In the last two decades, nuclear disarmament has become an integral part of the electricity industry, little known to most Americans. Salvaged bomb material now generates about 10 percent of electricity in the United States — by comparison, hydropower generates about 6 percent and solar, biomass, wind and geothermal together account for 3 percent. Utilities have been loath to publicize [this fact] for fear of spooking consumers: the fuel from missiles that may have once been aimed at your home may now be lighting it.
It's important to note that this bomb material is coming from both Russian and American weapons that have been dismantled over the course of the past twenty years. Through a series of limitations and reductions treaties -- the most recent of which is the Obama-Medvedev START negotiations -- nuclear weapons have been taken offline; the actual warheads have been separated from the missiles themselves; and then the warheads have been dismantled. However, these treaties don't address the core itself -- the billet of uranium or plutonium that makes a nuclear bomb the terrifyingly powerful weapon it is.
Let's do some math to understand the potential benefits of using dismantled nukes to generate electricity:
The amount of uranium or plutonium that can sustain a nuclear chain reaction, which is needed to create a nuclear bomb, is called the weapon's critical mass. Let's take uranium as an example: the critical mass for uranium-235 is about 56 kilograms, or roughly 123 pounds.
The United States currently has about 2,200 nuclear warheads and the Russians 2,800. Over the summer, Presidents Obama and Medvedev just agreed to reduce their warheads to as low as 1,500 each. So that means that after reductions, the US would give up about 700 nukes and Russia about 1,300. Altogether that's 2,000 nuclear warheads that could now be used to generate electricity. Assuming all 2,000 have uranium cores, and at a minimum of 56 kilograms per warhead, there would be a total of 112 tonnes of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) available for use in nuclear power plants.
112 tonnes. That's 112,000 kilograms of uranium. According to the New York Times article, 34 tonnes can generate enough electricity to power 1 million American homes for 50 years.
112 divided by 34 equals 3.29. So that means powering 3 million American homes for 50 years.
One more time. 2,000 dismantled nukes can provide enough electricity to power 3 million American homes for 50 years.
Now you can see how beneficial these warheads can be as an energy source. So it's no wonder that for a while now, energy companies have advocated for a steady stream of highly-enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear weapons: they can buy that material at market price, downblend (or de-enrich) the volatile stuff to a level appropriate for use in a civilian nuclear power plant, and generate electricity from it. This program is known as the Megatons to Megawatts program. The energy industry sees huge benefits to acquiring as much uranium as possible for use in nuclear reactors, so naturally, they would advocate for nuclear disarmament. The higher the number of nuclear weapons that come off the grid, the more material available for power generation.
With the energy industry being such an influential lobbying group on Capitol Hill, it would seem advantageous to have Big Energy on the side of those who advocate for global nuclear disarmament. But something like this can never be such a simple win-win solution, so what's the catch? Emissions aren't really a problem, since nuclear power plants don't emit the same level of greenhouse gases that come out of coal-powered plants, which provide the overwhelming majority of electricity in the US.
However, there are serious drawbacks to nuclear power. For a comprehensive list, click through to Time For Change, but here are the relevant ones: first, startup costs. Building a nuclear power plant can take decades, so any return on investment doesn't manifest itself for quite some time.
Second, radioactivity. Who can forget Chernobyl? The possibility that a reactor in the US might melt down and kill or poison scores of people is one of the biggest drivers in keeping total American dependence on nuclear energy to less than 20 per cent.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the radioactive material that is a natural byproduct of the nuclear power cycle can potentially be used to create low-grade nuclear weapons or dirty bombs. This would render the entire Megatons to Megawatts idea completely counter-intuitive -- the point there is to diminish the number of nuclear weapons worldwide, not create more.
So what's the bottom line? On the one hand, those of us advocating for nuclear disarmament now know we have a large ally in Big Energy, and we could leverage our shared goal to pressure government leaders worldwide to take significant and verifiable steps towards complete nuclear weapons abolition. On the other hand, the long-term benefits of relying more on civilian nuclear power don't seem to add up to much, and perhaps we as a nation should continue to keep our dependence on nuclear-generated electricity to less than 20%.
As long as we don't increase the number of nuclear reactors in the US, and as long as we continue to search for a more sustainable and renewable method to generate electricity, continuing the Megatons to Megawatts program seems, in the short term, like an all-around good idea.
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