International Panel on Fissile Materials Report Interesting but Still a Fizzle.

A new report from the so called International Panel on Fissile Materials appears to be directed against the Integral Fast Reactor, Barry Brook's favorite energy toy. The White Paper, titled Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status, offers a one sided account of Sodium Cooled Fast Breeders, their history and prognosis. One of the reports writer's Frank von Hippel, is a controversial nuclear proliferation talking head. Alex De Volpe who also worked with the Soviets on practical nuclear disarmament issues notes:

Frank von Hippel and Amory Lovins are two prominent outspoken opponents of plutonium demilitarization. Examination of their papers and presentations reveals that both tend to omit evidence and citations that contradict their position on the supposed weaponization qualities of reactor and demilitarized grades of plutonium. While short in relevant credentials, each has been actively impeding arms-control and nonproliferation measures described below.

De Volpe often claims the authority of Los Alamos weapons designer J. Carson Marks for his contention that so called Reactor Grade Plutonium mis weaponizable. De Volpi points to a 1990 paper by J. Carson Marks that stated:

Taking “weapon” to signify an object suitable for stockpile by a military organization, then heavily irradiated reactor plutonium would not be attractive for an arsenal of pure fission devices

De Volpe comment's

In Mark’s terminology, “pure fission devices” included essentially any type of nuclear weapon that proliferant nations might seek to develop. His phrase “heavily irradiated reactor plutonium” corresponded to what is now called “reactor-grade plutonium.” (During private, one-on-one discussions with Mark, he confirmed his defining 1990 conclusion, and he didn’t know how or why it was omitted in the 1993 version.)

Mark’s defining syllogism for a “weapon” was as specific as possible. By his criteria, reactor-grade plutonium is not a viable constituent in military stockpiles. In contrast to an ad-hoc group, national military organizations have high standards for an extraordinarily devastating weapon designed to be safely stored during peacetime and reliably delivered under wartime conditions. Mark distinctly advises that national arsenals would not be made out of inferior materials (and no nation is known to have militarily exploited substandard fissile substances).

De Volpi also reported:

Mark wrote a paper, “Reactor-Grade Plutonium’s Explosive Properties,” a definitive description of the topic published in 1990 by the Nuclear Control Institute.[1] At the behest of the Department of Energy, a revised version, “Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium,” was published in a 1993 issue of Science and Global Security (Vol. 4, pp. 111-129), which includes an “Appendix: Probabilities of Different Yields” by Frank von Hippel and Edwin Lyman. [2]

It is instructive to compare the 1990 and 1993 papers which are essentially the same except for a curious, but important difference: Missing from the 1993 version is Mark’s carefully defined term “weapon” as “an object suitable for a stockpile by a military organization.” No explanation for this obvious and crucial omission is supplied with the published revision. My personal interviews and conversations with Mark before 1993 confirmed the intended significance of his 1990 definition.

While reprints of the 1993 paper designate J. Carson Mark as the sole author, the Princeton University website index for Science and Global Security credits the revised paper to “Mark, J.C., von Hippel, F.N., Lyman, E.” The revised version acknowledges that “This article is adapted from an earlier paper” (a reference back to Mark’s original 1990 article).

Reading in between the lines of De Volpi's accounts, there is an unacknowledged and unanswered question about von Hipple's role in the disappearance of the inconvenient sentence from the 1993 version of the Marks' paper. De Volpi adds a long quotation to a 2000 National Academy of Science report

If it is assumed that proliferators in all categories will ultimately be capable of obtaining reasonably pure plutonium metal starting from the dispositioned forms — as we believe to be the case — then the main intrinsic barriers in this category are those associated with deviation of the plutonium’s isotopic composition from “weapons grade.”

De Volpi has noted the unfortunate consequences of von Hippel's reinterpretation of J. Carson Marks' views.

Some individuals have chosen to interpret Mark’s conclusion differently, arguing that because it is possible to make nuclear explosives out of “heavily irradiated reactor plutonium,” nations would actually undertake an expensive and clandestine development program using materials that would lead to uncertain results. Such a suggestion defies engineering logic and historical experience.

Von Hippel has persistently overstated the supposed weaponization qualities of reactor and demilitarized grades of plutonium. Although deficient in direct experience — particularly with nuclear engineering, nuclear weaponization, quality control, and military organizations — he has cavalierly reinterpreted and widely exploited his interpretation of Carson Mark’s published conclusion. Von Hippel has assumed that lack of attractiveness implies that the fissile composition is based on some undefined convenience factor rather than meaningful military standards.

Even with ample analytical experience, and presumably access to some classified information while serving briefly in a government bureaucracy, Von Hippel has persistently underrated the fundamental complexity of nuclear-weapons physics and engineering. He and his acolytes rely on second-hand assurances instead of fundamental specifics about the difficulties in weaponizing degraded plutonium. Von Hippel has employed poorly substantiated “worst-case” methodology to exaggerate the weaponizability of reactor-grade and degraded plutonium. This has lead him to support flawed and overly expensive propositions for less-effective options than offered by the U.S. Department of Energy to demilitarize and salvage the latent energy and economic value of surplus plutonium.

