Annual figures for holdings of civil unirradiated plutonium
|
|
As of 31. Dec. 1996 Rounded to 100Êkg plutonium
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1. Unirradiated separated plutonium in product stores at reprocessing
plants
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|
-
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2. Unirradiated separated plutonium in the course of manufacture or
fabrication and plutonium contained in unirradiated semi-fabricated
or unfinished products at fuel or other fabricating plants or elsewhere.
|
|
2,600 kg
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3. Plutonium contained in unirradiated MOX fuel or other fabricated
products at reactor sites or elsewhere.
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|
100 kg
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4. Unirradiated separated plutonium held elsewhere
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|
negligible
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|
TOTAL (this line does not exist in
the official document)
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|
2,700 Kg
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Notes:
(i) Plutonium included in lines 1-4 above belonging to foreign bodies:
0
(ii) Plutonium in any of the forms in lines 1-4 above held in locations
in other countries and therefore not included above: 0
(iii) Plutonium included in lines 1-4 above which is in international
shipment prior to its arrival in the recipient State: 0
|
(Source: Permanent Mission of Belgium to IAEA, 12 December 1997)
This table should contain more explicit data. It can be noted, for
instance, that while the International Guidelines for the Management
of Plutonium - which have been adopted by Belgium - explicitly call
for the publication of figures on the plutonium inventory covering two
years (as of 31 Dec. of one year, and in parentheses the previous years'
figures), Belgium has only published values for one single year.
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Word of the month
Former US Government Official Recommends Plutonium/Spent
Fuel Swap
Prof. Frank von Hippel, physicist at Princeton University, and former
assistant director for national security in the White House Office of
Science, recommends an original approach for the management of the stockpile
of British plutonium. As stated in Plutonium
Investigation No3, while there is no currently agreed planned
use for separated plutonium in the United-Kingdom, the industry is still
producing separated plutonium and worsening the problems concerning
the management of its stockpile of this nuclear material. "The enormous
accumulation of separated civilian plutonium represents a global security
threat that can no longer be ignored. The surest anti-proliferation
measure is to stop reprocessing spent fuel and to reduce the quantity
of separated plutonium in store". Von Hippel proposes that the British
exchange separated plutonium together with radioactive waste against
spent fuel under reprocessing contract from other countries - that is
swapping the nuclear components before and after reprocessing. This
would result in the reduction of the total quantity of reprocessed spent
fuel and thus of separated plutonium. A good idea. But there is a strange
error and a missing link in this article signed by one of the major
experts on plutonium on the planet. The error first: "France does not
have a large domestic stockpile of plutonium with which it could carry
out similar trades". While Britain's civil plutonium stockpile is -
yet - larger than that of France, the French utility EDF stockpiles
currently more than 40 metric tons of plutonium (as compared to some
60 tons in the UK). Not so little either! Then the missing link: Any
such trade would not solve the management problem of the other country
recuperating the separated plutonium of any stockpile. MOX or waste,
Mr. Hippel? PS: By the way, the French plutonium stockpile increased
by more than a factor of 20 since the country started using MOX in 1987
as a means... of avoiding a plutonium surplus.
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