Dr. Conca reports that the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) in South Carolina is under fire again, with the Administration trying to cut its funding and kill the project, and Russia saying that to do so would abrogate a key nuclear weapons treaty. Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) is a blend of uranium and plutonium (U and Pu) into new commercial nuclear fuel that can be burned in nuclear power reactors but cannot be used to make nuclear weapons. MOX is one of the pillars of our nuclear weapons non-proliferation strategy, and is the basis of the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) between the U.S. and Russia. The deal, first negotiated by Vladimir Putin and President Clinton in 2000, committed Russia and the U.S. to disposing of at least 34 tons of weapons grade Pu by turning it into MOX.
But Russia is also close to commercializing another method that recycles all the uranium and plutonium in spent fuel without separating them, and tops off with some fresh enriched uranium to make a regenerated mixture, or REMIX fuel. Russia may be using this MOX project issue to pull back from these agreements and just make new REMIX fuel of its own. This is an amount of Pu that could be made into about 5,000 nuclear weapons the size of Fat Man that was dropped on Nagasaki 71 years ago. There are not many instances where turning weapons into plowshares has worked very well, but nuclear is one of those few. The way to get rid of something like Pu is to let it decay away over thousands of years, or blend it with other materials like U, burn it in a nuclear reactor and make energy out of it.
The original URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/10/05/south-carolina-nuclear-fuel-facility-at-center-of-u-s-russian-struggle/#4b4c982431cf
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