Putin's Nuclear Plan

I just returned from Moscow, and the day before my departure I had the opportunity to see the Russian news reportage about Putin's grandiose schemes for the Russian nuclear industry. Over the next seven years, the Russian government plans to invest about one trillion rubles in new nuclear power projects. After this point, Putin expects that the industry will be able to secure regular financing for itself. With twenty-six new nuclear reactors by 2020, Putin hopes to double the size of Russia's nuclear fleet.

What really made my ears perk up, however, was when I heard this:

- Но следует переходить к новейшим технологиям: внедрять замкнутый топливный цикл, создавать коммерческий реактор на быстрых нейтронах. На решение этой задачи должна быть направлена целевая программа "Ядерные энерготехнологии нового поколения". Следует завершить ее подготовку уже к ноябрю текущего года", - сказал Путин. Наиболее эффективно АЭС работают в режиме полной загрузки, "поэтому единая энергосистема страны должна быть готова принять новые мощности". В этой связи Путин подчеркнул необходимость опережающего развития сетевой инфраструктуры. Он напомнил, что по некоторым объектам атомной отрасли решения не были приняты, "так как сетевая инфраструктура не была готова". "Прошу учесть этот аспект в генеральной схеме размещения объектов электроэнергетики", - сказал он.

But it is necessary to migrate to new technologies: to introduce a closed fuel cycle, to construct a commercial fast reactor. To achieve these aims there an entire program, "Next Generation Nuclear Energy Technology," should be introduced. Its preparation should be completed by November of this year," said Putin. The most effective nuclear plants operate at full load, "therefore the entire national energy system should be ready to receive the new capacity." To this end Putin underscored the necessity of the aggressive development of grid infrastructure. He reminded [listeners] that at some nuclear sites solutions were not reached, "and therefore grid infrastructure was not ready." "I request the study of this issue in the general scheme of siting power stations," he said.

I believe that the fast reactor part is probably a reference to the ongoing work on the BN-800, although it may be referring to even more ambitious fast-reactor projects, such as the BN-1600. It will be very interesting to see what the Russian plan for advanced nuclear technology includes when it comes out in November.

Better Than Baseline

I apologize for my lack of posts lately. This is because I'm currently in Moscow scoping out archival sources for my dissertation, and I've had some difficulties with my housing situation. The Russians I'm currently staying with informed me only a few hours before my flight to Moscow that I could only stay with them for one week, as their landlord apparently balked about their scheme to sublet a room. As a result, I've had to find a new place to live, so I'm moving to an apartment over at Park Pobedy on Tuesday. I'm happy to be staying there, as it's an elite housing development from the Brezhnev years a few hundred meters from the WWII memorial. The bad news is that I am probably going to lose internet access when I move, so I probably won't have another post until August.

Lately I've been pondering the debate surrounding potential policy solutions for global climate change. One of the things that I believe that nuclear advocates should emphasize is that our solution has the potential to be an enormous improvement of "business as usual." I'm honestly not sure what to make of the economic analyses that have been made of reducing carbon emissions. So many of the technical questions remain unanswered that it seems hard to know what sort of numbers are being used to reach these conclusions. And never mind the debates over issues like discount rates that plagued the Stern Review a few years ago. I believe that simple logic can provide a good basis for the nuclear case.

The problem with assuming a "business as usual" scenario is that it's pretty clear that our current economy, with its dependence on oil and natural gas, will not survive this century. Even assuming that sizable new resources are discovered, it is totally implausible that these will be adequate to meet soaring demand from the developing world. So clearly, there will be some sort of transition away from these fuels. Coal is another matter. We can continue burning coal for the forseeable future, but without vast technological intervention this is unacceptable in the current situation. It appears (to me, at least) that the chances of coal with CCS becoming competitive with even current nuclear plants is quite slim.

The preferred solution of much of the population is the idea of a renewable energy economy. This idea comes in several variants, of course. One popular vision is ultracentralized, as seen in the ideas for giant solar farms in the Southwestern US and the Sahara. The opposite vision is decentralized, to the point of people producing their own energy via rooftop solar panels, small windmills, and the like. Neither one of these is a good idea, in large part due to the vagaries of the weather. Indeed, the renewable energy economy is by its very nature crippled by serious problems. It might be best to describe its probablt result as "energy fuedalism."

Renewable energy technologies operate by extracting energy from the ambient environment. As such, renewable energy production is much like farming. And just as with corn or turnips, solar and wind farms can have a bad year. For instance, large volcanic eruptions can reduce solar flux, and large storms could damage offshore wind capacity, reducing generation considerably. So long as these technologies provide a negligable amount of our overall energy supply, these things don't matter. But if our economy lived off of them in a hand-to-mouth fashion, the results would be disastrous. Inclement weather events could cause large sectors of the economy to grind to a halt at a moment's notice. We would live in a world of fear and uncertainty, knowing that we could be mere hours or days away from a serious energy shortfall. Just as our medieval ancestors, we would be powerless in the face of nature, and would be forced to accept whatever bounty (or lack thereof) nature saw fit to grant us.

Renewable energy really becomes "feudal," however, in its "decentralized" variant. In this dystopian world, people would produce their own energy. What this would probably mean in practice is that only the rich could afford to acquire reliable energy supplies. It's fairly obvious that most places where people live are suboptimal for renewable energy generation, and on top of this many people don't own land to site such devices even if they could afford them. On top of this, it's unlikely that such a system would possess enough storage and excess capacity to be reliable under unfavorable weather conditions. As such, I'm shocked that so many people are enamored by this terrible idea. It's inequitable, and the uncertainty it created would curtail and probably cripple economic growth. Instead of creating a world of peace, equality, and prosperity, it portends a dystopia where energy will be monopolized by a neofuedal ruling class and the poor will have to go without.

Advanced nuclear fuel cycles, meanwhile, offer the possibility of a future markedly improved from the present. One of the great advantages of nuclear fuel is its incredible energy density. Because of this, nations could conceivably stockpile decades or even centuries worth of fuel. Air-cooled PBMRs and MSRs could be sited almost anywhere, allowing the electrification of remote communities that could never be adequately served either by fossil or renewable plants. Energy supply would be independent of the vagaries of the weather, and would indeed be considerably more reliable than they are now. Imagine the possibilities: a world where wars over energy resources are an unhappy memory. Where energy prices are stable because fuel is acquired decades in advance. Where electricification has improved the health and well-being of the world's remotest and poorest communities. Where the lack of uncertainty in all these things has fueled robust economic growth for all the world's people. And all without the deleterious environmental, social, economic, and political costs of the alternatives. Indeed, we can have all these things and beat global warming too. But to do so we have to start now. If we waste twenty years pursuing fantasies, we could very well lose everything.

