Bio-Diesel/Biodiesel Energy Resources, Alternative Energy

Philip Sewell, Senior Vice President,
United States Enrichment Corporation, Inc. (USEC)

BROOKS: Phil Sewell is Senior Vice President of USEC, United States Enrichment Corporation. And he is responsible for international trade and, in particular, for implementing what remains the largest, single nonproliferation program ever, the elimination of 500 tons of Russian weapons grade highly enriched uranium under what is often called the Megatons to Megawatts Program.

Before he came to the U.S. Enrichment Program in 1993, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of Energy, where he was deeply involved in the uranium enrichment activities and represented the United States in negotiating the agreement on highly enriched uranium. And before that he held a number of positions in the Department.

SEWELL: Good afternoon. I want to first thank you for the opportunity to speak at this forum. It’s an honor to participate at the anniversary of, the 50th anniversary that addresses issues associated with President Eisenhower’s monumental “Atoms for Peace” proposal delivered to the United Nations in 1953.

The Eisenhower proposal sought to address the proliferation of nuclear weapons by sharing information and nuclear materials with other nations to promote the peaceful use of atomic energy. Over the past 50 years the pursuit and accomplishments of the peaceful atom have achieved tremendous success in many fields. And, as mentioned this morning, that’s shown by the fact that about 16% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear reactors today.

But these peaceful achievements are still obscured by the shadow of nuclear weapons proliferation. Almost every day we see news reports about nuclear weapons proliferation by nations and stories about the possibility of bomb-grade material falling into the wrong hands. So the subject of this meeting today is indeed timely as is the panel discussion on controlling nuclear material. As you can see from the program, the title of my presentation pretty well captures the importance of what we are doing to secure nuclear bomb-grade material.

Megatons to Megawatts is a 20-year program and an agreement between the U.S. and Russian governments to turn 500 metric tons of Russian nuclear warhead material into fuel to produce electricity. Eliminating 500-metric tons of bomb-grade material is the equivalent of eliminating 20 thousand nuclear warheads. So, this Megatons to Megawatts Program is among the most ambitious and successful efforts to control nuclear weapons material. It also uses the most effective method of controlling nuclear weapons material--eliminating it.

In the late 1980s, representatives from the United States and Russia began to focus on how to improve safeguards for the nuclear weapons material that was in storage. As the collapse of the Soviet Union took place these discussions moved into high gear. In 1992, the outline for an innovative U.S.-Russian nuclear materials control program was adopted and in 1993, a formal government to government agreement was signed by the United States and Russia, committing the two nations to an ambitious 20-year undertaking--the elimination of nuclear weapons-grade material, capable of making 20,000 nuclear warheads.

The formal title of the landmark 1993 agreement is as follows, “The Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation Concerning the Disposition of Highly Enriched Uranium Extracted from Russian Nuclear Weapons.” One could fall asleep reading that. As you can tell, it’s a big mouthful. So what we tried to do was capture the essence of what this agreement does by labeling it Megatons to Megawatts.

This agreement provides over 20 years, that 500-metric tons of HEU taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads will be converted in Russia to low enriched uranium, suitable for use as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. Over this period an executive agent, appointed by the U.S. government will purchase this recycled weapons material, valued at $12 billion dollars. The fuel will then be sold to utility customers for use in commercial nuclear reactors to produce electricity.

Quite remarkably the entire Megatons to Megawatts Program is financed not by government funding but by these commercial fuel purchases. My company, USEC, Inc. is the U.S. executive agent responsible for implementing this program with our Russian counterpart Tenex and that is exactly what we have been doing over the past ten years. We are more than one-third of the way through this program, having eliminated more than 190-metric tons of highly enriched uranium, which is equivalent to more than 7,500 nuclear warheads. And each and every day more warhead material is converted into fuel that will be used to produce electricity.

You may well ask, why would Congress or the Executive Branch have any interest in direct financial support for a new power reactor? Because we could stipulate that this new reactor would be powered entirely by fuel recycled from dismantled nuclear weapons. This new power reactor would facilitate the government’s efforts to reduce the threat posed by nuclear warhead material. For discussion purposes, Mr. Timbers suggested we call the proposed new reactor concept, the Isaiah Nuclear Energy Plant, after the Biblical prophet Isaiah, who called for turning swords into plowshares.

