To Be Flexible on Arms, Reactors Must Be Reopened

Several disarmament and nuclear opposition groups are taking advantage of safety problems at the nation’s aging nuclear weapons plants to call essentially for unilateral nuclear disarmament. If we follow their lead, we run a grave risk of endangering our future national security.

These groups object to the construction of new military reactors to provide strategic nuclear materials needed to maintain our nuclear deterrent. They argue that the U.S. government has consistently overstated its requirements for nuclear materials. They further claim that better management of these materials--and ultimately possible reductions in the nuclear stockpile resulting from strategic arms-control negotiations--will make it unnecessary to build new reactors. If Congress sides with these critics, we will be going into the 21st Century unable to deter war or respond to threats to U.S. interests.

Events of the past year are not reassuring. Last April, the three existing defense production reactors at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina were shut down indefinitely for safety reasons. Two months earlier, the reactor in Hanford, Wash., was closed permanently in response to mounting concerns about both the management of the plant and the safety of its outmoded design. These facilities have been our only adequate source of plutonium and tritium, essential to the warheads used in our nuclear weapons systems.

Plutonium lasts tens of thousands of years and stockpiles are reasonably satisfactory. However, tritium steadily decays and has a half-life of only 12 years.

There is a consensus among knowledgeable national-security analysts that if the reactors at Savannah River are not restarted soon, the tritium reserve will be exhausted by this summer, forcing the premature retirement of some warheads in order to recover tritium for use in other weapons. Since no offsetting reduction in the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal would be required, such a situation would constitute unilateral disarmament by the United States. As it is, replacing the capacity of these reactors will take at least a decade.

Opponents of the U.S. nuclear-weapons program belittle these concerns. Citing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s announcement that the Soviets will halt production of enriched weapons-grade uranium, they suggest the problem can be eliminated in the near term by reducing the amount of tritium used in weapons, and in the long run by reducing arsenals through arms-control agreements.

But reducing the tritium in warheads means at best pushing the problem into the future rather than solving it. At worst, it means reducing or eliminating the margin of conservatism in weapon design. If the tritium in a warhead decays faster than predicted and if there is no margin of conservatism, the weapon will not work--in effect, crippling our nuclear deterrent.

If the objective of nuclear critics is to force changes in weapon designs, they are creating another serious problem. Weapons using less tritium would mean bigger warheads, which would have an adverse impact on the goal of nuclear arms stability. Conversely, if critics want stability, they will have to support the nuclear materials requirements for more stabilizing weapons with greater range and mobility, which means a greater reliance on tritium.

Opponents of developing new tritium-producing capacity are putting the cart before the horse. Arms control is a means, not an end. The goal of arms control is improved stability and security. Negotiators must have flexibility to link weapons reductions to security interests, and not be stampeded toward a pact because we lack the capability to produce nuclear weapons or are forced to cannibalize them.

The threat that the tritium shortage poses to our nation’s flexibility in arms control becomes even more apparent when compared to the Soviets’ capacity for producing nuclear materials. Some experts estimate that this capacity, despite Gorbachev’s announcement, is five to six times greater than that of the United States.

What can be done to provide a secure supply of tritium? For the long term, the Energy Department has proposed building two new reactors to produce tritium and plutonium, while it addresses environmental, health and safety problems at the nuclear weapons complex. In the short run, the reactors at Savannah River must be re-started as soon as safety permits. However, these reactors are approaching the end of their original-design lifetimes.

The challenge facing the Energy Department is to develop an interim tritium-producing capability in the event of a protracted shutdown of the existing reactors prior to operation of the new reactors. For example, the department could produce some tritium by converting its test facility at Hanford, which is currently being used to develop nuclear fuels.

The Energy Department has begun to improve its management of tritium by reducing the time between the scheduled retirement of nuclear weapons and the recovery of tritium for use in other weapons. But these steps do not address the long-term need for tritium. In these times of tight-fisted fiscal policy, Congress must move promptly to provide funds to begin building new reactors. If we are to ensure our nuclear defense capabilities for the future, we must start the process now.