TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102191/1021300.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.9 KB | 84 lines

                                                                                SCIENCE, Page 79

Disposing of the Nuclear Age


The cold war has left the U.S. with mountains of hot garbage
and no permanent site for storing it


    President Bush may have struck a blow for world peace with
his nuclear-weapons-reduction speech last month, but he has also
handed a heavy burden to the atomic-arms industry. By the latest
calculation, there are over 3,000 warheads headed for early
retirement, containing about 25 tons of enriched uranium and 10
tons of plutonium -- both radioactive and both difficult to
dispose of. Moreover, the Department of Energy's Pantex
bomb-assembly facility near Amarillo, Texas, which was expecting
to build some 3,500 warheads over the next few years, suddenly
has to reverse gears and begin dismantling weapons. Says Thomas
Cochran, a nuclear-arms expert with the Natural Resources
Defense Council: "It's doable, but if weapons production
continues, it will strain the system."

    Technically speaking, the process of decommissioning nukes
is not very complicated -- and in fact some 40,000 of the
60,000 weapons built since 1945 have already been retired,
mostly because of obsolescence. After deactivation of their
electronic triggers, the warheads are loaded back into their
original, customized packing crates and, if overseas, flown back
to the U.S. Under heavy guard, they are then shipped to Pantex
by truck or train, along routes that are constantly changed and
always kept secret. The most sensitive part of disassembly comes
not in handling the uranium and highly toxic plutonium, which
are shielded in metal, but in dealing with the conventional
explosives needed to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.
Disassembly therefore takes place in underground bunkers known
as "Gravel Gerties," whose roofs are mounded with gravel to
contain any accidental blasts.

    Once disassembly is complete, the real question arises.
What to do with the leftover radioactive material from the
bombs? When nuclear weapons were a growth industry, their parts
could be recycled into new nukes. Now, however, the most readily
reusable weapons ingredient is tritium, a radioactive gas used
in some warheads to increase the power of the nuclear reaction.
Tritium decays rapidly, so existing bombs must be periodically
replenished. This tritium windfall may even keep the Department
of Energy from reactivating the accident-prone Savannah River
plant near Aiken, S.C., where the gas is manufactured.

    But aside from some uranium that will be recycled for use
in nuclear-powered submarines, most of the fuel will have to be
stored or dumped as waste. Unfortunately, the nation does not
have a reliable, long-term plan for disposing of this deadly
material. Most will probably be stockpiled at weapons plants,
but there is a danger of loss, theft and environmental damage
from mishandling.

    A far bigger problem, from an environmental standpoint, is
what to do with the tens of thousands of tons of hot waste left
over from 46 years of weapons production -- everything from
gloves to ball bearings. This material will remain radioactive
for millenniums. The U.S. has only one facility designed to
store this production waste, but the opening of the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant, 655 m (2,150 ft.) underground in massive
salt domes near Carlsbad, N. Mex., has been stymied by political
wrangling and safety concerns. Last week the Department of
Energy attempted to sidestep congressional deliberations on the
matter and ship the first load of waste to the plant. It was
halted after New Mexico filed a federal lawsuit, and the DOE
agreed to postpone the shipment. For the time being, 1 million
bbl. of the deadly stuff continue to sit in temporary storage,
as they have for decades.


By Michael D. Lemonick. Reported by Nancy Harbert/Albuquerque
and Bruce van Voorst/Washington.