There are different kinds of advanced reactors designs that might be chosen for this Isaiah concept, so for rough calculation and estimate purposes, here are some useful statistics. The initial core for an Isaiah reactor could use LEU derived from three metric tons of highly enriched uranium. That would facilitate the elimination of 100 nuclear weapons just from the first fuel core loading. Each refueling would contain LEU from about 25 additional warheads. And over a projected lifetime for the Isaiah reactor, more than two thousand nuclear warheads could be eliminated.

Could such an Isaiah nuclear energy plant attract U.S. government support? I believe there is a convincing case to be made for this proposal, given three distinct advantages. Number one, it could provide increased domestic energy security. Number two, it could help mitigate the potential of global warming with emission free electricity from nuclear reactors. And three, it could provide enhanced national security by eliminating nuclear weapons material. That’s a triple hit.

Put another way, nuclear warheads that were once aimed at American targets, are now generating electricity to serve those same communities.
And building on what has been accomplished through the Megatons to Megawatts Program, over the last ten years, we could expect impressive results in the future. Let’s look ahead. If Isaiah were to stimulate industry to build one, five, ten, 15, 20, or any number of power reactors, a portion of the fuel they would use could come from nuclear weapons material. The increased demand for nuclear fuel would drive the opportunity to eliminate more nuclear warhead material. The vision of thousands of megawatts of electricity being generated by eliminating thousands of nuclear warheads is a vision that should become a reality.

Worries about the use of nuclear energy persist. But, no matter what your view is of nuclear energy, we cannot force the nuclear genie back in the bottle, nor erase E=MC2, nor un-invent enrichment, nuclear power reactors or weapons technologies. After all is said and done, nuclear energy and nuclear power are realities. We will have to live with and safely use their benefits to our greatest advantage. The good news is that we are at an intersection of mutual interests.

I believe that there are a number of areas where the strength of the commercial nuclear industry can help insure positive nonproliferation results in concert with government policy objectives--whether it be by eliminating nuclear weapons material or preventing its further accumulation. I would ask NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks, and Deputy Administrator Paul Longsworth, to consider exploring new approaches to utilizing the strength of the private sector to assist the Administration in achieving further non-proliferation objectives.

If it were true that Iran would be prepared to completely dismantle its enrichment activities in exchange for some kind of a guarantee for long-term fuel supply from outside, presumably the European Union from what I understand to be the case, and that this could be done in the context of an additional protocol with all of the bells and whistles of transparency that that could bring-- We may need even more. Then I see this going in a very, very constructive direction because I think this would be a bell weather for how other countries would have to try to treat this approach to their fuel cycle desires in the future.

Iran is a real test case in this regard. If on the other hand, what looks to is to take a leaf from Ron’s book, some kind of a multi-nationalization of an Iranian enrichment program sitting on Iranian territory, that becomes more problematic and I would be concerned about that, although I must say that, if I think about some of the questions that Ron just raised in his run down of the issues of what do we mean by this, that, and the other, there’s no need for us to be uniform in how we approach this. I think we can take this region by region or country set by country set as long as we stay within the parameters of the arrangement that brings about the outcome that we desire, which is avoidance of further proliferation.

HORNER: Dan Horner from McGraw Hill Nuclear Publications. I think that you just made a-- I’ll pose this question as a devil’s advocate question and then ask the panelists to respond. In Paul Longsworth’s presentation he mentioned, as part of the U.S. nonproliferation efforts, the effort with regard to the U.S. supplied research reactor overseas and converting those reactors and bringing back the HEU fuel. But wasn’t the supplying of those reactors a direct outgrowth of the Atoms for Peace Program and, in that respect, isn’t that a proliferation downside of the Atoms for Peace Proposal and wouldn’t your job have been easier if that aspect hadn’t taken place?

LONGSWORTH: You know, it’s not, and I’m going to give you a strange answer here. It’s not, because the original deal was that the spent fuel from those reactors would come back to the U.S. and I think, even in 1953 when they kicked that program off as the-- We realized that obviously we needed to repatriate the nuclear material. It is a strange answer because we are going to complete about half of the fuel that we’ve identified in an environmental impact statement by-- In the next few years we will have only addressed about half of the fuel that, again, we designated to come back to the United States.