There are, of course, a number of issues that will need to be resolved to make the nuclear future happen. Among other things, we need a practical agreement regarding the internationalization of nuclear energy. I believe that the universal and equitable inspection of all the world's nuclear facilities by the IAEA of some similar organization is called for. Every nation needs a chance to benefit from nuclear energy so long as they follow a reasonable set of rules. Given an appropriate agreement between the US and Russia, most of the world's nuclear weapons and weapons materials can be converted into fuel salt for starting MSRs or solid fuel assemblies. But the solutions seem simple enough, especially given the enormous possibilities.

The Misadventures of Amory Lovins, Fossil Fuel Apologist

I've been following RMI's response to David Bradish over at Gristmill with interest, and I must say that so far I'm not exactly blown away. But the fact that I'm unimpressed isn't at all surprising; what is surprising is that it seems that regular Gristmill commenters are nonplussed as well. But I think this is to be expected, given that Lovins' defense of his anti-nuclear critique makes it abundantly clear that he's an apologist for continued fossil fuel use.

However much we pro-nuclear types may disagree with the people over at Grist, they know as well as anyone the many reasons why continued fossil fuel use is unacceptable given the realities of global climate change. On top of this, RMI's explanation of why Bradish's critique is "wrong" makes it abundantly clear that he was absolutely correct in his charges of cherry-picking data and using highly arbitrary definitions for concepts like "micropower." Most importantly, Lovins is explicitly defending onsite diesel and gas generators as an alternative to new nuclear plants--a position that any "environmentalist" worthy of the name should be highly skeptical of.

Take, for instance, Lovins' defense of "micropower." RMI claims that Bradish simply misread their "simple" definition, which they give as:

1. onsite generation of electricity (at the customer, not at a remote utility plant) -- usually cogeneration of electricity plus recovered waste heat (outside the U.S. this is usually called CHP -- combined-heat-and-power): this is about half gas-fired, and saves at least half the carbon and much of the cost of the separate power plants and boilers it displaces; [and] 2. distributed renewables -- all renewable power sources except big hydro plants, which are defined here as dams larger than 10 megawatts (MW).

I still don't see why these things deserve to be grouped together at all, other than that Lovins has been doing this since the mid-1970s. Although he digs at Bradish that " we chose and defined our terms carefully, presented data consistent with our definitions, and cannot be responsible for Mr. Bradish's pretense that we meant something different and should have said so. He's welcome to compile his own data using his own idiosyncratic definitions, but he shouldn't blame us for not adopting them," RMI's definition is so idiosyncratic by nature that it's hard to really regard it as "careful." He admits that wind doesn't really possess most of the "advantages" of micropower, but he doesn't explain why huge solar thermal plants in California deserve the "micropower" appellation but an 11MW hydroelectric system doesn't, or why diesel-fired anything deserves to be regarded as "green." Never mind as well that the Soviets operated nuclear-fired systems for decades that meet the above definition. Indeed, there's no reason that small nuclear systems can't be built that would be far more environmentally sound than the fossil-fuel alternatives championed by Lovins.

Yesterday's post mentioned Lovins' rebuttal of the claim that Jevons' Paradox seriously compromises his theories regarding energy efficiency. As he puts it:

Mr. Bradish has posted part three of his critique, claiming that RMI has overlooked Jevons Paradox, which undoes and reverses the intended energy savings from more efficient end-use. We have rebutted this invalid claim in a response to Mr. Bradish's cited primary source -- an article by Robert Bryce in his newsletter. Completion of our response was delayed by travel, but we expect to finish it shortly, and will then post it on RMI's website, in this blog, and (Mr. Bryce has assured us) on his site.

Meanwhile, readers should know that the claimed "rebound" effect -- phenomena that make net energy savings smaller than gross savings -- is real but generally very small, and has no material effect on our conclusions. This is firmly established in the empirical literature, and is well-known to knowledgeable energy economists but evidently not to Mr. Bryce, Mr. Bradish, or the theory's current standard-bearers, Dr. Peter Huber and Mr. Mark Mills. A brief introduction to some basic concepts is on Wikipedia.

It'll be interesting to see this, because Lovins isn't on very firm ground on this point. RMI's earlier attempts to rebut Bryce were unimpressive, to put it mildly. Indeed, the "Rebound Effect" is not something that can be debunked in the sense that Lovins is implying, as it derives directly from the basic economic principles accepted by free-market economists. In order for the "rebound effect" to be a myth, neoclassical economics must be fundamentally wrong.

The basic principle on which orthodox economic theory rests is the idea of utility. It is no coincidence that Jevons was an important figure in the development of the concept of marginal utility. Neoclassical economics, also known as the "marginalist" school, explains economic decision-making in terms of marginal utility. Utility is defined as "a measure of the relative satisfaction from or desirability of consumption of goods." Early concepts of utility, such as that of Jeremy Bentham, regarded utility as a concrete, quantifiable thing, but later economists moved away from this idea. Economists argue that people consume goods to the extent that gives them the most satisfaction for their expenditure.

What implication does this have for Lovins' efficiency theories? Far from having "no material effect," Lovins' arguments dating back to The Soft Energy Path are incompatible with neoclassical economics. Increased energy efficiency increases the marginal utility of consuming a particular amount of energy. If consumers are rational maximizers, the ability to produce a greater amount of satisfaction from consuming energy will, all other things remaining equal, increase energy use.

It is true that in recent first-world experience, the short-term rebound has not been 100%, or close to it. There is a simple explanation for this: in developed economies, major efficiency improvements have been driven by scarcity. In many classic instances, increased scarcity far outweighed increased efficiency. Because the cost of energy has not remained the same and also because demand for the things produced using energy is also somewhat inelastic, efficiency improvements haven't generally resulted in a large rebound. RMI seems intent on insinuating that this demonstrates that Jevons was wrong, but it really does nothing of the sort. The simple fact that global energy consumption continues to increase as the marginal benefits of consuming energy has increased with the proliferation of more efficient technology is a powerful confirmation of Jevons' Paradox.

I find it ironic that Lovins' linked to the Wikipedia article about the paradox, given that it explains why Lovins is wrong in two sentences:

At the microeconomic level (looking at an individual market), even with the rebound effect, improvements in energy efficiency usually result in reduced energy consumption. That is, the rebound effect is usually less than 100%. However, at the macroeconomic level, more efficient (and hence comparatively cheaper) energy use leads to faster economic growth, that in turn increases energy use throughout the economy. Taking into account both the microeconomic and the macroeconomic effects, technological progress that improves energy efficiency will tend to increase overall energy use.

