Plutonium Dispositioning

U.S. cooperative efforts with Russia on plutonium disposition are premised on a two-track approach, including immobilization and burning as MOX in reactors. The 200 million recently appropriated by tbe U.S. Congress will help jump start the ongoing negotiations with Russia but, ultimately, more funding will be needed to create the necessary infrastructure in Russia to dispose of approximately 50 tons of surplus Russian plutonium, and eventually more as arms control progresses. 

Aloy, A. S., Kovarskaya, E. N., Koltsova, T. I., Samoylov, S. E Rovny, S. I. Medvedev, G. M. 2002. Immobilization of Am-241 formed under plutonium metal conversion into monazite-type ceramic. In Lardine, L. J. Borisov, G. B. (eds) Review of Excess Weapons Plutonium Disposition. LLNL Contract Work in Russia, UCRL-ID-149341, 141-145. 

Weber, W. J., Ewing, R. C. et al. 1997. Radiation effects in glasses used for immobilization of high level waste and plutonium disposition. Journal of Materials Research, 12, 1946-1975. 

Stewart, M. W. A., Begg, B. D. et al. 2003. Ion irradiation damage in zirconate and titanate ceramics for plutonium disposition. Proceedings of ICEM 03 The 9th International Conference on Radioactive Waste Management and Environmental Remediation, in press. 

Magill, Jv O Carroll, C., Gerontopoulos, P., Richter, K., van Geel, J. (1995). Advantages and limitations of thorium fuelled energy amplifiers. In "Proc. Unconventional Options for Plutonium Dispositions, Obninsk", Int. Atomic Energy Agency TECDOC-840, pp. 81-86. 

A.I. Orlova, Yu.F. Volkov, A.A. Charlamova, im L. Jardin, G. Borisov (Eds.) Review of Excess Weapons Plutonium Disposition LLNL Contract Works in Russia, St.-Petersburg, 2002, P.407. 

In conclusion, I would like to say that a great scope of work is certainly connected with the problems of reasonable plutonium disposition. But I will not dwell upon this problem, as we present several reports that will review this topic in sufficient detail, and state the Minatom attitude toward these problems. 

An overview of the cooperative program to improve the safety of Soviet-designed nuclear power plants is provided in Section 2. The applicability of that work to safety improvements that would be desirable for VVER-1000s under a MOX fiiels program is outlined in Section 3. A summaiy and some observations on plutonium disposition are provided in Section 4. 

Incorporating plutonium into a ceramic matrix—in other words MOX—appears to be the best option because it answers all the non-proliferation issues raised by the plutonium disposition program. In any case, plutonium vitrification, contrary to the case for fission products, is not a mastered technique. Reaching this goal will undoubtedly require time and money for R D purposes. 

AR292 Physics and fuel performance of reactor-based plutonium disposition, OECD Proceedings, Workshop proceedings, Paris, 28 30 September 1998. 

Pu/Th02 cycle, which can also be considered as an option for plutonium dispositioning... 

Chan, P.S.W., M.J.N. Gagnon, RG. Boczar, RJ. Ellis, and R.A. Verrall. 1997. CANDU - A Versatile Reactor for Plutonium Disposition or Actnide Burning, Proceedings of the International Conference on Future Nuclear Systems (GLOBAL-97), Yokohama, Japan. 

Rogozkin, B.D., et al, Proc IAEA TCM Unconventional Options for Plutonium Disposition, Obninsk, Russia, November 7-11 1994, p.229. 

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