PLENTIFUL ENERGY

12.13 Summary
In IFR technology the potential for energy production is unlimited, free of
greenhouse gas emissions, and its attributes minimize proliferation potential.
How much risk could IFR technology add to the proliferation of nuclear
weapons to states not possessing nuclear weapons today? Nuclear weapons have
always been developed in secrecy in large laboratories with extensive capabilities.
The continuing existence of plutonium is a settled issue; plutonium exists and it will
continue to be created in large amounts, with or without IFRs. In all nuclear power,
plutonium production is not a matter of choice. All nuclear power plants produce
plutonium. Today it generates at least 40 percent of the world‘s nuclear electricity,
and probably more, and stands to generate most of the world‘s electricity in the
future.
Processing of spent fuel is vital to recycle and the massive energy production
potential that follows from it. While the processing technique must be good enough
for reactor fuel, as electrorefining is, it‘s equally true that it‘s desirable not to have a
technology that‘s too good. In the IFR process, the high level of radioactivity of the
fuel spent fuel ensures remote handling even after processing, making IFR
plutonium both difficult to handle and less desirable than clean plutonium or
uranium-235 in making a weapon. Highly enriched centrifuge-produced uranium
can be handled with gloves only. Plutonium-239 cleanly processed by PUREX can
be handled similarly. IFR-processed fuel, principally because of the short-lived
radioactive decay of the higher actinides present, remains dangerously radioactive
to personnel and produces considerable heat. The corresponding need for heavy
shielding increases the height of barriers to its unauthorized use. The absolute
necessity of the use of manipulators to handle IFR-processed plutonium rules out
delicate fabrication work of the kind mandatory for weapons.
Reactor spent fuel certainly poses considerable difficulties for weapons for all
but the most capable of national nuclear-weapons programs. We also think it
obvious that the use of weapons-grade fissile material is so much preferable, and for
the uninitiated aspiring proliferating group or nation, uranium-235 so much
preferable to Pu-239, that the link to civilian reactors that are properly monitored, is
weak to non-existent.
The IFR offers on-site processing, no off-site transport, no easily concealed
diversion streams, no weapons-level purification, and no need for plutonium stocks
to build up. The IFR pyroprocess produces an impure radioactive product, very
different from PUREX. Because of the compactness of electrorefining equipment
systems, it has been speculated that it is more amenable to clandestine operation
even though it produces crude materials requiring further processing. In fact,
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