That sounds about right. Lovins' riposte is a pretty weak given the withering critique Bryce gave Lovins in Energy Tribune last year. But I still think that RMI's big problem is that their argument is that we shouldn't go nuclear and that we should use fossil fuels more efficiently instead. These days, people like James Hansen are arguing that we really shouldn't be burning fossil fuels at all. It's hard to make a convincing argument for a fossil-fuel future, even one vastly improved on the present. We need a zero-carbon economy, and realistically that means fission. As such, "negawatts" and "micropower" are just obfuscation that only serve to cloud the energy debate.

Is That The Way I Look?

Herbert Block Political Cartoon, September 26, 1954.

Что такое АТЭЦ?

With the recent release of RMI's new piece criticizing nuclear power, there has been an upsurge in the discussion of waste heat from nuclear plants. It's important to keep in mind that there is no reason why nuclear plants can't do all the things that Lovins' beloved natural gas cogeneration plants can. In fact, in Russia they already do--and have been doing so for more than thirty years.

Although it is likely to surprise readers who associate cogeneration with Lovins' criticisms of "centralized planning," the Soviets were actually huge fans of cogeneration. This might be taken as evidence that cogeneration isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be, as anyone who has lived in St. Petersburg in the summer when the municipal hot water is turned off can tell you. I imagine it's a lot less fun when the system fails during the winter, which I've heard about but have been mercifully spared in my own experience. Because of these problems it's increasingly common for Russians to install water heaters in their apartments.

Whatever the shortcomings of the centralized water and space heating systems found in Soviet cities, they combined with the Soviet penchant for nuclear technology to inspire the creation of the Атомная теплоэлектроцентраль (АТЭЦ)--a nuclear plant designed to produce both heat and electricity. Officially, this term was reserved for a special variant of the VVER-1000 that was under construction in Odessa and Kharkov in the 1980s. These plants were canceled following Chernobyl. However, the principle of nuclear cogeneration was demonstrated before this at the Bilibinskaia AES in northeastern Siberia.

The Bilibino Nuclear Cogeneration Plant, Siberia

The Bilibinskaia plant is one of the more unusual in Rosenergoatom's fleet. Whereas most Russian nuclear plants are either VVER LWRs or RBMKs, Bilibino's consists of four comparatively tiny EGP-6 graphite-moderated boiling-water reactors with a total electrical output of only 48 MW total. The plant began construction in the mid-1960s and the first reactor went into service in 1974. It provides both heat and power to the city of Bilibino, which is a small gold-mining town of only 5700 people. In part as a result of this low demand, the plant operates at a low capacity factor--well under 40% in recent years.

So here's what I'm wondering: why isn't the Bilibino nuclear plant "micropower?" It's much smaller than some of the fossil-fuel fired cogeneration plants that RMI includes in its statistics for "micropower," and it certainly has a better claim for climate-friendliness. In Forget Nuclear, RMI defined "micropower" as follows:

1. onsite generation of electricity (at the customer, not at a remote utility plant)—usually cogeneration of electricity plus recovered waste heat (outside the U.S. this is usually called CHP—combined-heat-and-power): this is about half gas-fired, and saves at least half the carbon and much of the cost of the separate power plants and boilers it displaces;
2. distributed renewables—all renewable power sources except big hydro plants, which are defined here as dams larger than 10 megawatts (MW).

It's pretty clear that most of the combined heat and power (CHP) plants in RMI's statistics are larger than Bilibino and no less removed from the consumer. But somehow I doubt that Bilibino has ever been included in RMI's tally of "micropower," or that Soviet plutonium-production reactors that also served a similar role in their cities of residence were included. I wonder why?

How's This For A Premise?

1999: A World of Difference

On August 12, 1992, England's tiny nuclear arsenal fell on Ireland, South Africa, and finally on China. Instantly the planet went up in flames. In the first half of what was to be called the War of '92, half the Eath's population perished.

The United States was reduced to a vast underpeopled land--and, to make matters worse, Texas had seceded and taken her precious oil reserves.

But Israel, virtually untouched in a world ravaged by war, was painfully overpopulated. So Sol Ingelstein and Myra Kalen had come to America looking for a place to settle. As mercenaries on the side of the union in its war with Texas, the Israelis had been promised land in exchange for their services.

Leading their bedraggled troops into the heartland of Texas, Sol and Myra head up operation King. Mission: Resuce the President of the United States!

From The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 by Jake Saunders and Howard Waldrop (Del Rey, 1974). And yes, it's about as bad as it sounds.

Why Gas Is Not Our Future

From Lovins' recent Newsweek piece:

Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007—and more than 100 percent in some months.

I'm not sure what parallel universe Lovins inhabits, but he can't seriously believe that because Schleswig-Holstein generates more electricity from wind than it uses in certain calendar months that it is "more than 100% wind-powered"... can he?

Micropower delivers a sixth of total global electricity, a third of all new electricity and from a sixth to more than half of all electricity in 12 industrial countries (in the United States it's only 6 percent). In 2006, the global net capacity added by nuclear power was only 83 percent of that added by solar cells, 10 percent that of wind power and 3 percent that of micropower. China's distributed renewables grew to seven times its nuclear capacity and grew seven times faster. In 2007, the United States, China and Spain each added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. Wind power added 30 percent of new U.S. and 40 percent of EU capacity, because it's two to three times cheaper than new nuclear power. Which part of this doesn't Moore understand?

This particular set of numbers is pretty illustrative of how mendacious Lovins' presentation is, and how in practice he's essentially shilling for the natural gas industry. Note that the very limited additions in nuclear capacity coming online in 2006 were 83% of new installed solar capacity and 10% of new wind power. At realistic capacity factors, the new nuclear capacity could be expected to generate about 3x the new solar capacity and about 1/3 that of the new wind capacity. However, "micropower" generally added more than 30x the capacity than nuclear in 2006. This reveals that "micropower" is really a code-word for fossil fuels, and in practice that means natural gas. Lovins' numbers reveal that the vast majority of "micropower" is really natural-gas fired cogeneration. However attractive this technology may appear at present, it is not viable as a long-term energy strategy. A brief review of Russian energy policies reveals why.

Although the Soviet Union's fleet of nuclear power plants is pretty notorious in the west, nuclear power provides a smaller fraction of Russia's electrical generation than it does in the United States. Instead, Russian cities are actually dependent upon natural gas for a very large proportion of their electrical generation and heating. There are a variety of reasons for this, the main ones being geographic. Russian coal reserves are mediocre, and they tend to be located far from urban centers. Because gas is easily transportable and the Soviet Union possessed it in abundance, this was a logical choice for domestic energy needs. Similar considerations, however, fed into the Soviets' enthusiasm for nuclear power. Nuclear plants could be sited in energy-poor regions of the European USSR, such as Ukraine. This freed up oil and gas for sale to western nations in exchange for desperately needed hard currency.

