GUEST COMMENTARY

BY ALAN J. KUPERMAN
GUEST COMMENTARY

NOBODY HAS TO tell me about the importance of ensuring the safety and security of nuclear transportation.

As a public-interest advocate at the non-profit Nuclear Control Institute in the 1980s, I drafted what ultimately was enacted as the nation's strictest nuclear-transport law, addressing then-planned Europe-to-Japan air shipments of plutonium over U.S. territory.

The effect of the law -- which required actual airplane crash tests to certify the safety of transport casks -- was to compel these foreign interests to switch to sea shipment, a safer though by no means foolproof form of transportation.

However, all nuclear transports are not created equal. What compelled our institute's intervention in the 1980s was a combination of two factors. First, the environmental risks were relatively high in that the plutonium was to be transported in easily-dispersed powder form and the casks to be used had failed crash tests at the Sandia National Laboratory. Second, there was no national-security benefit to the shipments. Indeed, by promoting international commerce in a nuclear-weapons material, the transports would actually have undermined the nation's security. This was a no-brainer -- high environmental risk plus high security risk equals bad idea.

By contrast, the impending return shipments of U.S.-origin nuclear fuel from Asian research reactors, via the Concord Naval Weapons Station, are a different story.

The environmental risks, while not negligible in a worst-case accident scenario, are relatively small, owing to the fuel's lower background radiation level and non-powder form. Moreover, there is a compelling national-security interest in bringing home this nuclear material, for at least three reasons.

First, the fuel is directly usable in nuclear weapons, if stolen or diverted from the foreign reactor sites. Unlike nuclear powerplants, which generally use a low-enriched uranium fuel that is useless for weapons, most research reactors traditionally have relied on highly enriched uranium -- the material used in the Hiroshima atom bomb.

As part of the United States' optimistically named "Atoms for Peace" program, this fuel was exported with dozens of reactors starting in the 1950s. Even after being used in the reactors and becoming "spent," this material is directly usable in nuclear weapons. Not only nations, but subnational, terrorist groups could use this material to make nuclear weapons without the need for the high-tech enrichment facilities used by Pakistan.

Indeed, after the Gulf War it was discovered that Iraq had pursued just such a shortcut to the bomb, having already sawed the ends off fuel rods from its research reactor, stopped only by Operation Desert Storm.

Second, taking back this fuel is integral to a two-decade U.S. effort to end such reactors' reliance on bomb-grade uranium fuel. Non-weapons-usable fuels have been developed for the reactors, and the United States has struck a deal with their operators.

If over the next decade we take back the fuel we originally provided them giving them time to develop their own nuclear waste solutions, they'll agree to switch to the safer fuels now and thereby end commerce in fresh bomb-grade fuel.

Third, in nearly all cases the United States promised to take back this fuel decades ago, at the time it was originally exported. If the United States is going to insist that other nations live up to their promises and treaty obligations, we can't very well renege on our own.

Californians are justifiably concerned about their local environment and they have every right to be skeptical of assurances from the Department of Energy, which in decades past did not distinguish itself with openness and honesty.

In the present case, however, initially under the leadership of maverick Secretary Hazel O'Leary, the Department has gone the extra mile to address the public's safety and security concerns. When initial drafts of its Environmental Impact Statement were flawed, officials accepted public comments and made substantial modifications to ensure that emergency preparation, port selection, and routing would minimize risks of environmental accident or terrorist seizure.

Indeed, that is the main reason the department prevailed in lawsuits on the East Coast seeking to block shipments from Europe, which have proceeded without a hitch.

None of this suggests that Californians should be any less vigilant about protecting the environment or the health and safety of their families. It does, however, call for residents to keep two factors in the foreground.

First, the risks from these shipments, which contain a fraction of the radioactivity found in spent fuel from U.S. nuclear powerplants, are relatively remote.

Second, if the fuel instead were left overseas and terrorists got hold of it -- which is not out of the question, given the unstable conditions and lax security in several of the countries at issue -- the risks to the health and safety of all Americans could be quite considerable.

To my mind, that makes these shipments, like those I worked against in the 1980s, also a no-brainer, but with a different conclusion -- small environmental risk plus big security gain equals good idea.

Kuperman is senior policy analyst at the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington-based group concerned with issues of nuclear proliferation and transportation safety.