WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Enough plutonium to make mroe than 4,100 nucear wepaons is moved in commerical shipments every year, an expert warned this week.
"Currently, approximately 100 commercial shipments of unirradiated plutonium take place per year, or one shipment every several days," David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International security wrote in a report released Wednesday.
"These 100 shipments contain in total about 25 tonnes of unirradiated plutonium. With eight kilograms (17.6 pounds)of unirradiated plutonium enough to make a nuclear weapon, these shipments contain enough weapon-usable plutonium for about 3,100 nuclear weapons. This report estimates that through 2020, roughly 1,500 shipments will occur containing 500 tonnes of unirradiated plutonium, enough for about 62,000 nuclear weapons," Albright wrote.
Albright wrote that "shipments of commercial unirradiated plutonium typically travel from civil reprocessing plants to mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facilities and then to power reactors that use the MOX fuel.
"The transportation of civil unirradiated plutonium for use in nuclear power reactors is a small but critical part of a large system in which nuclear materials must be shipped by land or sea among facilities involved in the nuclear fuel cycle," he wrote.
"The transportation of unirradiated plutonium is widely recognized as one of the most vulnerable parts of the nuclear fuel cycle to attack by terrorist or sub-national groups," Albright warned. "Although the continuing danger posed by unsecured nuclear sites in various countries throughout the world is well recognized, there has been less recognition of how prevalent plutonium shipments are becoming in the world and the risk they pose to international security.
"Such shipments require extraordinary physical protection, as even the theft of a single shipment could provide enough plutonium for tens of nuclear weapons," he warned.