Today, Russia's gas reserves have become a source of wealth and power. This produces a significant incentive to restrain domestic consumption to maximize the profitability of state-owned Gazprom. I am convinced that this is one of the primary reasons that Russia is building new nuclear plants. There is another reason, however: the Russians understand that their days as a net gas exporter are numbered. This isn't likely within the immediate future, but sixty years from now Russian gas reserves will probably be largely depleted. It is clear that by this time the Russian government plans to create some kind of plutonium economy, and that they hope to dominate the fission-powered future as much as they do the fossil-fuel present.

This should give serious pause to anyone considering major increases on natural gas as an energy source. It is not likely that sustainable biofuels will be available in the quantities needed to supplant natural gas for the range of applications it is currently used. If we take the path that Lovins has prescribed for us, and make our economy and our way of live much more dependent on this resource than they currently are, what will happen when it runs out? Obviously, nothing good. Indeed, it would rapidly become untenable as gas becomes scarcer and more expensive. Even with aggressive efficiency measures, by the late 21st century this path would have played itself out. The fact that the nation with the world's largest natural gas reserves doesn't think that natural gas has a very bright future is a sign that we should be divesting from dependence on it.

Never mind as well that natural gas is a fossil fuel. If James Hansen is right and we need to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels to 350ppm to avoid catastrophic climate change, burning fossil fuels is simply unacceptable as a climate strategy, no matter how efficiently they are used. This also puts the kibbosh on "negawatts" generally, because using coal-fired electrical generation just isn't going to cut it. Even if Jevons' Paradox doesn't eat all the gains (a likely scenario, given past experience), we really need to supplant all fossil-fuel fired generation as quickly as possible.

Lovins concludes that:

The punch line: nuclear expansion buys two to 10 times less climate protection per dollar, far slower than its winning competitors. Spending a dollar on new nuclear power rather than on negawatts thus has a worse climate effect than spending that dollar on new coal power. Attention, Dr. Moore: you're making climate change worse.

Lovins simply does not get it. In the long run, negawatts do not really offer credible climate protection, whereas a new nuclear plant does. Neither does "micropower," a mendacious concept that has only served to distort the energy debate. In the present circumstances, the only thing that matters is developing a non-carbon energy infrastructure. In the long run, any apologist for fossil fuel dependence--even magical, ultra-efficient fossil fuel dependence--is making climate change worse. And it would appear that Amory Lovins is such an apologist.

Can We Send Our Nuclear Waste to Siberia?

John McCain's speech yesterday has been making the rounds on the blogosphere. It's received a Bronx cheer from some observers (see Kate Sheppard in Grist here) but on the whole I feel better about it. McCain's stated commitment to multilateral arms control agreement and, particularly, the need for close cooperation with Russia, are both good developments.

Readers familiar with McCain's earlier rhetoric about Russia may find this surprising. He did, after all, say awhile ago that Russia should be kicked out of the G8. This is inconsistent, and my hope is that it signals some moderation in McCain's stance on Russia. One would certainly expect so, given that one of the things McCain is proposing is a repository in Siberia for foreign spent nuclear fuel. As he stated in his speech:

I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials. It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The location of this facility was only clarified by one of his advisors:

Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy and national security advisor to the McCain campaign, said later that the repository could be in Siberia and that if there were sufficient security guarantees, McCain had a "willingness to entertain possibility ... that we could possibly send some of our spent fuel there."

However convenient this might be for American politicians, it is not something that the Russians are likely to agree to. The enthusiasm of the Russian government for providing spent nuclear fuel storage has waned in recent years as their economy has boomed. The concept is unpopular with the Russian public, who are tolerant of the idea of offering reprocessing services but not of becoming "the world's nuclear waste dump." At the same time, international cooperation on monitoring the nuclear fuel cycle is important, so any step towards working closer with the Russians could be interpreted as a good thing.

In any case, the real proliferation danger is associated with the front end of the fuel cycle. McCain's solution to this is reminiscent of internationalization schemes from Atoms for Peace to GNEP:

The most effective way to prevent this deception is to limit the further spread of enrichment and reprocessing. To persuade countries to forego enrichment and reprocessing, I would support international guarantees of nuclear fuel supply to countries that renounce enrichment and reprocessing, as well as the establishment of multinational nuclear enrichment centers in which they can participate. Nations that seek nuclear fuel for legitimate civilian purposes will be able to acquire what they need under international supervision. This is one suggestion Russia and others have made to Iran.

It is interesting that McCain seems to be implicitly endorsing Russia's scheme for Bushehr: allowing the Iranians to possess the VVER-1000 reactor but making them dependent on foreign (i.e., Russian) fuel suppliers. This is in marked contrast to many Congressional critics of Russia's nuclear export policies, who are threatening to block the 123 agreement over Bushehr.

While a fair amount of what McCain proposed in the speech is no more than a pipe dream, on the whole it marks an enormous improvement over the policies of the current administration in several areas, particularly the need for real arms control negotiations with Russia. As such, I'm heartened by it. As Obama has also emphasized the need for such negotiations, there's reason to hope that there will be new arms control efforts irrespective of who wins the election this fall.

Indy's Atomic Fridge Ride

By now I'm sure most of you have heard of the scene in the new Indiana Jones movie where the title character survives a nuclear explosion by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator. I get the bad feeling that I'm going to be answering questions about this for the remainder of my career, so I figure I may as well get started. Here's the summary:

1. There is such a thing as a lead-lined refrigerator.
2. This was not a feature that ordinary household refrigerators had in the 1950s.
3. Even a refrigerator made entirely of lead would probably not save you receiving a lethal radiation dose within the radius of the blast depicted in the film.
4. When attempting to survive a nuclear blast, do NOT hide in a refrigerator.

The lead-lined refrigerators are made to store materials used in nuclear medicine. The shielding they offer is pretty limited, only .125" of lead. Also, they're made to fit under a lab bench, and I doubt that any normal adult could shoehorn themselves inside of it. For comparison, let's explore the kind of radiation protection offered by a hypothetical refrigerator made entirely of lead.

