Released : December 01 2004
Written by : Rebecca Huntington

The U.S. government wants to concentrate plutonium production at an Idaho lab about 100 miles west of Jackson in a move critics say would make it the country's nuclear capital.

The U.S. Department of Energy is proposing moving the production, purification and encapsulation of plutonium-238 to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, soon to become the Idaho National Laboratory.

At the same time, engineers at the Idaho lab are researching the possibility of using nuclear power to produce hydrogen, which could be used to reduce the nation's dependence on oil.

On Monday, INEEL and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City announced they had found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods. However, the process would require building a new kind of nuclear reactor.

Nuclear watchdogs are leery of what they see as an effort to reposition the Idaho lab as the nation's center for nuclear reactors, plutonium production and processing, testing and research.

"The eye of the nuclear future is right there in Idaho at INEEL, and that is worth talking about," said Mary Woollen Mitchell, executive director of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free. Mitchell said she is not advocating support or opposition for specific programs but wants the community to consider what INEEL's new role might mean to the region.

DOE officials, meanwhile, see INEEL as pivotal to national security.

Consolidating plutonium-238 production and processing in one, secure location would enhance national security, said Timothy Frazier, document manager for DOE's Office of Space and Defense Power Systems.

"The material is now transported quite a distance across the roads in the United States," Frazier said Tuesday. "The miles the material will be shipped will essentially go to zero if the proposal [to consolidate] goes through."

Moving the radioactive stockpiles and production, purification and encapsulation capabilities to Idaho would cost more than $200 million and take five years to complete, he said.

Jackson is one of seven cities in five states where DOE officials will hold public meetings to explain the proposal and take public comment. The meeting will run from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Jackson Hole Middle School, 1230 S. Park Loop Road.

Mitchell is urging residents to attend and learn more about the proposal.

"This is really significant to me because it's centralizing plutonium reprocessing from around the country into one place, and that's in Idaho," she said. The Jackson-based Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free originally formed to protest building a nuclear waste incinerator at the Idaho lab due to concerns about air pollution. KYNF successfully defeated that proposal and has since kept an eye on INEEL activities.

Cancer fears

Mitchell said she has not yet made up her mind about this latest proposal but questions whether plutonium particles could be emitted and become airborne from the proposed facilities. Inhaled plutonium particles may stay in a person's body for decades and increase the risk of developing cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Peter Rickards, a Twin Falls, Idaho, podiatrist, who also battled the incinerator proposal, calls the consolidation plan "the Trojan horse for a modern refinery to basically do all the nuclear dirty work" in Idaho's desert.

But Frazier defended the proposal as meeting the demand for a higher level of security for nuclear materials following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Frazier also disagreed with Rickards' concern that the plan could make an easier target for terrorists by concentrating nuclear materials in one location.

"We're confident in the security that Idaho has in place," Frazier said. "We don't see that as a concern."

Plutonium-238 is not used to make nuclear weapons like plutonium-239, which is used in atomic bombs. Instead, plutonium-238 is used as a heat source in radioisotope power systems, which are long-lived nuclear power sources.

DOE had planned to make Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee the new plutonium-238 production site.

But the government changed course after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2002, DOE decided to move the assembly and testing of the radioisotope power systems to the Idaho lab.

Security drives move

The government could no longer house that program at the Mound Site in Miamisburg, Ohio, because it would have been too costly to upgrade security in Ohio to meet post-Sept.-11 security requirements, Frazier said.

Now, DOE wants to consolidate the entire program in Idaho to reduce costs and increase security, in part by reducing shipments of sensitive materials. That means Idaho would inherit the plutonium production slated for Oak Ridge and the purification and encapsulation process now conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Idaho would become the hub for building radioisotope power systems. That includes radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which transform heat from decaying plutonium pellets into electricity. That current would run science instruments, computers and flight systems in deep space where other power sources will not work. The nuclear batteries will power a probe slated for launch in 2006, to explore the planet Pluto, and are generating power for the Cassini spacecraft, which entered Saturn's orbit on June 30, 2004.

While making space batteries sounds less ominous than bomb building, Rickards warns that plutonium-238 is far more radioactive than weapons-grade plutonium.

"Just because it's used for space batteries, instead of nuclear weapons does not lessen the damage it does to your children's lungs when it is inhaled or fetuses when it is absorbed by the mother," Rickards said.

Frazier said the facility would be designed to protect workers and the public from exposure to plutonium particles.

Dirty bombs a risk

In the past, DOE's Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons plant in South Carolina, produced plutonium-238 using reactors, which have since shut down. Since 1992, the United States has purchased extra plutonium-238 from Russia. However, under the agreement with Russia, the purchased material may be used only for nonmilitary purposes, such as space missions, Frazier said.

The need to produce plutonium-238 at a U.S. lab stems from national security demands ­ not space exploration, Frazier said.

The radioisotope power systems already are playing an active role in safeguarding national security, Frazier said. But he could not elaborate on those security applications except to say that they do not involve space.

Said Frazier, "Frankly, given the environment in a post-9/11 world, we expect those national security requirements to become the driving force for the program."

Meanwhile, experts have warned that plutonium-238 theoretically could be combined with other materials to make a nuclear explosive device, or dirty bomb. A Russian atomic scientist made international headlines Nov. 2 when he turned over eight containers of plutonium-238, which he had been storing in his garage, to authorities. The scientist claimed he had hidden the material "to avoid tragic consequences" when his lab was deserted and looted following the Soviet collapse in 1991, according to a CNN report.

When asked about the dirty bomb theory, Frazier said: "I wouldn't care to characterize what it could be used for suffice it to say it's not used in weapons at all. It can't be made into an atomic bomb."

But Frazier acknowledged the "very active isotope" could pose a risk if mishandled, which is one reason the U.S. government has moved to consolidate and increase the security of its stockpile

Go to : Current News | Archived News