May/June 1993
START-2 means a start in recycling parts of dismantled nuclear weapons—which, for the scrap recycling industry, could mean that no nukes is good news.
BY NANCY L. GAST
Nancy L. Gast is editorial associate of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
This is the tale of thousands and thousands of poor nuclear weapons that will never live to see their first kabooms. Never fear, though, this story's ending is a happy one—at least from a recycling perspective. At Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, N.M.), scientists, weapon designers, government officials, and a variety of consultants are working together to find ways to dismantle and recover metals from bombs, missiles, and other nuclear warheads ordered out of commission by this year's Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as START-2.
Signed in early January by then-President George Bush and Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin, START-2 is now among a host of nuclear arms negotiations between theUnited States and the Soviet Union or Russia over the last two decades. This latest treaty, however, has been described as the most significant arms reduction treaty ever, slashing the countries' stocks of long-range nuclear warheads by more than two-thirds over 10 years. When all's said and done, the United States and Russia should go from about 21,000 atomic warheads between them to 3,000 to 3,500 each.
The Weapon's Brawn
For all of its answers, the treaty left the United States with a major question: How would it get rid of the huge stockpiles of U.S. nuclear weapons both here and abroad? Certain types of weapons can be safely eliminated through open burn/detonation methods, but that doesn't work for nuclear arms. And even if it were a viable option, there' plenty of sturdy, even highly valuable, metals in every warhead that would go to waste—material that, Sandia Labs and its partners now realize, could be of real use if it were recovered and recycled.
Sandia Labs, designers of virtually the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, began to consider the implications of substantial warhead reductions in 1991, in response to the potential for new regulations that would hold manufacturers responsible for disposing of their products. Could there be a way to, in effect, constructively undo what had been 30 years in the making?
Enter WeDID, the Waste Component Recycle, Treatment, and Disposal Integrated Demonstration (the acronym is a throwback to an earlier name whose abbreviation stuck), sponsored by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Technology Development. WeDID's goal: to find methods of disposing of decommissioned weapons in cost-effective, environmentally responsible ways. Not surprisingly, one of those ways turned out to be recycling, and, thus, the pre-pilot weapon recycling project now under way at Sandia was born.
The project deals only with the Sandia-designed non-nuclear components, which tell a bomb "when to go boom," as Ted Wheelis, the project's integrated demonstration coordinator puts it, not what makes it boom. That "boomer"—euphemistically referred to as the "physics package" of the weapon—is made up of radioactive materials such as uranium and plutonium that WeDID isn't touching. Other operations, however, like New Mexico 's Los Alamos National Laboratory, California's Livermore National Laboratory, and Pantex in Amarillo, Texas, reportedly are working to recover and recycle some of that material both for new weapon use and for nuclear fuels.
The physics package may be the power of the bomb, but there's value in what surrounds it too. Take the printed circuit boards—the "chip" of the weapon. Like computer chips, the circuit boards are veritable treasure troves of precious metals, including gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, as well as nickel and copper. What's more, the weapon casings contain high-quality aluminum.
No Bomb Bins
Sure, recovery and recycling was a good idea. But, as anyone involved in the Sandia project will tell you, it's not as easy as tossing the unneeded warheads into a recycling bin marked "bombs." In some ways, it's more challenging than splitting the atoms themselves.
Even after the primary explosives are taken out, there are still obstacles and risks to dismantling and processing weapons. For one thing, many components are "potted"—sealed in an opaque epoxy—which makes separation difficult. In addition, removing heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, and mercury—as well as asbestos—slows the process down. Even little things like detonators that start timing sequences can erupt and easily "blow a hand or finger off" if mishandled, Wheelis warns. And since many cutting systems that could have been used are apt to generate heat and thus activate yet another hazard—carcinogens present in the special foam that pads many weapon components—WeDID adopted a water-jet "shearing" method.
But the concerns don't end when the many hazards are eliminated. Secrecy is as big a part of dismantling weapons as it is in building them, so before going any further in the recovery process, those working on the Sandia project must make the components of the bomb inoperable and unrecognizable "so the bad guys out there can't use them," says Wheelis. You might think that "rubblizing," as Wheelis coins the process, would call for sophisticated methods, but, as WeDID discovered, the tool of choice was right out of the past: forge hammers, circa 1920. "For `old' technology," Wheelis asserts, "it's just right for keeping up with our volumes." The hammers are used to reduce the bomb to 1-inch chunks before hitting the final step: separation or thermal treatment to destroy unusable organics and recover the good stuff—the aluminum, copper, and precious metals.