According to Cresson Kearny, 1 cm (.4") of lead reduces the intensity of gamma rays by 50%. Therefore, 2" of lead would reduce gamma ray intensity to 6.25% of the original intensity. Note that this does not include the effects of neutron, beta, and alpha radiation. Calculating this is a LOT more complicated. As the 1977 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons explained:

Neutron shielding is a different, and more difficult, problem than shielding against gamma rays. As far as the latter are concerned, it is merely a matter of interposing a sufficient mass of radiation between the source of gamma radiations and the recipient. Heavy metals, such as iron and lead, make good gamma-ray shields because of their high density. These elements alone, however, are not quite as satisfactory for neutron shielding.

Using the graphs provided in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, it appears that from a distance of 1000 yards, a 20 kT fission explosion would result in a dose of about 4,000 rads from gamma and 4,000-6,000 from neutrons. Therefore, the shielding offered by our hypothetical lead fridge would reduce exposure to its occupant to 260 rads, with a presumably greater dose from neutrons. More than half of individuals exposed to 500+ rems will die of acute radiation poisoning, with several months of convalescence minimum. In short, Indy would not be up for a trip in the near-term to battle Soviet agents in exotic South American locales. Never mind the massive injuries he would have sustained from being flung around inside a heavy metal box.

Podvig on US-Russia Civil Nuclear Cooperation

From a column in BAS:

Two weeks ago, the United States and Russia signed an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation, commonly known as a "123 agreement." It was immediately attacked from all sides. Some members of Congress urged the Bush administration not to submit the document to Congress and threatened to block it once they did. Meanwhile, nuclear skeptics in Russia raised concerns that the agreement could revitalize the idea of importing foreign spent nuclear fuel into Russia or strengthen the U.S.-led Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. For their part, U.S. nuclear enthusiasts suspected Russia of attempting to gain access to advanced U.S. nuclear technologies, which, they argued, Moscow could use to establish a competitive advantage in the international nuclear trade.

There are many good reasons why such a nuclear deal should receive scrutiny and raise questions, but in this case, the opponents of the U.S.-Russian agreement are wrong. Whatever their concerns, blocking the cooperation agreement is the worst way to address them.

I'm in general agreement with this. A particular statement in the piece caught my eye:

The Russian public may be sympathetic to using the spent fuel to recover plutonium and produce electricity--a grand vision promoted by the Russian nuclear industry--but it's not ready to accept the idea of permanently burying nuclear waste somewhere in Siberia.

Go read the whole thing.

In Case of Nuclear War, Take...

Аптечка индивидуальная АИ-2

This item, available now on eBay for the princely sum of $35, is an example of the first aid kit stockpiled by the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s to distribute to ordinary individuals in case of nuclear war. The ominous-looking black thing at the top is a single-use morphine syringe. Quite a few of these little orange kits seem to have been made, and they were featured fairly prominently in Soviet civil defense propaganda.

With This Missile, India Can Even Strike Shanghai

From The Times of India:

India's long-range nuclear capable Agni-III missile, which was successfully tested on Wednesday, is not aimed at any particular country but can hit targets deep inside China or any West Asian country, according to Group Captain R K Das, spokesperson of the Indian Army's Eastern Command.

"The Agni-III is not country-specific but was test-fired to strengthen our military power. With the successful launch of the missile, India has joined the league of global superpowers like China, France, Russia, US and UK who already have this type of weapons in their possession," Das said here Wednesday evening.

He said: "With this missile, India can even strike Shanghai. Agni-III was developed indigenously by scientists in India. The research and development activity of the missile had been on for the past eight years."

India successfully test-fired the 3,000 km range surface-to-surface nuclear capable missile from Wheeler's Island off the Orissa coast Wednesday morning.

"We can't let ourselves be unprotected. We have built a capability to retaliate if we are threatened. This missile would help India form a credible defence from China. With this launch, China will think twice before attacking us," Das said.

Who said the arms race was over?

20% Wind By 2030?

The DOE issued a report today claiming that the US can generate 20% of its electricity with wind by 2030 without tax credits and without running into serious grid-balancing problems. While the report has received a lot of praise from the likes of Joe Romm and Ezra Klein, among others, I have to say that it left me somewhat incredulous.

What bothers me is the contention that the variability of wind really doesn't matter. According to the report:

A statistical analysis of the load net of wind indicates the amount of reserves needed to cope with the combination of wind and load variability. The reserve determination starts with the assumption that wind generation and load levels are independent variables. The resultant variability is the square root of the sum of the squares of the individual variables (rather than the arithmetic sum). This means that the system operator, who must balance the total system, needs a much smaller amount of reserves to balance the load net of wind. Higher reserves would be needed if that operator were to try to balance the output of individual wind plants, or all the wind plants aggregated together in isolation from the load.

For a concrete case, it offers:

A hypothetical example is offered to calculate reserve requirements. Say that system peak load for tomorrow is projected at 1,000 MW with a 2% forecast error, which makes the forecast error (i.e., expected variability of peak load) equal to 20 MW. Wind generation for a 200-MW wind plant in that balancing area is predicted at a peak hour output of 100 MW with an error band of 20%. The expected variability of peak wind generation, then, is 20 MW. Assuming that these are independent variables, the total error is calculated as the square root of the sum of the squares of the individual variables (which is the square root of 2 × 20 squared, or 1.41 × 20, which equals 28 MW). Adding the two variables to estimate reserve requirements would result in an incorrect value of 40 MW.

The problem is, wind doesn't really work this way. The "expected variability of peak generation" is an estimate. Even with very good forecasting techniques, it's sometimes going to be too small. In any case, you need enough dispatchable reserve to make up for shortfalls in relatively extreme situations--and in a grid with 20% wind, that means enough natural gas or hydropower to make up nearly all the variability. I'm also disturbed that the report talks a lot about hypothetical "studies" while paying very little attention to real-world experience with wind power in Europe. Far from the rosy picture painted in the report, countries like Denmark have not really gotten their money's worth out of their investment in wind power--see, for instance, this study of how Denmark balances its power grid in practice. It concluded that:

Denmark has the most intense wind carpet in the world, with a total of 3000 MW installed by the end of 2003— equivalent to 0.88 kW of wind energy per person in west Denmark. The average annual load factor for the wind turbine carpet in west Denmark is measured at approximately 20%. There are considerable and often rapid output variations throughout the day and throughout the year. Accurate forecasting of wind speeds is still difficult and output rarely matches demand, sometimes dropping below zero as stalled wind turbines still require power for their steering systems.

The variations, which are inherent in any wind energy system, can be readily accommodated in west Denmark because there are very strong electrical connections to the much larger grid systems of Norway, Sweden and Germany that can absorb these variations, particularly due to their reliance on rapid-reacting hydropower. Countries such as the UK, which operate an ‘island’ grid, will find it difficult to do this with slower-reacting thermal power stations and may thus have to limit their reliance on wind power.

