Carlsbad, N.M. Mayor Dale Janway disputed former Energy Secretary and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s recent claims that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant would have to expand and adopt new waste policies to accept the material result of downblending some34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium designated for disposal. Released yesterday, a letter sent by Janway on Sept. 3 to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) stated: “The reality is that about 3 metric tons of down-blended weapons grade plutonium has already been disposed of at WIPP. As Bill Richardson knows, because it was completed while he was Secretary of Energy, the Rocky Flats cleanup campaign included the exact same dilute and dispose recipe for Plutonium Oxides. Weapons-grade plutonium, when properly down-blended with inert materials, is transuranic waste, and falls well within WIPP’s Waste Acceptance Criteria.”
Completed in 2000, the U.S.-Russia Plutonium Disposition and Management Agreement requires the countries to each dispose of 34 metric tons of excess weapon-usable plutonium by converting it into mixed-oxide fuel or through any other method that the parties might agree to in the future in writing. Its fate unknown, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility being constructed to dispose of the plutonium is estimated by MOX contractor CB&I AREVA MOX Services to be about 70 percent complete. Janway also claimed that dilution and disposal in a deep geologic repository is a “safer, more permanent solution to ensuring nonproliferation,” argues that ½-mile-underground WIPP repository can store the downblended material “essentially forever,” and cites “members of the nuclear power industry” who oppose the conversion of plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel because of the process’ “extremely high cost and effort” and the lack of commercial utilities willing to accept the fuel.
“As taxpayers, we believe it is unconscionable to spend public money that it is not necessary to spend,” Janway wrote. “This community is proud to serve our country by reducing the environmental and proliferation risk from the production of nuclear weapons. This surplus plutonium can come to WIPP without any changes in the facility’s Waste Acceptance Criteria.”
