US Should Cancel Plutonium Plant, Say Scientists

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Rachel Oswald reports that the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent science advocacy organization, says that the United States should cancel plans to build a multi-billion dollar plutonium research facility in New Mexico and criticizes Obama administration plans for nuclear facilities and weapons. They argue that the plans to build new fissile-material handling plants are unnecessarily ambitious given the expected future downward trajectory of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The proposed Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement plant (CMRR) building at Los Alamos would replace a Cold War-era site at a cost of $6 billion. It is intended to assist in ensuring new and existing plutonium pits are in working order absent a return by the country to nuclear-weapons testing. The 81-page UCS report, 'Making Smart Security Choices,' (PDF) says if the U.S. carries out limited reductions of its nuclear arsenal over the next-quarter century — as President Obama has said he would like to do — current facilities at Los Alamos can produce sufficient plutonium cores to maintain the warhead stockpile. The CMRR complex is designed to have the capacity to produce between 50 and 80 plutonium pits annually even though no more than 50 cores are needed yearly and Los Alamos currently has that production capability, says report co-author Lisbeth Gronlund. 'The idea that you would need to produce up to 80 [cores] is not warranted,' says Gronlund. 'We think it's time just to cancel the whole thing.'"

Comments

Re:Not just for weapons

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong isotope. Nukes need Pu-239, RTGs use Pu-238, and the manufacturing processes are different.

Blech

[Jiro]

The Union of Concerned Scientists includes some scientists, but is an anti-nuclear political organization. This headline is like saying "Teenagers have unhealthy fantasies playing D&D, say mothers" amd omitting from the headline that "mothers" really refers to "Mothers Against Dungeons and Dragons".

Re:Not just for weapons

[ArbitraryName]

While there is an easier way to specifically produce Pu-238, it is a byproduct of Pu-239 production.

Re:I don't get it

[Shakrai]

If we simply stopped with the disarming there would be little need for expensive new technology

Nuclear materials have a half-life.... you can't take an unmaintained plutonium pit from the 1980s and expect it to function as designed thirty years later. Contamination from decay products will yield unpredictable results, ranging from a fissile (weapon fails to reach nuclear yield) to a significant increase in power (Castle Bravo is a good example)

The only way to control for this is to conduct weapons testing (a geopolitical non-starter) or to continue to produce new fissile materials with known quantities. Computer modeling can offset the need for testing to a certain extent but at the end of the day the only way to be certain that a weapon will work as designed is to test it and/or modernize the materials contained therein.