If this is any indication, the DOE report vastly underestimates the challenges of integrating large amounts of wind generation into our power grid. To their credit, though, they do get this much right:

Reliability planning entails determining how much generation capacity of what type is needed to meet specified goals. Because wind is not a capacity resource, it does not require 100% backup to ensure replacement capacity when the wind is not blowing. Although 12,000 MW of wind capacity have been installed in the United States, little or no backup capacity for wind energy has been added to date. Capacity in the form of combustion turbines or combined cycle units has been added to meet system reliability requirements for serving load. Thinking in terms of “backing up” the wind is not appropriate because the wind capacity was installed to generate, low-emissions energy but not to meet load growth requirements. Wind power cannot replace the need for many “capacity resources,” which are generators and dispatchable load that are available to be used when needed to meet peak load. If wind has some capacity value for reliability planning purposes, that should be viewed as a bonus, but not a necessity. Wind is used when it is available, and system reliability planning is then conducted with knowledge of the ELCC of the wind plant. Nevertheless, in some areas of the nation where access to generation and markets that spans wide regions has not developed, the wind integration process could be more challenging.

Translation: Wind can "work" because it's not expected to substitute for baseload: i.e., even building 300GW of new wind turbines will not obviate the need to build new nuclear plants to provide carbon-friendly dispatchable baseload power.

What Do Putin's Liberal Russian Opponents Think of His Nuclear Policies?

The answer may surprise you.
Boris Nemtsov is an important figure in Russia's liberal opposition movement. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia during the late 1990s under Yeltsin. Nemtsov was one of the founders, and now the main spokesperson of, the Union of Right Forces. Despite its ominous-sounding name, the Union of Right Forces is one of Russia's two main liberal opposition parties, along with the more left-leaning Yabloko. Nemtsov, in particular, is the proponent of a particular brand of Russian liberal thought that is as suspicious of the west as it is disapproving of Putin.

This outlook led Nemtsov to make a critique of Putin's nuclear weapons policies that will surprise most westerners. In his recent "White Paper" in which he critiques the legacy of Putin's presidency at length, Nemtsov claims that Putin has allowed a catastrophic decline in the quality of Russia's nuclear deterrent, and that that this threatens Russia's national survival:

This was the time to arm the army adequately. However actual arms deliveries and even plans for re-equipment have been scandalously low. According to data from the Council for National Strategy published in November 2007 published in a report entitled Results under Vladimir Putin: Crisis and Decay of the Russian Army, between 2000 and 2006, the Armed Forces received deliveries of only 27 ICBMs (27 warheads) while 294 (1779 warheads) were written off. In the penniless years 1992-1999, the army received 92 ICBMs (92 warheads). Since the year 2000, only 3 new aircraft have been delivered: one Tu-160 and two Su-34s. Around 100 aircraft were delivered during the 1990s. Since the year 2000, a little over 60 T90 tanks have been purchased while the total for the 1990s was 120. During the same decade, the Navy and seaborne frontier forces took delivery of over 50 surface and subsurface vessels. The figure for the current decade is less than ten [FN 1]. The state armaments programme for 2007-2015 plans to deliver a mere 60 aircraft to the armed forces in that time. This means that it will take … 80 years …. to renew our existing air fleet.

But the main blow has been against the most important element of Russia’s military potential, the support of the country’s sovereignty – the strategic nuclear forces. During the Putin years, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces have decayed at a frightening rate. More data from the Council for National Strategy’s report quoted above shows that between 2000 and 2007 the strategic nuclear forces wrote off 405 delivery units and 2498 warheads (as against 505 warheads only in the 1990s, during which time 60 new delivery units were bought while the army also took delivery of 1960 Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers). Under Putin, only 27 rockets have been produced – three times fewer than in the 1990s. So while Russia was overall able during the 1990s to maintain its nuclear potential at the level of that which it had inherited from the USSR, under Putin its reduction has become a serious threat to national security.

Furthermore, while the numbers of relatively invulnerable silo-based and RT-23 [FN 2] rail-mobile ICBMs (these latter look like standard refrigerated rail cars, which make them difficult to keep track of) were reduced, the armed forces continued to be given mobile Topol [FN 3] units that are highly vulnerable (these are 100-ton, 22-metre-long road-mobile units which can easily be found by optical, radar and infrared intelligence).

One hardly need say how important a country’s strategic nuclear force is to its sovereignty. One might even say that no SNF = no sovereignty. The rest of today’s armed forces are most unlikely to be able to resist large-scale attack by a strong aggressor. If Russia’s nuclear arsenal continues to be shrunk at current rates, by the middle of the next decade Russia’s SNF will have at its disposal no more that 300 ICBMs and 600 warheads. In that case, it is questionable if it will be able to perform its nuclear deterrence function: it becomes possible for an aggressor to make a disarming non-nuclear strike with high accuracy weapons to annihilate practically all of Russia’s nuclear strike power and take out the few rockets that the country does manage to launch with its anti-missile defence capability. China’s strategic nuclear force will equal that of Russia in the next 10 years or maybe even exceed it.

There’s no sensible response to the endless jabber about “sovereignty” as the main aim of Putin’s policies if in reality the main factor in that sovereignty – the strategic nuclear deterrent – has been undermined under Putin.

I don't think that this critique of Putin's nuclear policies is remotely fair (Russia does have obligations under the SORT treaty to reduce its nuclear arsenal), and claiming that the silo-based ICBMs and the rail-based SS-24s were vastly more survivable than the road-based Topols simply strains credulity. In fact, if current trends continue the Russian nuclear deterrent may be qualitatively superior to that of the United States twenty years from now--it'll be 50+ year old Minuteman IIIs and 30+ year-old Trident IIs versus road-mobile Topol-Ms and Bulavas of vastly more modern design (not to mention new weapons systems that are being considered by the Russian government right now.) Western critics of Putin tend to make the opposite criticism: that he has squandered precious resources on strategic nuclear forces while neglecting other areas of policy. But the fact that this kind of thinking about nuclear weapons exists among influential members of Russia's liberal opposition should give serious pause to those who think that it will be easy to "induce" Russia to abandon its nuclear armament.

Topol Missiles on Red Square

From yesterday's Victory Day Parade on Red Square: Topol missiles pass by a military review. These road-mobile ICBM launchers have no American equivalent, and the Topol is about the size of the US Minuteman, which was considered for rail-based deployment in its early development. These are the old Soviet-era Topol (RT-2PM, NATO reporting name: SS-25), not the current Topol-M, which is the most advanced ICBM in the world.
I'm actually a little surprised that the Topols would fit through the entrance to Red Square. I guess that the gap between the Kremlin Wall and the State Historical Museum is bigger than I remember it being.

