Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire: U.S. Said to Have Major Surplus of Fissile Material

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

U.S. Said to Have Major Surplus of Fissile Material

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010

The U.S. Energy Department is storing 324 metric tons of weapon-usable uranium even as President Barack Obama is calling for foreign countries to get rid of their own stockpiles of the fissile material, a government watchdog said in a report released today (see GSN, March 30).

The report from the Project on Government Oversight calls on the Obama administration to designate part of the highly enriched uranium stockpile as excess inventory and to ratchet up the amount of material being converted annually into low-enriched uranium fuel for nuclear power plants, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The HEU stockpile started to balloon in past years following implementation of several nuclear arms control treaties that required retirement of thousands of nuclear weapons. The United States ceased enriching uranium to bomb-grade levels when the Cold War ended.
The National Nuclear Security Administration -- the semiautonomous Energy Department agency with oversight over the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile -- stood behind its HEU conversion rate and pointed out the expense and complications associated with the effort. The agency did not disclose the specific size of the HEU stockpile.
The nuclear agency also claimed it was not sending conflicting signals by holding the surplus while urging other nations to eliminate or secure theirs. Nuclear installations in the United States are highly secure and NNSA officials offer their expertise to countries looking to surrender their own fissile materials, the agency said.
Still, nuclear watchdog groups and U.S. lawmakers are giving the issue greater attention.
"The U.S. would be on higher moral ground if we clearly articulated that we are working to minimize our use of highly enriched uranium," Nuclear Threat Initiative President Joan Rohlfing said. "It should be the norm that every country with these materials publishes their status."
"We are awash in surplus" HEU material, International Panel on Fissile Materials co-Chairman Frank von Hippel said. He, however, estimated the size of the U.S. surplus to be much smaller at 60 metric tons.
House Armed Services Committee staffers hope to learn more about the rate of HEU conversion during an upcoming trip to a $500 million uranium storage site in Tennessee, a GOP source said (Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 14).
[Editor's Note: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]