Unfortunately Von Hippel continues to ignore De Volpi's critique of his claims about the weapons use of reactor grade plutonium. In Fast Breeder Reactor Progress, von Hippel states.

The mission of the IPFM is to analyze the technical basis for practical and achievable policy initiatives to secure, consolidate, and reduce stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. These fissile materials are the key ingredients in nuclear weapons, and their control is critical to nuclear disarmament, halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and ensuring that terrorists do not acquire nuclear weapons.

Both military and civilian stocks of fissile materials have to be addressed. The nuclear weapon states still have enough fissile materials in their weapon stockpiles for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. On the civilian side, enough plutonium has been separated to make a similarly large number of weapons. Highly enriched uranium is used in civilian reactor fuel in more than one hundred locations. The total amount used for this purpose is sufficient to make about one thousand Hiroshima-type bombs, a design potentially within the capabilities of terrorist groups.

Given the limitations on the explosive potential of Reactor Grade Plutonium devices, the notion that a Hiroshima type device could be built from RGP is highly unlikely, and the notion that terrorists would be capable of building one from RGP traverses well into the realm of the absurd. Von Hippel is trying to frighten the children, with Brothers Grim type stories.

Thus the reader of "Fast Breeder Reactor Programs", should take note that Von Hippel and quite possibly other report writers have agenda's that might in some instances override their obligation to tell the whole truth.

In particular FBRPs is predisposed to recount each of the many LMFBR program failures, while ignoring their successes. The FBRP report fails to assess hard won progress towards program goals, and fails to note that not all of the the program delays reported were due to technical problems. This is fair, but the merit of a research program lies not in the problems that it encountered, but in what was learned and in the success in overcoming those problems. Here FBRP offers no assessment. A problem is simply viewed as a failure, and reactor research is not understood as a learning process.

A further flaw is the failure give proper weight to success. For example, FBRP briefly notes the life history of theExperimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) , which it describes as

arguably the most successful of the U.S. fast reactors . . .

No mishaps are noted in the report, and indeed, there were none. What was learned about future fast reactor design? American scientists believed that they learned a lot, but FBRP ignores this, for to acknowledge a fully positive outcome is also to acknowledge progress, and to suggest that the project in question might succeed.

Despite its flaws, FBPR has numerous strong points. It does recount histories of experimental fast breeder projects, and offers descriptions of their problems It offers many interesting and useful facts. For example, a table comparing India Fast Breeder Reactors and Pressurized Heavy water reactors. which shows that the nominal levelized of electricity from a single PFBR (500 MWe) was higher than the levelized cost of electricity from indian 700 MWe PHWRs. The case is actually worse than M. V. Ramana presents, because FBPR construction costs are probably going to be above 1 billion dollars, rather than the $648 million he estimates. Ramana's table will show that fuel reprocessing adds significantly to FBPR levelized costs. The lifecycle fuel costs for a single 700 MW PHWR costs less than 1/4th the lifecycle cost of the reprocessed FBPR fuel. The Levelized cost of power from PHWRs is estimated to be, 3.5 cents per kWh, while the FBPR levelized power costs will run, to over 6.3 cents per kWh.

Still even given the higher levelized cost figure for the FBPR, the levelized cost of power from it will be more than competitive with post carbon power costs from nuclear or renewables, in the United States or in Europe. Thus the cost argument does not suggest that India's projected FBR program will handicap the Indian economy. Ramana rargues that for indian Fast Breeders

a capacity factor of 50 percent might well be more plausible. This would result in a levelised cost of 8.35 cents/kilowatt hours (kWh), 139 percent more expensive than PHWRs.

But this assumes no progress on FBR reliability between now and 2050, and even with the higher levelized cost, the Indian economy would still have a competitive advantage in electrical costs. Ramana conclusion might be taken as invalidating the theory offered by FBRP, namely that fast breeder reactors will add to the world supply of weaponizable plutonium:

A more careful calculation that takes into account the plutonium flow constraints shows that the capacity for MFBRs based on plutonium from the DAE’s heavy water reactor fleet will drop from the projected 199 GWe to 78 GWe by 2052.56 If the out-of-pile time were projected to be a more realistic three years, the MFBR capacity in 2052 based on plutonium from PHWRs will drop to 34 GWe.
While these figures may seem large compared to India’s current nuclear capacity of only 4.1 GWe, they should be viewed in relation to the projected requirements, under business-as-usual conditions, of approximately 1300 GWe total generating capacity by mid-century. Further, the only constraint assumed here is fissile material availability. It assumes that there will be no delays due to infrastructure and manufacturing problems, economic disincentives due to the high cost of breeder electricity, or accidents. All of these are realistic constraints and render

Of course, India might shop for RGP on a future international market, or switch to Thorium breeding Molten Salt Reactors (LFTRs) before 2050.

Of the issues raised by FBRP. the most telling is the cost issue. Both the cost of FBR construction, and the cost of fuel reprocessing with fast breeders may block long term implementation in the United States. While FBR technology might be economically justified in India, China and other Asian countries, it might be far to expensive to implement in Europe and North America. What ever FBRP conclusions that might be applied to localized implementations of FBR technology, those conclusions should not be applied to the future costs and value of LFTR technology.