So while the dismantling can be tricky, when it comes right down to it, the recovery process is not as mysterious as many probably would have thought. And that's just how WeDID wants it. "Everything we're doing is off-the-shelf technology, because we're looking for existing methods that, with minor modifications, can be used in this new task," explains Richard Cassin, chairman of WeDID's Treatment Technology Support Group. The group, which acts as an advisory committee for the project, is made up of various industry experts, including Dr. John Huizenga, a world-renowned nuclear chemist and physicist whose first job out of school was with the original Manhattan Project.
What It's Worth
Of course, sellable scrap is money in DOE's pocket. But not that much money—and not right now.
Since the program is so new and volumes are still on the low side, WeDID is holding onto the recovered materials, both for further evaluation and as tangible proof to DOE and other interested parties that there's gold (and copper, and silver...) in them thar weapons. But as the project expands, Wheelis anticipates that the weapon scrap will be sold on the market. The program will "be happy just to be able to make up for dismantling costs," Cassin notes, but still speculates that if the metals recovery were done on a large-enough scale, WeDID's work could eventually turn a profit.
How much of a profit? Compared to what the typical scrap processor might bring in, it might seem like small potatoes. After all, recycling is just one facet of WeDID's work, and, of course, volumes aren't great. "We don't have tons at a time; we have pounds," explains Wheelis.
But the high value of much of the recovered material can't be dismissed. "We had an inkling [of what the scrap would be worth] when we started," Wheelis says, "but, to be truthful, seeing these numbers has really been an eye-opener." Among the eye-opening figures: The value of the precious metals alone is estimated at as much as $15,000 per ton, and reusable electronics and military specification parts could bring that kind of cash as well.
Still, money isn't the only motivator; the project could have major implications in consumer electronics recycling as well. Like weapons, products such as televisions and stereo systems contain valuable materials that could be used in future applications if there were a simple way to recover them. If WeDID's weapons project continues its recycling successes, its appeal could spread to mainstream consumer electronics recycling—and clean up in more ways than one.
Global Warfare to Global Cooperation
Of course, the project's success depends in part on the weapon decommissioning schedule prescribed by START-2, and changing world politics could always alter the plan. Currently, many nations are keeping a close eye on emerging world powers such as North Korea , whose unprecedented yet legal withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and reports of nuclear warhead developments have caused some worldwide nailbiting. And power struggles continue in the former Soviet Union ; as recently as late March, Yeltsin's presidency was threatened by Communist loyalists who could turn the tide of START-2 should they regain power.
Amidst these question marks, WeDID plows on, continuing in its search for cost-effective and environmentally compliant technologies for recycling nuclear weapons. If all goes as scheduled, the final stage of the current project will lead to establishment of a pilot dismantling plant to handle what Wheelis calls "reasonable" amounts of material in as few steps as possible.
Will WeDID's work bring about global nuclear recycling? "We hope so," says Cassin, explaining that while there have been some preliminary meetings with Russia and the Ukraine about nuclear weapon recovery and recycling, "they're way behind us" in terms of actually dismantling their unneeded arms. In the meantime, the United States is lending assistance to those former Soviet republics in the safe storage of unneeded warheads until a dismantling and/or recycling program like WeDID's can be put into operation.
And back at home, the Sandia project is moving ahead, knowing "time is of the essence," says Cassin. Because of the urgency to reduce nuclear stockpiles, "there isn't really time for the basic research and development" that would ideally go into a project of this scope, Cassin reports. "When the idea for the project first came up in 1991, the anticipated numbers of weapons to be eliminated was a fraction of what it is now"—tens of thousands of bombs, warheads, and other nuclear devices. For WeDID and Sandia Labs—or even for Rumpelstiltskin—that's a lot of weapons to spin into gold.
START-2 means a start in recycling parts of dismantled nuclear weapons—which, for the scrap recycling industry, could mean that no nukes is good news.