LEHMAN: The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty was initially envisioned as sort of either of two things, one was a universal treaty open to all parties, the other was something that one would do, maybe on an interim basis or a regional basis, but primarily focused on South Asia and perhaps the Middle East, i.e., the non-parties as well as the weapon states. Interestingly enough, there was a UN resolution in the General Assembly co-sponsored by both the United States and India, supporting a fissile material cutoff. And all the P-5 have said that they can live with it.

Having said that, it is in the conference on disarmament. It’s caught up on linkages, by and large issues such as Pakistan’s concern about making sure that it deals with residual stocks. It is not enough to cut off the production for weapons purposes; they want to deal with the existing stocks. There’s linkages to India by the issue of a time bound framework for disarmament. In short, there’s been maybe some flexibility on each of those, at least expressed by the parties. But the process seems bogged down in the CD.

BROOKS: I would like to just add that as the community thinks about the future, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is a good example of the limitations of formal multi-lateral arms control. It’s it’s one of the reasons why we probably need to spend more time thinking about, as Ron said in his presentation, whether “international” means the same sort of thing that it has always meant or whether there are commercial international agreements a la the USEC Agreement that are, at least part of the solution.

__: Question for Mr. Sewell, I was intrigued by his suggestion with regard to the government sponsoring a reactor, the intent of which is to get rid of the, let me call it, surplus nuclear materials in Russia and, perhaps, even our own defense programs. We are not only having the problem with uranium 235, we also have a problem with regard to plutonium 239. And if the real objective is to get rid of those materials-- There have been people said, “Well, you just bury them.”

And the idea that we put forward, in terms of government support in burning basically, nuclear materials, is just that. It’s an idea of the government and industry to grasp and design in a way that’s optimum, optimum in terms of meeting policy objectives by the government and the world community and also in a way that will help provide incentives to build a new nuclear reactor that will get things started, with respect to the increased use of nuclear power that has so many benefits.

BROOKS: Let me just point out a third concept that’s actually what we’re doing. Some of the defense HEU is, in fact, being burned in U.S. reactors -- TVA reactors. In addition, at a galacticly slow pace, we are working with the Russian Federation to the elimination of 34 tons of weapons plutonium in each country through conversion into MOX fuel. It doesn’t make any economic sense either but it does allow us to take advantage of existing reactors.

However, what I have experienced is, when you get more into the, I’ll use the generic phrase, cooperative threat reduction and constructive engagement, you start to deal with practical problems that inevitably have to deal with the specific differences. And in many cases, I think the great debate about the future of arms control, international constraint and cooperative threat reduction is really the great debate between how much emphasis you put on standardization of norms and how much emphasis do you put on engagement, constructive engagement.

LONGSWORTH: You know there are so many nuances with how safeguards work actually gets done at facilities and I’d just like to parrot what Ambassador Lehman said. Inspections are the tool to the end not the objective. And I think everyone would agree that the IAEA probably spends a lot of money inspecting facilities that are not really a proliferation risk. For example, in the U.S., I don’t think anybody has accused the U.S. of selling plutonium or weapons on the open market. But because inspections are a tool and because of the universality principle, I think we allow inspectors to come in and we fully support that but it is a problem because it does take limited IAEA resources and the UN is inspecting facilities that don’t pose a great proliferation risk. But it is the way you get other countries to open up their facilities. So it is a tool to the end.

LYMAN: Hi. I’m Ed Lyman with the Union of Concerned Scientists. I wanted to ask a follow-up question to Dan Horner’s question on research reactors. With all due respect, I don’t think you really gave a complete answer to the question of whether exporting HEU research reactors all over the world was the best idea or not and, in fact, the other part of the answer you left out, is that not only are we taking the spent fuel back but we are persuading reactors that we had shipped that only used highly enriched uranium to convert so they no longer need to use highly enriched uranium but can use low enriched.

And that was a flaw in the original regime that we’re trying to play catch up on. In that respect, I’d just like to ask you, it would be a terrible legacy, 50 years after Atoms for Peace, if our own export control law was to be significantly weakened, yet that’s exactly what’s going on in Congress right now, where’s there’s an attempt to modify the U.S. HEU export control laws to make it easier for certain countries to receive highly enriched uranium without any obligation to work with the US to convert.

