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Sandia Helps Secure Kazakh Nuclear Material
RedEaredSlider writes "A large cache of enriched nuclear fuel – some 13 metric tons — was stored in a nuclear reactor in the port city of Aktau, on the Caspian seacoast. The reactor was a Soviet-era fast breeder reactor, designed to make nuclear fuel for both weapons and power plants. The reactor, which started operations in 1973, also provided 135 megawatts of electricity, 9 million gallons of water per day and steam for hot water and heating for Aktau. It was shut down by the Kazakh government in 1999. Getting the material out of a seaport was one way to make it harder to steal, [Dave Barber of Sandia Labs] said. So the US and Kazakh governments embarked on a project to move it to a guarded — and remote — facility in the interior."
Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that a breakaway Russian Republic called Kazakhstan will be transferring nuclear fuel to the United Nations in a few days. Here's the plan. We get the fuel and we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
I am officially gone from
Eeks, were they wearing dosimeters?
A few months after we took Iraq, we secured and flew out almost 14 tons of Yellow Cake in 55 gallon drums, 4 to a pallet,on C-17's to Diego Garcia, where it was put on ships to other places. A year or two later 3 of our pilots came down with Lymphoma. Uncle Sam says it was unrelated...
Yellowcake isn't particularly radioactive. To get a significant exposure to radiation they would have had to essentially breath it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm guessing it was for the Desalination plant. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/7190472
That was probably part of the reason they built the reactor in the first place. (Old school desalination).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The US helped remove a half ton of fissile material from Kazakhstan in 1993-94 in a covert project called Project Sapphire at a cost of $27 million.
"The yellowcake removed from Iraq in 2008 was material that had long since been identified, documented, and stored in sealed containers under the supervision of U.N. inspectors. It was not a "secret" cache that was recently "discovered" by the U.S, and the yellowcake had not been purchased by Iraq in the years immediately preceding the 2003 invasion. The uranium was the remnants of decades-old nuclear reactor projects that had put out of commission many years earlier: One reactor at Al Tuwaitha was bombed by Israel in 1981, and another was bombed and disabled during Operation Desert Storm in 1991."
Source
This doesn't sound like it was dodgy hidden under cover drums or anything like that. It sounds as if it was well regulated.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The material you're talking about is an alpha emitter. This means the radiation is stopped by things like barrels, walls, your clothes, your skin and air.
There would only be residual gamma radiation. This would become harmless on the way from the barrels to the cockpit. If you're not trolling you would do well to read up on how different types of radiation work.
The above poster was right about it being no risk unless someone ingested it. The pilots were exposed to dangerous radiation though: airplanes are routinely hit by powerful cosmic radiation which is much worse than anything coming from yellowcake barrels.
14 tons of yellowcake isn't worthless(there was a peak in 2007, to $136/pound, which would give that shipment a best-case value of ~$3.8million. More typically, though, spot prices are under $50/pound, often more like $30, which would only be ~$840,000); but I'd be quite surprised if that operation ended up being profitable for anybody, unless it was handed over to some lucky winner at a totally sweetheart price. C-17s aren't exactly RyanAir, never mind the broader costs...
That would be the main health concern. As a freestanding gamma source you don't have much to worry about; but a mixture of uranium, decay products, and whatever delightful residues and impurities remain from the leaching process is not the sort of dust one would want to be breathing.
If the drums were properly sealed, no problem. If one or more of them were damaged, the handlers could quite easily be tracking around and breathing the dust. That would probably be unrecommended...
In a fast breeder reactor (FBR) like the one mentioned in the article, the primary coolant was liquid sodium. There are no FBR's that operate with water as the primary coolant because relatively larger amounts of water versus sodium are required to provide adequate cooling of the fuel. Such quantities of water in the reactor core would thermalize far too many fast neutrons to breed fuel. The only water used would be in the secondary coolant loops which could provide heat to steam generators to power turbines/desalinization operations/hot water for the city of Aktau.
Why would the cash-strapped republic of K. not resell the material for reprocessing to some country that has running reactors, rather than store it?
This is not a signature.
Probably because it has "-stan" in its name and, as far as gross generalizations go, its not completely unwarranted.
On the other hand, you can be sure that a lot of people, including certain interested foreigners, are keeping a close eye on the material. It should be safe enough. If anything, I don't think the Russians will want that stuff getting loose any more than the people in the US would.
The government is just as ruthless in holding down dissent as some Arab states. There hasn't been an open election there in decades, and the president is looking to hand the government over to his daughter and son-in-law. He's playing a 4 way power broker between major powers, but he can only keep that up till al qaeda moves in, as they have already started doing.
He dies, and that country spirals out of control. Its Egypt all over again.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
A few months after we took Iraq, we secured and flew out almost 14 tons of Yellow Cake in 55 gallon drums, 4 to a pallet,on C-17's to Diego Garcia, where it was put on ships to other places. A year or two later 3 of our pilots came down with Lymphoma. Uncle Sam says it was unrelated...
Do you have any further information on this incident, a link perhaps?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A large cache of enriched nuclear fuel - some 13 metric tons -- was stored in a nuclear reactor in the port city of Aktau, on the Caspian seacoast.
The really interesting thing about this story is that it demonstrates exactly why a well engineered spent fuel containment facility with appropriate logistics to support it is required in the United States. Currently there is approximately 70,000 tons of spent fuel around the U.S waiting transportation to longer term facilities. So if the following statement illustrates the logistics required to move 13 tons from one location;
The nuclear fuel was placed in steel casks, each one the size of a train car. Each of the 60 casks weighs 100 tons. They are designed to hold the material for 50 years, and they were taken across Kazakhstan to a remote location...The casks were put onto a special train, which made the 1,860 mile journey under guard. To make sure that nobody tried to sabotage the transport, nearly every mile of the tracks ahead were checked for damage.
then it also illustrates what an enormous logistics challenge moving 70,000 tons of spent fuel from multiple locations around the U.S represents. I point this out because often, when conversations arise around nuclear power, the discussion is focused on the reactor technology and none on any of the other logistic and infrastructure required to support the reactors operating.
Efforts like this are a positive one to reduce the threat of asymmetrical nuclear weapons use and should be applauded, even if they are only to a temporary location. Considering that the DOEs own report into Yucca mountain said that the geology was unsuitable for the containment of nuclear waste there should be no doubt why a geologically stable (embedded in granite as opposed to pumice) spent fuel containment facility is a necessity in the U.S. It has to be built to last as it will become the center point of many other large logistics operations that connect it to nuclear facilities around the country.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.