Post-Nuclear Fallout : San Diego Firm Says Fuel From Russian Reactor Can Heat Homes

In desolate Siberia, Russia’s Tomsk-7 nuclear complex sits atop a mountain of plutonium. Its 20,000 workers operate weapons reactors not to fight the cold war, but to provide steam heat to nearby residents.

Under an agreement signed with the United States last year, Russia vowed to shut the reactors by 2000. But how to accomplish this lofty goal has created an unusual dispute with an unusual cast of characters.

General Atomics, a San Diego-based nuclear equipment manufacturer, believes it has the solution to all of Tomsk’s problems: a new reactor said to be meltdown-proof that could burn Tomsk’s surfeit of plutonium, generate heat for the city and preserve thousands of jobs.

The company quietly signed a formal contract last month with Russia’s Ministry of Atomic Energy to begin development of the new helium-cooled reactor, funded initially with $1-million contributions from the company and from the Russian government.

If built, the reactor would be the first in the world to burn weapons-grade plutonium left over from Cold War bomb production. Ultimately, the project will need U.S. financing and approval.

Yet General Atomics is waging an uphill fight to persuade the U.S. government to back the project. Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary does not like the proposal, asserting that it involves an unproven technology that cannot meet the schedule to deactivate the Tomsk reactors by 2000 and that using plutonium as a reactor fuel poses a proliferation risk.

“I have said nyet, nyet, nyet, “ O’Leary said in an interview earlier this year. “I am not entertaining a high-temperature helium reactor. This reactor is contrary to everything we have laid out.”

But O’Leary’s tough talk does not faze General Atomics Chairman Neal Blue, whose family purchased the company from Chevron 10 years ago. General Atomics is seeking to position itself as a major international player in nuclear energy.

“The Department of Energy is opposed to advanced nuclear energy development,” Blue said. “This is an unrealistic policy that ultimately will be reversed in time, because it is contrary to U.S. interests.”

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General Atomics has been waging a long and tedious battle to win over other elements of the U.S. government, including the White House, Congress, National Security Council, the Commerce Department and the Defense Department. The program clearly has support outside the Energy Department, particularly in Congress.

The dispute highlights the vast gulf that exists between the two nations about the future of plutonium, tons of which remain from the Cold War nuclear arms race. Under U.S. policy, plutonium is typecast as the ultimate toxic waste, both a health hazard and a potent weapon ingredient. Russia, meanwhile, considers its plutonium a valuable energy asset.

The Energy Department would like Russia to take the American approach with its plutonium at Tomsk-7 and other sites. The United States plans to spend billions of dollars to dispose of its plutonium, possibly by encasing it in glass logs and burying it deep underground.

But the United States might as well suggest that Russia bury the czar’s jewels. The Russian nuclear weapons complex is virtually broke, unable to pay hundreds of thousands of workers for weeks at a time, and the country is witnessing an exodus of its top scientists.

A desperate Ministry of Atomic Energy signed an $800-million deal in January to complete a nuclear reactor in Iran, putting in jeopardy a range of cooperative U.S. projects. Russian officials, for their part, complain that they only have seen delays in dealing with U.S. officials.

Even if Russia could afford to dispose of its plutonium, it is far from certain that the U.S. plan to bury it is safe. Amid Energy Department efforts to open a disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, scientists have raised a long series of concerns that buried plutonium waste might be unstable and cause an environmental catastrophe in the distant future.

“We don’t understand the American position,” said Nicholai N. Ponomarev-Stepnoi, a vice president at Russia’s Kurchatov Institute, a weapons research lab. “Americans have made no decision on the disposition of their own weapons plutonium. Only study, study, study this problem, but no decision. My position is that plutonium is a necessary energy source.”

In hooking up with General Atomics, the Russians have found a company that shares their ideas and that is willing to battle the U.S. government.

“It makes good sense to utilize plutonium as an energy source while it is being consumed in a reactor,” Blue said. “You can’t squeeze toothpaste back into its original container. Tomsk-7 fuel exists, and it is not realistic for some people in the Energy Department to not allow Russia to capture the energy value of that plutonium just because the Energy Department insists on it.”

General Atomics remains a true believer in nuclear-generated electrical power, continuing to invest heavily in research at a time when many larger players have long ago concluded that the industry would never make a comeback.

After serious environmental and economic concerns arose in the 1970s, roughly 100 worldwide orders for reactors disappeared, sending the nuclear industry into a tailspin. General Atomics itself lost 10 firm orders.

Now the firm believes that the Russians’ plight presents the right opportunity to commercialize its helium-cooled reactor technology and stake out a significant share of the growing world market for electrical generating systems.

The privately held firm, which is debt-free, has revenue of more than $300 million annually and has “good healthy” growth, according to Blue, who would disclose no other financial information. It has about 1,600 employees.

The big selling point of the helium-cooled reactor is General Atomics’ contention that it is meltdown-proof and represents a big leap in safety over existing water-cooled reactor technology.

The General Atomics system uses particles of uranium or plutonium encased in layers of carbide and carbon, which keep the radioactive fission byproducts physically contained. As the temperature in the reactor rises, the chain reaction of the uranium fuel pellets moderates itself.

The firm asserts that the reactor is immune to either structural failure or human error because it can safely survive a complete loss of coolant. According to General Atomics senior vice president Walter Simon, a loss of coolant would result in a core temperature of 1,500 degrees--still 500 degrees less than the temperature at which the fuel particles disintegrate.

Mujid Kazimi, chairman of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he has studied the reactor design and the claim that helium-cooled reactors are immune to meltdowns appears valid for reactors of up to 100-megawatts, which is a modest-sized plant.

Kazimi said additional research is needed to examine whether the fuel pellets will remain stable over many years--he pointed out that the controls for the helium-driven turbines will be highly complex--but he said that the technology merits development.

General Atomics believes it can design and build a helium-cooled reactor at Tomsk-7 for about $500 million, using low-cost Russian technical and manual labor, Simon said. The gas turbine, gas compressors and reactor vessel would be U.S.-made.

One easy way for the U.S. government to support the project would be to tap hundreds of millions of dollars already appropriated under the Nunn-Lugar Act, passed in 1991 to assist Russia in dismantling its weapons complex, according to Sam Ethridge, the General Atomics contracting director who negotiated the Russian deal.

But a senior Energy Department official said the agency does not consider disposing of plutonium as dismantling a weapon and that the Nunn-Lugar money could not be allocated to the Tomsk-7 project.

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Even more problematic is whether the Energy Department will allow General Atomics to transfer the helium reactor technology to Russia.

“Secretary O’Leary has strongly opposed the transfer of technology that would be useful to facilitate this project in Russia,” Blue acknowledged. “But I wouldn’t write off the possibility she would modify her opposition, given the realities.

“These are the same people,” he said of the Russian nuclear work force, “who build weapons, and it is important to have them engaged in work that is beneficial to their society. This would yield a long-term association between the U.S. and Russia in disposing of Russian plutonium.”