Watchdog group challenges DOE over use of plutonium

Wednesday, Jan. 15, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

The Safe Energy Communication Council, a national energy watchdog group, challenged the Department of Energy's plan to research the use of up to 42 tons of plutonium from nuclear bombs as fuel for U.S. commercial nuclear reactors.

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary said Tuesday the DOE is reversing a 20-year U.S. policy not to use plutonium from the nuclear weapons to generate electricity in commercial industry reactors. The plutonium would be unavailable to build more weapons, she said, and reactor use is one of two options.

But SECC Executive Director Scott Denman said the fuel option, combining plutonium and uranium into fuel pellets for use in reactors, will cost more than turning plutonium into glass blocks for permanent storage.

Pursuing the pellet option will send an adverse signal to other countries about a shift in the U.S. position on nuclear fuel policy, he said. Less than a pound of plutonium is needed to build a nuclear weapon.

The DOE's plutonium plan, first announced Dec. 9, consolidates seven long-term nuclear weapons storage sites into three, at Pantex, Texas, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.