[Congressional Bills 103th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3076 Introduced in House (IH)]

103d CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 3076

      To address the policy of the United States on plutonium use.


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                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 14, 1993

Mr. Stark (for himself, Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Markey, Mr. Evans, 
  Ms. McKinney, Mr. Kopetski, Mr. Serrano, Mr. Filner, Mr. Andrews of 
Maine, Mr. Torres, Mr. Waxman, Mr. Hastings, Mr. Edwards of California, 
 Mr. Frank of Massachusetts, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Miller of California, 
 Mr. Hinchey, Mr. Durbin, Ms. Eshoo, Mrs. Schroeder, Mr. Schumer, Mr. 
 Sanders, Mr. DeFazio, Mr. McCloskey, Ms. Furse, Mr. Hamburg, and Mr. 
    Fish), introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                      Committee on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
      To address the policy of the United States on plutonium use.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. MODIFICATION OF POLICY ON PLUTONIUM USE.

    (a) Findings.--The Congress finds the following:
            (1) All grades of plutonium, irrespective of their 
        designation as civil or military, can be used to make nuclear 
        explosive devices.
            (2) The Department of Defense has stated its view that the 
        proliferation risks posed by reprocessing and separated 
        plutonium under international safeguards are unacceptably high.
            (3) The Deputy Director of the International Atomic Energy 
        Agency stated that the excess of plutonium from civilian 
        nuclear programs poses a major political and security problem 
        worldwide.
            (4) Reprocessing programs that will produce large 
        stockpiles of civil plutonium in nations not deemed to pose a 
        proliferation risk may encourage or be used to justify such 
        programs in nations and regions that pose a proliferation risk.
            (5) There are already large surplus stockpiles of separated 
        plutonium in the world.
            (6) Abundant and inexpensive global sources of uranium and 
        uranium enrichment services have steadily eroded the economic 
        need for the use of plutonium in civilian nuclear reactors.
            (7) Breeder reactors were once supposed to be the principal 
        consumers of civil plutonium but have now encountered major 
        financial and technical problems and recently have been 
        abandoned or shut down in Germany, France, and Britain and have 
        suffered major delays in Japan.
            (8) Reprocessing was once regarded as an economic and 
        efficient approach to nuclear fuel recycling and waste 
        management but is now widely recognized as extremely costly and 
        posing major environmental hazards.
            (9) The United States has suspended the production of 
        military plutonium and has abandoned civil reprocessing and 
        commercial breeder reactor development in the United States.
            (10) The plutonium to be recovered from dismantled United 
        States and Russian warheads will further augment large surplus 
        stockpiles of separated plutonium in the world.
            (11) Russia continues to separate plutonium for both civil 
        and military purposes and has accumulated a surplus of some 30 
        tons of civil plutonium, for which there is no safe, 
        commercially viable application.
            (12) Much of the world surplus of civil plutonium has 
        resulted from reprocessing in the United Kingdom, France, and 
        Japan of spent fuel derived from United States-origin low 
        enriched uranium, and the United States continues to bear 
        responsibility for the transfer and disposition of such 
        material under nuclear cooperation agreements with these 
        countries.
            (13) Enormous amounts of additional civil plutonium, 
        exceeding the amounts of plutonium now contained in nuclear 
        weapons, may soon be recovered in reprocessing plants that are 
        to be started up or constructed in the United Kingdom, France, 
        and Japan in the near future.
            (14) Once these new plants start up and become contaminated 
        with radiation, the environmental difficulties of shutdown and 
        clean-up increase dramatically.
            (15) The new Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) in 
        the United Kingdom, if operated as proposed, will separate 59 
        tons of plutonium from spent fuel over the next decade.
            (16) The President has written to Members of Congress that 
        he has asked for a review of United States nonproliferation 
        policies, including specific attention to the issue of British 
        reprocessing.
            (17) The Irish government declared on February 1st that the 
        bringing on stream of THORP represents an additional and 
        unnecessary risk to the health and safety of the Irish 
        population and that the accumulation of plutonium with no 
        commercial use constitutes a grave proliferation risk.
            (18) The parties to the 1974 Convention for the Prevention 
        of Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources agreed on June 16 
        that a new or revised discharge authorization for radioactive 
        discharges from nuclear reprocessing installations should only 
        be issued by national authorities if special consideration is 
        given to information on the need for spent fuel reprocessing 
        and on other options, a full environmental impact statement, 
        and other criteria.
            (19) The Government of the United Kingdom is currently 
        conducting an internal review, scheduled to be completed this 
        year, to determine if THORP will be allowed to start up or if 
        an independent public inquiry into its operation will be held 
        prior to a start-up determination.
            (20) In a June 1993 report by the General Accounting Office 
        entitled ``Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Japan's Shipment of 
        Plutonium Raises Concerns about Reprocessing'', a British 
        Government official was quoted as stating that the rationale 
        for operating THORP is no longer valid because THORP cannot be 
        a financially successful venture, and that without economic 
        justification to engage in commercial reprocessing, the basis 
        for reprocessing in the United Kingdom has collapsed.
    (b) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that the start-
up or continued operation of any plutonium separation plant presents 
serious environmental hazards and increases the risk of nuclear 
proliferation and therefore should be suspended until the outstanding 
proliferation and environmental concerns set forth in subsection (a) 
have been thoroughly addressed and resolved.
    (c) Presidential Action.--The Congress urges the President--
            (1) to convey the sense of the Congress set forth in 
        subsection (b) to the Governments of the United Kingdom, 
        France, Japan, and Russia; and
            (2) to address the proliferation and environmental 
        implications of THORP in high-level bilateral discussions with 
        the Government of the United Kingdom before the conclusion of 
        the review described in subsection (a)(19).

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