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Is an International Nuclear Fuelbank a Good Idea?
An anonymous reader writes "A roundtable at the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences explores the notion of nuclear fuel banks which would offer nations a guaranteed supply of low-enriched uranium if they renounce the right to enrich on their own. From the article: 'The basic idea behind an international fuel bank is that it would, in a reliable and nondiscriminatory way, make emergency supplies of market-priced low-enriched uranium available to states that sign up to participate. States that opt for membership in a fuel bank would gain increased confidence that their access to reactor-grade fuel would not be interrupted. In return, they would renounce the right to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel on their own. Such an arrangement could be appropriate for a number of states. But for others, it might be less than ideal.'"
Thorium can be used to produce U-233 which can be used to produce a simple bomb.
And they are fully justified in requiring at least some of the processing being done on Iranian soil.
Several NATO countries have reneged on nuclear technology deals over the past thirty years, mostly as a result of US pressure.
Russia itself delayed and delayed the Bushehr project for various reasons.
When the Tehran Research Reactor came up for re-supplying in 2009, the US and NATO refused to supply fuel on the open market as is REQUIRED by the NPT. This lead to negotiations in fall of 2009 which resulted in an ultimatum to Iran to ship out all of its low-enriched uranium stock in exchange for the TRR fuel - WITHOUT any guarantee that Iran would actually get that fuel. Iran naturally refused this offer and made a counteroffer to exchange the LEU at the time of delivery of the TRR fuel, with the LEU being held in Turkey or elsewhere under IAEA seal. The US refused.
So Iran went ahead and began enriching to 20% to produce the TRR fuel itself in January or February of 2010.
Then Brazil and Turkey tried to make a deal with Iran similar to the deal it offered in November/December of 2009. Obama wrote a letter to the Brazilian President outlining the details of a deal the US would accept. The Brazilians and Turks got the deal with Iran. The US then refused the deal under the spurious notion that since Iran's stockpile of LEU had gotten bigger in the meantime that the deal was no longer acceptable.
Iran has every reason to distrust the US because it is clear from the behavior of the US over the years that it has no serious interest in negotiating a genuine resolution of the issue. The nuclear issue is merely an excuse being used by the US to justify extreme sanctions and an upcoming military attack on Iran. The real reasons for this process is the US and Israeli desire for hegemony in the Middle East. Iran (and to a lesser degree Syria which is why Syria is in trouble now) is the only country in the Middle East not beholden to the US for foreign aid, weapons and security. The US and Israel will not rest until Iran, Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon are "brought to heel."
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Well, the best way would be to get the spent fuel back, and check the amounts. U-238 could be put near the reacting material like with neutron activation testing, but I don't believe that any remotely usable P-239 could be recovered that way (hence why reactors that produce plutonium have to be specially designed). It might be possible (I'm not an expert) to produce dirty bombs by heavily neutron activating a ton of stuff, but a dirty bomb is a far cry from a nuke, and it would be a very slow process. The main problem would be finding a place to keep the spent fuel, as nobody wants to have to keep the stuff.
Dirty bombs don't work except to freak out a gullible uneducated populace. The US Army checked this out decades ago, found there was nothing there, and went on to other things. Doesn't stop the media in the US from hyping it up,though. Gotta sell those advertising slots in the evening news somehow ya know.
Seriously, though, there is no way this 'fuel bank' won't get politicized, and no way the US will stand still and let it be placed anywhere but the US. And if they get built in the US, what corporation is going to run them, for 'the good of mankind', of course, as long as it's profitable as hell. They want something viable, start getting into thorium reactors. At least stockpiling thorium has a chance of working. 'No pourmouthing, El Presidente For Life, how much uranium do you really have?' could become a thing of the past. And since thorium is non-weaponiseable, there'd be no problem for Iran to build thorium reactors for power plants. Win/win in my opinion.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Oh yeah, we've done so well since Hiroshima! Let's see the Korean War, The Viet Nam War, two Gulf Wars, The War in Afghanistan, a couple dozen outbreaks in Africa and the Mid-East. That's just the U.S, Add the fun and games from all the other countries in the world and there's been about 12 war free days since we nuked Japan. Nukes don't stop war. In fact technology is moving fast in a direction where war is going to performed from remote consoles, and nukes won't impact that process either. There is no reason to have them. We should just dismantle them, remove the possibility of some idiot building a crude nuke or dirty bomb, and get on with life.
Not really, in WA state there was talk of putting something like that in place with milk. Basically require all dairies to sell their milk to a collective which would in turn sell to retailers. The idea was aimed squarely at killing the small number of smaller dairies that weren't owned by big milk. Putting them out of business for all intents and purposes as they would no longer be able to sell their milk. In order to distribute it themselves under their own label they would be forced to sell the milk and buy it back at inflated prices.
Sometimes, allowing a market to develop is a good thing. In the US we have a different set of problems with markets and foods.
Oh yeah, we've done so well since Hiroshima!
And indeed we have as the previous poster noted.
Let's see the Korean War, The Viet Nam War, two Gulf Wars, The War in Afghanistan, a couple dozen outbreaks in Africa and the Mid-East. That's just the U.S, Add the fun and games from all the other countries in the world and there's been about 12 war free days since we nuked Japan.
Peace doesn't mean complete absence of war. If you add up the body count for every war since the end of the Second World War, you barely get something comparable to the First World War (excluding the influenza epidemic).
Nukes don't stop war.
They stopped total war in Europe after 1945. The USSR was an extremely aggressive military power that completely changed its approach after the development of nuclear weapons.
Those US basketball players over there apparently get around without trouble and have a big fan following. The culture is changing and it's a bit of a race whether they will get nukes and wreak havoc with them (nice place you've got Bahrain - pity if something happened to it) before the younger generation takes over. There's now the very old running the place, a very low population between 30-60, and a huge population of young adults due to a baby boom after the war with Iraq and they are not brainwashed like North Koreans. Read up on where the phrase "young Turks" came from to get an idea of what might happen. The weird old extremists have nobody to hand the torch to, and while it is no democracy (the position of President is a mostly powerless joke filled by a clown), there's enough of an appearance of one to give people the desire for a real one.