Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has put forward a plan that envisions tonnes of weapons plutonium from the United States and Russia imported into Canada over a 25 year period. This weapons plutonium will be in the form of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel bundles (a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide) to be used in CANDU reactors.
In April 1996, without public consultation or parliamentary debate, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien declared that Canada supported the plan in principle. Despite numerous critical assessments of the weapons plutonium fuel concept, hundreds of municipal resolutions in Quebec and Ontario opposing the importation and transport of MOX plutonium and the recommendation of a parliamentary committee that the plan be scrapped, the federal government in 2000 allowed the import of plutonium fuel from U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles for the purposes of "test burn" (the first of up to three) in a nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ontario.
The following links provide information about MOX plutonium in Canada and internationally.
