Megatons To Megawatts Program Concludes

Published on Monday April 22 2013 (AEST)  

Over the past two years, there has been considerable confusion, misinformation and speculation regarding the end of the Megatons-to-Megawatts Program. This piece will set the record straight. (However, I make the qualification that these arrangements could change in the future.)  

The Basics 

The program was entered into by the USA and Russia in 1993 for the purpose of both countries dismantling nuclear warheads and converting the fissile material into reactor-grade materials, for its ultimate use in civilian nuclear reactors. The Russian party to the contract is Techsnabexport, or TENEX for short. This is the nuclear fuel export subsidiary of Rosatom, the government-owned nuclear authority. The US party is United States Enrichment Corp, or USEC, which was the commercial enrichment division of the US government, which was privatized in 1993, and taken public in 1998. 

Warheads typically used two types of fissile material: plutonium-239 and; Highly-Enriched Uranium, or HEU. HEU is fabricated by concentrating the small amounts of the fissile isotope U-235 present in naturally-occurring uranium-238 isotope. Plutonium is typically the waste by-product of reactors. Uranium-238 is bombarded with a slow neutron to transmute up to plutonium-239. The French company, Areva, is building a reprocessing facility for the USA in South Carolina, which will convert plutonium-239 from American weapons into a form that can be used to make fuel for reactors. 

The Russians, on the other hand, have developed the process for “blending down” HEU from the weapons – a kind of reverse concentration process – into Low-Enriched Uranium, or LEU. LEU is defined as U-238 with 2% to 20% U-235 content. Reactor fuel typically uses LEU that is about 4% U-235. During the 20 years since the program began, the Russians have dismantled thousands of weapons, and generated hundreds of millions of pounds of natural uranium equivalent in the form of 4% LEU, which has been delivered to electric utilities, mostly in the USA, for use in commercial nuclear reactors. For several years, the LEU deliveries have been equivalent to approximately 24 million pounds of mined uranium.  

The Termination of the Contract 

This program is due to expire at the end of 2013. The American government has been very active over the past few years in attempting to extend the contract – all without success. The current Russian powers view former President Yeltsin’s submission to the M2M program as a betrayal of Russian sensibilities, and of her national security. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the program will expire, and will not be renewed in anything resembling its existing form. A new contract has been devised and entered into, between TENEX and USEC. 

Announced in March 2011, by USEC, the so-called “Transitional Supply Contract” stipulates that USEC may purchase from TENEX a quantity of LEU, which is roughly half of the amount that was being delivered through M2M. However, this material has one very important difference: it is expressly stated in the contract that the uranium may NOT be derived from the Russian military or government stockpile. Furthermore, USEC must provide TENEX with sufficient natural uranium to replace any Russian mine supply used to produce this LEU. Hence, the Americans must source all the uranium that is used to supply all their own LEU. 

This contract is effectively nothing more than a purchase agreement for Russian enrichment capacity. The problematic bit for Americans is that total domestic uranium production has been less than 4 million pounds per year for several years. 

Given the enormously daunting requirements in the US for permitting new uranium mines, this level of production is not likely to rise to the 24 million pounds which is being displaced by the expiry of M2M any time in the foreseeable future. Americans are now almost entirely dependent on their own fast-dwindling stockpiles, and foreign uranium supplies.

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