AGING U.S. REACTORS ARE USED IN BUILDUP OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01117R000401020009-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 5, 2011
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: May 2, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

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The Director oVCentral Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
National Intelligence Council
NIC #02194-86
1 May 1986
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
FROM:
Acting NIO for Economics
Hard Currency Limitations on the Response
to the Chernobyl Disaster
1. We can expect Gorbachev soon to come under pressure by
neighboring countries to shut down all nuclear reactors similar in design
to the units at Chernobyl. While Gorbachev may have been able to
consider such an option only two years ago when foreign exchange earnings
were much higher, the squeeze of lower oil and gas prices effectively
precludes this option.
Each 1,000 MW reactor replaces the equivalent of 25,000 b/d of
fuel oil worth about $130 million per year at current market
prices.
The loss of the four units at Chernobyl, hence, already costs
the USSR $500 million per year. (Even if power is rationed
rather than replaced by oil-fired capacity, indirect economic
losses would presumably be equally high.)
It would cost the USSR nearly 500 thousand b/d in fuel oil at a
cost of $2.5 billion annually to shut down all reactors of
similar design, causing a drop in oil exports of roughly 40
percent.
2. Looking further ahead, hard currency considerations will also
play a role in decisions relating to food. Should the damage to farmland
prove widespread, the decision on determining levels of contamination
acceptable for distributing food absent an ability to pay for substantial
imports will be a difficult one. EC countries may well offer substantial
"emergency" credits for such supplies given their surpluses in
production. The Soviet bureaucracy, however, might opt to distributing
tainted food before taking up such an offer.
CL BY SIGNER
DECL OADR
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Aging U.S. Reactors
Are Used in Buildup
Of Nuclear Weapons
Graphite Core of One May Be Dangerous
By Cass Peterson
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Reagan administration is
relying on a battery of aging nucle-
ar reactors to support the largest
strategic weapons buildup in 20
years, government documents
show. All of the reactors have
caused environmental - problems,
and one will require expensive re-
habilitation.
In Hanford, Wash., the Depart-
ment of Energy operates a graph-
ite-moderated reactor similar in
design to the ill-fated Soviet plant at
Chernobyl. According to govern-
ment documents, it suffers from a
predictable and potentially danger-
ous distortion of its graphite core.
DOE officials have elected to try
to repair the 23-year-old Hanford
reactor rather than build a new, $4
billion reactor as a departmental
advisory panel recommended four
years ago.
The rest of the nation's weapons-
grade fuel production is carried out
at four 1950s-era reactors at the
Savannah River complex near
Aiken, S.C. Spills, leaks and other
accidents there in the 1970s
prompted Du Pont, the complex's
contract operator, to warn in a
1977 report about the dangers of
old equipment.
Like the Chernobyl plant, the
U.S. military reactors lack the kind
of containment buildings required of
commercial power plants to prevent
the spread of radioactive materials
in an accident.
"These are big reactors, as large
or larger than commercial reac-
tors," said David Albright, a phys-
icist with the Federal of American
Scientists. "Why don't they have
containment vessels? Part of the
reason is that they are old, and they
are from a period when the United
States didn't care about it much."
Congress and the Reagan admin-
istration this week launched safety
investigations of the Hanford reac-
tor, despite DOE assurances that
the chance of a similar accident
there is negligible.
According to DOE documents,
however, the reactor's graphite
core has become distorted by what
is known as the "Wigner effect,"
named for the physicist who first
recognized the dangerously unsta-
ble condition, a radiation-induced
rearrangement of crystals that
makes the graphite "bulge."
Some scientists speculate that
the Soviets were trying to rid their
reactor of such distortions by heat-
ing it, prompting a runaway reac-
tion that ignited the graphite.
Larry Caldwell, a former Hanford
technician, said distortions in the
Hanford reactor have caused graph-
ite to swell against the metal tubes
that encase the reactor's fuel rods.
"That bends the tube, and when the
tubes bend, sometimes the fuel el-
ement gets stuck," he said. "It has
to be rammed out physically.
"All the problems that plagued
the Russians could potentially affect
this one," he said. "They've blown
fuel elements out of the reactor
tubes. Two years ago, they ...
spilled 400,000 gallons of radioac-
tive water."
In a 1983 environmental impact
statement on the restart of DOE's
"L" reactor at Savannah River last
year, DOE said that because of the
graphite distortion, "the life of N
Reactor [at Hanford]... is not ex-
pected to'extend beyond the mid-
1990s."
In its fiscal 1987 budget request,
however, DOE asked for $12 mil-
lion to study distortion, saying that
a solution is "essential" if the N Re-
actor is to serve beyond the mid-
1990s. The money also would fi-
nance preparations for replacing
several hundred reactor tubes that
will soon be "unacceptable for op-
eration from embrittlement and/or
distortion," the request said.
In an interview yesterday, Ener-
gy Secretary John S. Herrington ac-
knowledged the graphite problem
at Hanford, but said the reactor has
safety mechanisms not thought to
be present on the Soviet reactor,
such as an independent cooling sys-
tem for the graphite.
Hanford points up a dilemma for
the administration, which is at-
tempting to balance budgetary con-
straints against a demand for weap-
ons-grade nuclearfuels expected to
increase significantly in the 1990s.
In a classified report is 1982. a
DOE panel said a nsw poduction
reactor was neede4 to ludd war-
heads for the MX, Trident and
cruise missiles and to replenish tri-
tium in older warheads.
Faced with soaring deficits, how-
ever, the administration has not re-
quested the $4 billion to $8 billion
that would be needed for a new re-
actor. Weapons-grade fuel contin-
ues to be produced at Hanford and
the Savannah River complex's four
reactors, one of which is shut down
to repair a crack in the reactor ves-
sel that was leaking 100 pounds of
tritium a day.
A fifth reactor was mothballed at
Savannah River in 1964 and has
been partly "cannibalized" to repair
the other four.
In its environmental impact
statement for Savannah River's L
reactor, DOE said the only alterna-
tives to restarting the reactor
would be to run Hanford or the re-
maining Savannah River reactors at
levels "beyond the range of expe-
rience" and that possibly are unsafe.
"We are utilizing all our reactors
to the maximum," said Charles
Payne, who is charge of reactor op-
erations at Savannah River.
Environmental groups have ques-
tioned the safety of the Savannah
River reactors, which rely on a
pressurized ventilation system and
filters that Payne said "remove 99-
plus percent of fission products and
are designed to handle the maxi-
mum credible accident, about a 3
percent core melt."
In the L reactor analysis, how-
ever, the department assumed that
the ventilation system and filters
would continue to work even in the
event of a 100 percent core melt.
The chances of a complete melt-
down are less than one in 100 mil-
lion, the document said. If one oc-
curred, the radiation dose at the
boundary of the 300-square-mile
Savannah River complex, with all
filtering devices intact, would be
1,000 rem-nearly twice the lethal
amount.
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