United States and Russia Have a Nuclear Problem That Threatens All of Us

October 17, 2016 – When I was in junior high school in the fall of 1962, the October Cuban missile crisis made nuclear war a distinct reality. From October 14th to the 28th I remember emergency drills at our school. We practiced going into the halls where we could huddle against the lockers hoping to avoid the worst effects of an atomic attack. At other times we were told to get under our desks to protect us from a potential bomb blast. We were shown the results of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I recall a number of troubled and sleepless nights in our family as we followed the media coverage of the confrontation between President Kennedy and Chairman Krushchev.

At the time I didn’t know about the Doomsday Clock, the virtual time piece created by Atomic Scientists that tracked the likelihood of global catastrophe. That clock seemed to always be a few minutes from midnight throughout my life with the only time the hands moving back before 11:55 p.m. when the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Today it stands at 3 minutes to midnight having not moved a minute back even though COP 21 produced the Paris climate agreement and the United States brokered a nuclear agreement with Iran.

Why is that?

Because the United States and Russia (the principal remnant state of the former Soviet Union) have restarted the Cold War that led to the Cuban missile crisis. This has happened because of positions taken by the two countries over the civil war that is destroying Syria, and over the tattered remnants of failed Middle East politics and policy over the last 100 years. From the post-World War One division of the Ottoman Empire by European political and Western nations’ economic interests, politics in the Middle East has drifted from one crisis and war to another. It has produced many failed states and a number of artificially propped up ones that were created by and for oil companies and the nations behind them.

How and why Russia and the United States have become part of this Middle East mess is the main reason that today’s Doomsday Clock sits at 3 minutes to midnight, about as close to global catastrophe as at any time in the recent past. The Russians have the legacy of Soviet attempts to establish a Mediterranean and Middle East presence on Syrian soil. The United States’ legacy is to protect the interests of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states and the total mess which they created after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Standing on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war complicated by the rise of a reborn Islamic caliphate known as ISIS or ISIL, has brought the two most potent nuclear weapon states into a confrontation almost as frightening as the one I remember back in my beginning teenage life in 1962.

Three weeks from an American presidential election the world is watching two states trying to intimidate and stare each other down. When the 2016 Doomsday Clock statement came out reporting 3 minutes to midnight it made little mention of a 20-year-old program agreed to by Russia and the United States. Called the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, it pledged both nations to rid themselves of stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium that each had accumulated. The total amount, 34 tons each, in other words, 68 tons in total, could be used to build 17,000 bombs. And the 68 tons represents about one-third (32.5%) of the two countries weapons-grade plutonium.

Is there a peaceful use for the 68 tons the two countries have stockpiled for potential destruction?

This is plutonium-239. And the only thing it is good for is blowing things up. It is not the plutonium that provides the power to the Curiosity rover on Mars, or to the New Horizons spacecraft that flew past Pluto and is now exploring the Kuiper Belt in our outer solar system. That is plutonium-238. Finding a peaceful use for plutonium-239 has been a tough act. And getting rid of it is proving difficult.

The current methods to convert plutonium-239 is to turn it into plutonium oxide. The United States has a number of options available to it including:

• the Los Alamos’ Technical Area 55 Plutonium Facility dismantles obsolete nuclear warheads and converts their plutonium, called “pits” into plutonium oxide. It is a complex process that can only handle a few hundred kilograms a year. To render the 34 tons of this weapons-grade fuel using this technology would require more than a century of work.
• A better long-term solutions is the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility on which construction was halted by President Obama back in February 2016. It was to be built in South Carolina with a sole purpose to take weapons-grade plutonium and convert it to plutonium oxide, mix it with uranium oxide, and produce mixed-oxide fuel or MOX. A ton of MOX fuel would produce enough energy to light and heat a million homes a year. But the cost for this facility had escalated from $10 to $34 billion.

That $34 billion price tag was the justification for halting the project. This has produced the third option which involves diluting plutonium-239 and disposing of it by sealing it in an underground vault. First converted to plutonium oxide, the fuel would then be blended with gels and foaming agents to become a substance referred to as “stardust” containing less than 10% plutonium. The stardust would then be mixed with sand and put in containers which would be buried deep within a geologically-stable rock formation.

Does Russia have similar plans to deal with its plutonium-239 disposal?

If they have it is currently a moot point. Because in the last two weeks Russia has suspended the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement arguing that geopolitical circumstances have changed. Using the abandonment of the MOX facility in South Carolina, Russia has chosen not to move forward with disposing of its 34 tons. The Russian government argues that unfriendly acts by the American government pose a threat to its security and justify suspending the deal.

So the Doomsday Clock that at the beginning of 2016 was at 3 minutes to midnight, may move to 2 just as the United States votes on a new leader for the country. We should all be concerned should Americans make a choice that could make the clock move even closer to Doomsday.