LONGSWORTH: Let me start at the beginning of your question and work through it. It wasn’t possible to build reactors at the time with low enriched fuel to achieve what you needed to do for science, medicine, agriculture and other purposes. I wouldn’t describe it as a flaw in the original approach because I think the United States took the best course available to it at the time was, we’ll send the fuel out and we’ll take it back. And it’s taken 50 years to start doing that but we’re making progress on that.

One of the programs that we carry out is to convert these reactors as I mentioned in my remarks. With regard to the Burr, Schummer, depending on which one is being debated in the energy bill, you know, interestingly enough, we were unaware that that provision was in there. I believe we are opposed to it. Frankly, I may get in a lot of trouble here, but I think we were opposed to the Schummer amendment because we have all of those authorities that Schummer, which was the underlying provision that was amended, that it required us to take a lot of steps that aren’t necessarily appropriate to have in the statute.

__: I was glad to hear of Mr. Sewell’s proposals for cost-benefit to the public of expanding nuclear power to burn up some of these materials. It doesn’t stretch my imagination very much to think that the public would also accept a certain amount of public funds going to try to purchase this material and keep it out of the hands of terrorists, if it is only a few billion dollars a year, when the public supports hundreds of billions for defense, if the public was just explained the affect of not doing this compared to the effect of the 9/11 incident on our country.

BROOKS: Well, I’ll answer it. Secretary Abraham proposed and his Russian counterpart agreed well over a year ago to a parallel program that would create a strategic uranium reserve. We would purchase basically whatever the Russians would chose to sell us and the quantity is still being debated. Right now it is only a few tons a year. Blend it down and make it sort of the uranium equivalent of the strategic petroleum reserve. It would just sit there minding it’s own business, but it would be in a form that would be suitable for energy us and unsuitable for weapons use.

There is dispute on the hill as to whether that is good use of public funds and I’ll let you know when I see the appropriations act. But the idea is one that the President thought of a year ago and it’s basically a good idea. We’re also purchasing, and this is small amounts, I mean small amounts in the Russian context but large amounts in anybody else’s, HEU from Russia for the handful of U.S. research reactors that have not yet been converted to low enrichment fuel. They’ll be burning Russian HEU here very shortly, once again, the will of the funders permitting, and I’m pretty sure it will.

__: Firstly, I would like to make one historical remark. Indeed, historically, all technologies have become, as they were introduced ...(inaudible) technologies, and all have proliferated in the past. So, what we’re trying to do here is historically, totally, unprecedented and, therefore, one should not be surprised that it is extremely difficult. I mean that is one remark. In that sense, Administrator Longsworth gave a list of the program achievement and his note was certainly quite optimistic. And there are, indeed, many achievements to be proud of.

But I think it is a matter of the glass either being half full or half empty, namely, there have been developing many impediments and the time scale in which some of these programs have been proceeding have slipped really extremely badly. I mean the plutonium disposition has slipped very badly that one is now talking about 17 years, or whatever the number is. There have been glitches in the HEU Purchase Agreement. There are major problems in the MPC&A [Material Protection, Control and Accounting] improvement in Russia due to, on the Russian side, them not giving access sufficiently, on the American side, due to the insistence on liability protection for the American participants.

BROOKS: Let me, because I think that is really a question that is addressed to those of us who are in government. I can tell you that Secretary of Energy has been more active, as far as I’m concerned, than any Secretary in history in trying to accelerate programs and remove roadblocks I can tell you that the President has been active in pushing these. I can tell you that it was discussed with President Putin at Camp David. And so we are trying to accelerate but I think the honest answer is, it is a very slow process and a very difficult process.

I think that is going to have to be the last question. As I listen to your comments and the comments of the panel, I came to sort of three broad conclusions that I will leave with you. One is that the international regime that grew out of President Eisenhower’s vision, hasn’t done everything, but it’s done a lot. The second is that there are lots of good ideas for the future and we ought to explore those, but all those good ideas are going to take time. And, therefore, I guess, the third is that redoubling our efforts at material protection is probably pretty important in the near term.

Philip Sewell, Senior Vice President, United States Enrichment Corporation, Inc. (USEC)

Philip Sewell, Senior Vice President,
United States Enrichment Corporation, Inc. (USEC)