Rocky Mountain Instititute's "Rebuttal" of Bryce

From the RMI website:

Energy efficiency has been a consistent part of America's energy security policies and increasingly become an essential framework for abating carbon emissions. In fact, the federal government now offers several tax credits for everything from green home improvements to fuel cells.

But the effectiveness of energy efficiency does not go undisputed.

Skeptics such as the Energy Tribune's Robert Bryce point out that total energy use in the United States continues to rise, despite efficiency gains. Per capita, we're using more energy even as sales of hybrid cars increase and more green buildings get erected.

The argument hinges on an economic theory called Jevons' Paradox.

In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons wrote a book called The Coal Question. In it, he observed that the consumption of coal had gone up in England even after more efficient technologies, like an improved steam engine, had been introduced.

Later economic theory moderated Jevons' observation to say that a more efficient technology could create a rebound effect: Some of the efficiency gains are wiped out by greater demand for the resource.

Today's popularity of more efficient vehicles and green home retrofits means it is worth seriously considering if there is evidence for Jevons' Paradox -- or even a significant rebound effect -- that could dampen some of the enthusiasm for these technologies.

Luckily, we are observing only very small rebound effects (if any at all) in the United States. For example, we can look at household driving patterns: While total vehicle miles traveled have increased 16 percent between 1991 and 2001, there is no evidence that owners of hybrid vehicles drove twice as much just because their cars were twice as efficient.

Uh, no. This isn't what Bryce is arguing. Here RMI has turned Bryce's thesis--that we can't "save our way to energy independence"--into a preposterous strawman--that efficiency is bad. Bryce believes that efficiency is very important, but that it is a tool for containing growth in energy usage, not a cure-all that will solve all of our social ills and give us "lunches that we'll be paid to eat," as Lovins has been saying for decades.

Honestly, I think that the events of the past year may be the beginning of the end for RMI. Many of the technologies that Lovins has been pushing since the 1970s--ethanol, fuel cells, hydrogen, biofuels, etc.--have lost their credibility as serious contenders in the energy market. Meanwhile, nuclear power is roaring back, with the first new nuclear plant order in the United States in thirty years, the decision by the UK to build new nuclear plants, and the general trend basically everywhere but Germany and a few other holdouts. I'm not sure how Lovins can maintain much credibility in light of these developments. But seeing how being wrong has never seemed to slow him down in the past, perhaps he'll survive this too.

Wohlstetter in India

From Chalmers Johnson's review of Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire by Alex Abella:

"Starting in 1967, I was, for a few years -- my records are imprecise on this point -- a consultant for RAND (although it did not consult me often) and became personally acquainted with Albert Wohlstetter. In 1967, he and I attended a meeting in New Delhi of the Institute of Strategic Studies to help promote the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was being opened for signature in 1968, and would be in force from 1970. There, Wohlstetter gave a display of his well-known arrogance by announcing to the delegates that he did not believe India, as a civilization, "deserved an atom bomb." As I looked at the smoldering faces of Indian scientists and strategists around the room, I knew right then and there that India would join the nuclear club, which it did in 1974."

I'll have to read Abella's book. I'm not so sure quite what I think of Johnson's portrayal of RAND, especially as (at least in the field of nuclear strategy) there was very considerable disagreement among their specialists. By the mid-1960s, Brodie, Kahn, and Schelling were all making very different arguments, with varying strengths and weaknesses, all of which were different from what they had been saying a few years earlier. It's hard to demonstrate a straight path between their inconsistent ideas about nuclear strategy and later policy, except that their language was and is used to describe strategic concepts. At the same time, Johnson is right that RAND wasn't very good at understanding the Soviet Union, or indeed anything that wasn't a machine or a game theory model. I have mixed feelings about RAND; on the one hand I believe that they were instrumental in making the world safer by getting the military to replace some incredibly bad policies with considerably better ones, but on the other their influence in third world policy was, as Johnson notes, not very positive. In any case RAND is certainly a fascinating mileau for a historian.

Атом для мира!

From Izvestiia, April 14, 1961 (two days after Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight):

Впереди перекресток Ломоносовского проспекта. Уже видны витрины магазина "Изотопы", над которым в вышине укреплена такая простая и такая понятная всем людям на Земле надпись - "Atoms pour la paix - Атом для мира - Atom for peace"!

Да, в нашей стране атом служит мирным целям - ведь недаром на одном из самых красивейших проспектов столицы нашей Родины есть этот магазин. Советские ученые и инженеры раскрывают тайны атома, чтобы заставить его до конца служить благу всего человечества так же, как они заставили служить делу мира наши самые мощные, самые точные ракеты. И кто знает, может быть, пройдет совсем немного лет, и в космос устремится могучий краснозвездный межпланетный корабль, который будет двигаться силой покоренного атома.

Ahead is the crossing with Lomonosovskii Prospect. The windows of the store "Isotopes" are already visible, above which on high is expressed the simple and universally understood inscription--"Atoms pour la paix - Атом для мира - Atom for peace"!

Yes, in our country the atom serves peaceful ends. Why, it is for good reason that such a store exists on one of the most beautiful prospects of the capital of our Motherland. Soviet scientists and engineers are are unlocking the secrets of the atom, in order that it may serve the interests of all mankind as they made our most powerful, most accurate rockets serve the interests of peace. And who knows--maybe, in a few years there will fly into the cosmos a mighty red-starred interplanetary spacecraft, which will by powered by the power of the subdued atom.

Store "Изотопы" in the Early 1960s

What did "Isotopes" sell, you ask? Exactly what it sounds like. They didn't let ordinary Soviet citizens come in and buy the wares, of course, but the fact that the Soviet government would build and advertise a store for radioisotopes in their capital is one of the ways in which "Atoms For Peace" differed in Khrushchev's Soviet Union from that in Eisenhower's United States.

Important New Declassified Documents on USAF and Nuclear Weapons

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the National Security Archive at George Washington University has posted a number of very interesting declassified institutional histories produced by the USAF. These include some very interesting discussions of the relationship between weapons acquisitions and strategic doctrine. There's a lot of material here, and it is going to take me awhile to digest all of it. But if you're into this sort of thing, I wholeheartedly recommend that you go take a look.

Is Reactor-Grade Plutonium A Proliferation Risk?

