing of plutonium would cost about $2 billion over 25 years.
U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency director John Holum earlier urged the administration not to pursue the commercial reactor fuel plan, but he said Friday it was reasonable to keep both options on the table.
In a Nov. 1 memo to Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Holum raised concern that using plutonium in power plants would set a bad example for other countries, including Russia and South Korea, which the United States has tried to discourage from using plutonium in civilian reactors.
"If the hybrid option is chosen, these countries would hear only one message for the next 25 years: that plutonium use for generating commercial power is now being blessed by the United States."
In a Nov. 21 reply, O'Leary and White House science adviser John Gibbons said they were in favor of the two options.
"We are equally pleased that we are in agreement that reserving the option to dispose of excess weapons plutonium on two tracks, through immobilization and reactor-based options, is prudent and consistent with U.S. policy regarding civil plutonium and the irreversibility of the nuclear disarmament process," O'Leary and Gibbons said.