Oak Ridge

Tennessee Reactor To Make Tritium
by Rachel Zoll, Associated Press, 12/22/98

For the first time in U.S. history, the government is about to breach the long-standing wall separating civilian uses of nuclear power from military ones. The Energy Department announced Tuesday that it is awarding a billion-dollar contract to the Tennessee Valley Authority to produce tritium at a TVA nuclear reactor near Knoxville that generates electricity for homes and businesses in the Southeast. Tritium is an isotope that enhances the explosive force of nuclear warheads. The decision marks the first time in the nation's history that a civilian nuclear plant will be used to produce weapons material.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said that awarding the contract to the Watts Bar nuclear plant will be cost-efficient while providing needed tritium. TVA's Sequoyah nuclear plant outside Chattanooga will serve as a backup. “Watts Bar-Sequoyah is our best option for our national security. It is a proven technology. It's the best deal by far for the taxpayer,'' Richardson said. “It has the flexibility to meet our present and future tritium needs.'' Some congressmen and anti-nuclear groups opposed the decision, arguing that using a commercial reactor would fuel the arms race. “The use of a civilian nuclear reactor for the production of nuclear weapons materials is very troubling, and I believe that Secretary Richardson has underestimated the longterm nuclear proliferation implications,'' said Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who is stepping down this year as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Bruce Hall of the anti-nuclear group Peace Action in Washington said: “I think what we're doing is dangerous from a nonproliferation standpoint because we're blurring the lines between civilian and military applications of nuclear power.'' Richardson noted that the TVA a utility created during the New Deal is a government agency whose charter includes preserving national security. The Watts Bar decision “gives us the maximum arms control flexibility. It allows us to produce tritium when we need it,'' he said. He said details about the cost would be made public in a few weeks. A report issued in August by the Congressional Budget Office said that using an existing reactor such as Watts Bar would cost $1.1 billion over 40 years.

Tritium, a gas inside warheads, decays over much time and must be replenished. It has not been produced in the United States since 1988, when the government shut down its last weapons reactor at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The House approved legislation earlier this year that would have blocked the use of a commercial nuclear reactor to product tritium, but the measure failed in the Senate. Among other options that had been considered by the Energy Department was the TVA's unfinished Bellefonte nuclear plant outside Scottsboro, Ala. It also weighed the idea of building equipment at Savannah River or using a reactor at the government's Hanford weapons complex in Washington state. TVA officials had pushed the Bellefonte option, hoping to obtain financial help from the government to complete construction of the plant. Richardson also announced Tuesday that a $500 million plant to disassemble the plutonium cores of nuclear bombs would be built at Savannah River.