Frank N. von Hippel has a new article in Scientific American titled "Nuclear Fuel Recycling: More Trouble Than It's Worth." While I agree with one of von Hippel's main arguments--that the current GNEP proposal's emphasis on sodium-cooled ABRs is misguided--I must say that I continue to be confused by von Hippel's obsession with the supposed proliferation risks of separated reactor-grade plutonium. Although I think that current reprocessing proposals would probably be a waste of money, I think that the prospect of "unauthorized persons" absconding with separated civilian plutonium and building a bomb out of it has been greatly exaggerated. Due to the issue of Americanium-241 contamination, I don't see why effective security measures against theft of this material are impossible, or even particularly difficult.

According to von Hippel:

Separated plutonium, being only weakly radioactive, is easily carried off—whereas the plutonium in spent fuel is mixed with fission products that emit lethal gamma rays. Because of its great radioactivity, spent fuel can be transported only inside casks weighing tens of tons, and its plutonium can only be recovered with great difficulty, typically behind thick shielding using sophisticated, remotely operated equipment. So unseparated plutonium in spent fuel poses a far smaller risk of ending up in the wrong hands.

While this is certainly true (how would you steal a whole spent fuel assembly?), is separated reactor-grade plutonium really all that benign?

According to the World Nuclear Association,

The approximately 1.15% of plutonium in the spent fuel removed from a commercial LWR power reactor (burn-up of 42 GWd/t) consists of about 53% Pu 239, 25% Pu-240, 15% Pu-241, 5% Pu-242 and 2% of Pu-238 which is the main source of heat & radioactivity. Comparable isotopic ratios are found in the spent fuel of CANDU heavy-water reactors at much lower burnups (8 GWd/t), due to their use of natural uranium fuel and high thermal neutron spectrum. (From gas graphite Magnox reactors the plutonium has more Pu-239 - about 65%, plus 25% Pu-240, 5% Pu-241, 1% Pu-242 and negligible Pu-238.) Reactor-grade plutonium is defined as that with 19% or more of Pu-240.

That 15% Pu-241 turns out to be a big deal, as this isotope has a half-life of only 14.3 years, and it decays into Americanium-241--which is a fairly strong gamma emitter. As the WNA notes:

It is of interest (and some significance in recycling spent fuel) that if too much Am-241 builds up in plutonium separ-ated from spent fuel, it cannot readily be used for mixed oxide (MOX) fuel because it is too radioactive for handling in the normal MOX plant. For instance, British Nuclear Fuels at Sellafield, UK, can handle plutonium with up to 3% Am-241, hence up to 6 years old (any more would need special shielding).

Obviously, the radiation hazard posed by Am-241 is non-trivial. Just how radioactive is the amount of material needed to build a "nominal" bomb?

Von Hippel implies in the article that the amount of civilian plutonium needed for a bomb is 8kg. If the plutonium originally had the isotopic makeup given by the WNA for LWR fuel, after 7.15 years it would be 7.5% Am-241--about 600 grams of Americanium. For comparison, one gram of Am-241 is more than sufficient to build 5000 smoke detectors--so that 8kg of material produces gamma emissions equivalent to more than three million smoke detectors! (It's around 105 GBq, or a little under 3 Ci, if you'd like a figure.) The total radioactivity of the 8kg is far greater than this, but it's far easier to shield against beta and alpha radiation than gamma. The whole package would also produce a lot of heat--well in excess of 100 watts. In short, this is not something you would want to hide in your pants.

The upside of this is that Am-241 contamination makes it possible to design very robust security measures against theft of the material. Anti-proliferation types tend to worry a great deal about the fact that meaningful amounts of plutonium end up getting lost in reprocessing equipment, so precise accounting of all seperated plutonium produced is impossible. But I don't really understand why this is a problem, as because of Am-241 contamination, sensible radiological control measures at all possible exits should make it impossible to smuggle even very limited amounts of plutonium from reprocessing and storage facilities. Given that sensitive radiological monitoring equipment is very proven technology, this should be quite easy to achieve. Even in very "fresh" separated plutonium, the gamma radiation should be readily detectable. Just make sure the thief can't run out a back door or jump out a window or something, and preventing material theft is straightforward.

Of course, there is also the question of whether such "reactor-grade plutonium" can really be built into bombs. Much ink has been spilled over this issue, including by Amory Lovins and von Hippel himself. I feel that most of the writing on this issue obscures the real issues and performs its analyses in complete isolation from the realities of nuclear weapons design. In particular, they tend to ignore the fact that even though it's quite possible to build nuclear weapons out of non-weapons grade plutonium, the stuff produced in LWRs is probably unsalvageable. While it could be used in bombs by sophisticated states with a fairly advanced knowledge of nuclear weapons design, it would be very difficult for rogue states or terrorists to fashion it into working devices.

Weapons-grade plutonium contains at least 90% Pu-239; American nuclear weapons apparently use approximately 94% Pu-239. It's true that in 1962 the United States tested a nuclear weapon that used plutonium from a British Magnox power reactor, but according to the WNA, "The isotopic composition of this plutonium has not been officially disclosed, but it was evidently about 90% Pu-239." According to Carey Sublette, however, this weapon used >19% Pu-240. I'm not sure who to believe, but it is known that this weapon achieved only nominal performance using what was probably a very sophisticated design. In any case, this is the only known weapon ever tested that was built using "reactor-grade" material. My suspicion is that this is for good reason. Nuclear weapons states have devoted enormous resources to nuclear weapons research; my guess would be that the use of reactor-grade plutonium in weapons has been studied thoroughly in many countries, and that it has been universally rejected.

Where this become interesting is in the case of aspiring nuclear powers to whom the idea of a clandestine nuclear weapons program using reactor-grade material would be particularly attractive. The obvious example here is Taiwan, which developed a substantial civilian nuclear infrastructure while simultaneously seriously mulling the acquisition of nuclear weapons. However, prospective nuclear states do not seem to be attracted to the idea of building bombs out of this material. But I bet they've thought about it, and that some very knowledgeable people have devoted many hours to analyzing the idea. In fact, the reason that I think that the proliferation risks of weapons-grade plutonium are overblown is because apparently these people all came to the conclusion that they'd be better off developing infrastructure that can build better weapons. There are many reasons why--one of which being that nuclear weapons are generally acquired for their deterrent value, and apparently unreliable low-yield weapons of the sort that can be built from reactor-grade plutonium just won't do for this.

But in any case, I don't see why security of separated plutonium stocks is an unsolvable problem. Although I'm in favor of proliferation-resistant thorium fuel cycles, I don't think that proliferation risks are necessarily such a strong argument against reprocessing. The problem with reprocessing is that uranium is cheap, as is dry cask storage for spent fuel. Until those factors change, it seems silly to invest in very expensive reprocessing facilities. We can always reprocess the spent fuel into fuel salt for MSRs later.