Plutonium Shipment to France on the Way

duesi writes "According to BBC News a British vessel is carrying 140 kg of weapons grade plutonium from the US to France to turn it into nuclear fuel. It doesn't take a nuclear physicist to see that this is a dangerous thing... Similar shipments have happened before, for example in 1999 and 2002 but BBC writes that this is the first time weapon grade plutonium has been shipped ever."

Comments

Re:Not the way I would do it

[Retric]

1st off just send it via nuke sub. After all they already have the security to keep people from taking the nukes so you add little risk.

2nd I know 10kg of plutonium is not that large as it's basically as heavy as led. But your not going to ship it all in one container it's much much safer to ship in several containers than one large pile.

Penny Henny

[b-baggins]

Unreal. I find it ironic that it's the French who actually have the (insert body part) to actually use nuclear power. Everyone else is just too terrified to even mention the word nuclear, unless it's to make fun of people mispronouncing it.

Re:Don't need critical mass to make a bomb

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I think the danger from a dirty bomb is more likely to be contamination and ingestion by people, plants and animals of the radioactive substances. This would lead to a long-term exposure to smallish amounts of radiation which, over many years, would result in an increase in cancer cases (and therefore deaths).

Depends on how much, and what the wind distribution is- igestion by people once burnt can be acomplished by large amounts of plutonium oxide ash in the atmosphere- it's still radioactive.

Because the legal thresholds for what counts as "contamination" are very low, such a weapon would render large areas uninhabitable. I for one certainly wouldn't want to live somewhere a dirty bomb had been detonated.

Yep- the point being that you don't actually have to destroy buildings to make a city uninhabitable.

I find this form of bomb to be FAR more accessible as a WMD than the other form- it's hard to figure out how to get a mass to go critical in comparison.

Bits from the article

[iamlucky13]

Environmentalists say it presents a major terrorist target.

So let's protest to be sure it makes international news and everyone with an internet connection will know about it.

Both have a squad of armed police on board from the UK Atomic Energy Agency Constabulary. The ships carry naval cannons, have satellite monitoring, twin engines and hull protection.

"Ok Abdullah, here's the plan: we'll sneak in really quiet so they don't kill us with their 30mm cannons. We then kill a dozen armed guards, disable the automatic satellite tracking, then avoid all of the spy satellites, AWACS, aircraft carriers, and submarines from every infidel country that will be looking for us, and book it 5000 miles for home in this giant freighter. Are you done sharpening your boxcutter?"

But critics say the shipment would be safer if carried on a naval frigate.

I hope it's not the environmentalists making that criticism. The ships are owned by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). They were designed to safely and securely transport the stuff. It's not like you just want to toss the stuff in the dry storage on a frigate.

Captain Malcolm Miller, head of international transport at BNFL, said they were the "safest sea transports" he had ever seen. A naval escort had not been requested and was not necessary, he added.

He ain't worried, and he's in the middle of it.

Irish Environment Minister Martin Cullen told the BBC that "any accident could have catastrophic effects." He wants assurances that they will not pass near Irish waters.

An understandable concern, I suppose. I would expect that the fuel is sealed up in a pretty durable container that would contain any leaks long enough for recovery if the ships sank.

Ireland, with New Zealand, Peru and Chile, is co-sponsoring a proposal at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seeking detailed information for coastal states on all movements of nuclear material in international waters.

Seems like a good idea. It sounded, however, like BNFL was being pretty generous with relevant information on this trip, even though they don't have to.

Greenpeace says the plutonium should be disposed of as nuclear waste to avoid the transport and proliferation risks.

Ok, so it's unacceptable to burn it, move it, or leave it sitting in storage. Let's take Greenpeace's advice, then, and dispose of it as nuclear waste in a way that will keep it safe for 10000+ years in a chemically stable, glass form, in concrete and steel casks, a couple thousand feet underground in Yucca Moun...oh wait, they're protesting that also.

Re:That is the irony, isn't it?

[Suidae]

they are just anti energy consumption. People like this aren't really environmentalists.

What? I'm anti energy consumption. That doesn't mean I think we should all live in caves, just that we (Americans in particular) are extraordinarily wasteful with our energy. There is nothing wrong with being anti energy comsumption.

If I were king I'd make incandescent lights illegal, replace all coal-fired power plants with those new pebble-bed reactors and build nuclear waste reprocessing plants all over so we can extract every last erg from the nuclear fuels we have. And yes, they can put it in my back yard.

All Pu is "weapons grade"

[aminorex]

As opposed to Uranium which is difficult to isotopically separate, essentially all Pu is
usable in an implosion device, so simple chemical
separation suffices. It is a bit trickier to
detonate plutonium, because of the precise timing
requirements for the compression charges, but the
upside is that it's a lot easier to go thermonuclear,
if you've got the tritium.

Re:All Pu is "weapons grade"

[Vellmont]

Mostly true, but different grades of plutonium have differing degrees of difficulty and yield for a nuclear weapon. Like uranium, the plutonium is not all one isotope. For a weapon you want a high amount of PU-239. From Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility:

These other isotopes create some difficulties for design and fabrication of nuclear weapons.

* First and most important, plutonium-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fission, meaning that the plutonium in the device will continually produce many background neutrons, which have the potential to reduce weapon yield by starting the chain reaction prematurely.

* Second, the isotope plutonium-238 decays relatively rapidly, thereby significantly increasing the rate of heat generation in the material.

* Third, the isotope americium-241 (which results from the 14-year half-life decay of plutonium-241 and hence builds up in reactor-grade plutonium over time) emits highly penetrating gamma rays, increasing the radioactive exposure of any personnel handling the material.

The end effect is a lower yield because of the potential for PU-240 to cause pre-ignition. It's still a nuclear weapon with horrific consequences of course.