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London Nuke Plant Loses 30 Kilos of Plutonium
solafide writes "The Globe and Mail reports 'A British nuclear-reprocessing plant [at Sellafield] cannot account for nearly 30 kilograms of plutonium, but authorities believe it is an accounting issue rather than a loss of potential bomb-making material, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority said.' Although it says later plutonium is only 1% of what they deal with there. The Times Online has more details."
Accountability?
Seems like nobody needs that irky little thing anymore. Not even if you're dealing with stuff that could blow up half the world.
Sheesh.
A nuclear weapon only uses about a grapefruit sized piece of fissionable material.
True. Now try to guess how much a grapefruit-sized piece of plutonium would weigh.
That gets moderated to a 4? Holy fucking stupid moderators batman.
I know it's a terrible stereotype that Americans have no idea about the geography of the outside world, but a 250 mile error (*Paris* is closer to London than Sellafield is) makes BNFL's 30kg look utterly innocent...
If you think Plutonium is bad, chemically wise, you're right, and wrong. It's mostly nasty because it's radioactive. Once it oxidizes (which it does readily in open air), it's essentially harmless to the body chemically. Look it up yourself, if you think I'm full of shit. By all means, do so, if for nothing else to end the myth that it's the most deadly thing on the planet. Plutonium certianly isn't the nastiest thing out there that we should have to worry about.
Arsenic isn't even that bad. A few hundred thousand people in the US take it daily. (Coumadin--aka rat poison). Sure, a few grams and you'll be bleeding out your ass (and everywhere else) and you'll probably die. I'd say from an ingestion standpoint, Plutonium is quite a bit more diserable. For one, it dosen't like to disolve. I'd rather have a plutonium tablet than an arsenic one, that's for sure. I know I'd live!
The real problem with Pu is inhalation. The soft tissues of the lungs would take it in and never let it go.
They've done tests on animals, and while a dose of Pu is a bad thing for longevity, it won't end you outright.
The United States is the ONLY country that has ever used atomic bombs in real war. They dropped 1 each over Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan during WWII. Word has it that there were some plans to use them in Korea and Vietnam too, but it never happened.
Basically, the U.S. had the biggest baddest bomb, and used it. Everyone went ape shit and made their own. Then the realization started to settle in that, maaaaaaybe this just wasn't that good of an idea.
So it's not just a matter of "these days". Almost no one has EVER used atomic weapons as a weapon. They have always been used as a backup to bully talk. Only the U.S. was crazy enough to ever detonate one in war. Whether or not you think it was a good idea is an entirely different subject.
Fortunately, public ridicule saved the day.
First up, as others have noted, London and Sellafield are quite a long way away.
Secondly, the headline "Nuke Plant Loses 30 Kilos of Plutonium" is quite ridiculous. Anyone with half a brain would realise quite how off the mark this is. Has anyone thought about how you would go about doing a stock take on a collection of Plutonium?!! You don't just go and collect it from the storeroom and take it to the weighing scales.
In fact the auditing process involved some of the top UK statistics researchers and no doubt lots and lots of other people.
Does anyone here use their brain before they post stories?
"Shock and Awe" or Blitzkrieg?
The distressing thing about the shock and awe campaign was not only the physical act, but the propaganda or presentation of it. Officials (and media) were openly gloating and praising the destruction. One of the reasons I was content to have our obviously biased and anti-US news in Ireland (RTÉ) as one of my news sources.
"Shock and awe" was quite despicable all in all. I can say that regardless of what it was in response to (or what it was "pre-empting").
Going out to "shock and awe" people is really no more than going out to "terrorise" (i.e. instill terror) them.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Have you been to the American southeast recently? Is the US really homogonized? Maybe New York and Washington DC have extremely similar cultures (~300 miles), but go down to Alabama and contrast it with New York. Not so homogenous anymore.
-Turkey
"Shock and Awe" is an English translation of "blitzkrieg".
This is one of those stories that gets reported every few years when some nuclear facility releases an audit.
The headline screams "X kilos of plutonium missing" making it sound as if plutonium went missing in one chunk but down in the story it is always revealed that the loss is not unusual and is in fact perfectly in keeping with the expected error of the accounting system. In other words, nothing newsworthy whatsoever happened at all.
The fact that these audits get reported as if they were in fact news reveals the systemic anti-nuclear bias of the media.
OK, but the distance from Albany to Montgomery is near enough the same as the distance from London to Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw or Budapest.
Italians, Swedes, Poles and Hungarians are culturally quite distinct from most of the people I'll meet on my daily round (for the sake of this discussion we'll leave out those I know who have immigrated to London from those other places).
People from these places speak different languages, use different money, obey different laws, decide their vote on different issues, believe different things, holiday in different places, eat different food, drink different booze, buy things in different shops.... there's a lot of differences there, OK?
Convergence under the auspices of the EU is breaking some of these differences down, but the process will take decades/generations to get to where the US is now (if it can get that far at all).
Regards
Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h