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IAEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank
Kemeno writes "The International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Friday to form a nuclear fuel bank to help developing countries acquire nuclear fuel without having to enrich uranium themselves. Warren Buffet contributed 50 million dollars to a pool of 150 million with contributions from many different countries. The goal of the program is to provide countries with a source of low-grade enriched uranium suitable for fueling reactors but not for creating nuclear weapons."
So instead of supporting that poor countries get stuff like photovoltaics - which are modular, can be upgraded and are pretty much portable and 'place anywhere' (and clean!) - we're encouraging them to use something that involves transporting radioactive materials to what is essentially a very expensive environment-ruining nuclear-timebomb which they will need to pay for, build enough power infrastructure - roads for getting the enriched uranium in, and places to dump the very dangerous waste.
They should just give them free photovoltaics - you can just set a mini-plant in any of the villages, and you don't need expensive infrastructure either - nor a backup-plan when shoddy maintenance causes a meltdown.
What are these people smoking?
The problem with Pu is that only the 239 isotope is suitable for weapons, and if you have too much 240 or 241 (more than about 3%) then it isn't stable enough to fission when you want it to. Pu-240 and -241 spontaneously fission, leaving daughter products that absorb your neutrons.
Isotopic separation isn't done with Plutonium because the atomic weights of the isotopes are too similar. Cascading centrifuges won't get the job done, and chemical separation won't get the job done.
In order to create Pu-239 for weapons purposes, you have to use a ridiculously short fuel cycle in a specially configured reactor - it's quite obvious to the inspectors that will undoubtedly be required to be present should you sign contracts with the IAEA to get this fuel.
Remarkably - not a single statement in the above post is correct.
There are reasons why nations with large nuclear weapons programs prefer low burn-up plutonium but nuclear weapons can be made from high-burn-up power reactor plutonium, it is simply more complex to do so, and the weapons themselves are need shielding in storage to keep soldiers from exceeding occupational safety limits. A nation only with fuel grade plutonium can still develop adn make weapons with it.
Plutonium can be isotopically enriched, in fact since you simply removing impurities, rather than trying to extract weapon fuel present in trace amounts in natural sources (the usual case), it is actually much easier. Ony 4 kg of feedstock is needed for processing to make one bomb if plutonium is being isotopically purified vs 3000 kg of natural uranium for a U-235 weapon. Electromagnetic separation would be the method of choice, but gas centrifuges can be adapted to this.
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