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How About a Megatons To Megawatts Program For US Nuclear Weapons?
Lasrick writes "Dawn Stover looks at the incredibly successful Megatons to Megawatts program, which turned dismantled Russian nuclear warheads into lower-grade uranium fuel that can be used to produce electricity. The 1993 agreement between the U.S. and Russia not only eliminated 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium, but generated nearly 10% of U.S. electricity consumption. The Megatons to Megawatts program ended in December, but Stover points out that the U.S. has plenty of surplus nuclear weapons that could keep the program going, without the added risk of shipping it over such huge distances. A domestic Megatons to Megawatts, if you will. This would be very cost effective and have the added benefit of keeping USEC, the only American company in the uranium enrichment field, in business."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Should've done it years ago.
Russians got stiffed.
I know a lady who worked for the company at the time.
She also got stiffed to the tune of 10K un-reimbursed travel expenses.
But nothing like the Ruskys. Who learned the hard way about western bankruptcy laws.
BTW the company owner is still wanted in Russia, but what he did is not illegal in the USA, so no extradition.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The thing about nukes and MAD is that it is counterintuitive. To have peace in a world with nukes you actually need more than 1x the amount required to have a robust counterstrike. When nuclear disarmament reaches so called reasonable levels say UK,France, China levels the danger is actually greater since you slip below the megadeath that has kept chemical weapons and nukes deeply inside national pockets for almost 100 years. As long as there is a superpower who is not worried about a decapitation strike actually working there is little incentive to have an itchy trigger finger and common sense gets a chance to work.
You still saw some chem weapons in places like Yemen civil war by Egypt where there was no threat of a counterstrike or in Iran/Iraq where Iran didn't have the capacity.
Nukes are only safe when held in safely large and well dispersed numbers by a powerful central government facing a similar opponent with sufficient arsenal making a decapitation strike unrealistic. The only other safe option is strictly verified 100% planetary disarmament.
To take highly enriched U235 or Plutonium, that has cost 100k's per kg to produce, and convert it to a lower grade fuel. Even if you don't like nuclear weapons there are myriad potential future non-military uses that may crop up that will need highly enriched fuels, like:
Nuclear interplanetary rockets, Space nuclear power reactors, nuclear aircraft, trains,trucks, tractors, earthmovers, and (less likely) nuclear ships, where weight is critical or small size for shielding or safe containment in event of a crash is critical. We are going to run out of fossil fuel eventually and will still need high density power sources for transportation and primary production.
In the case of aircraft, nuclear power may offer the only long term solution for transporting billions of wealthy future-humans around the world at the high speeds they will demand without fucking up the stratosphere like any combustion based propulsion does.
We couldn't possibly give up our strategic advantage in an area that has almost no usefulness in this period of time!
We could give up our strategic advantage, but it would be exceedingly stupid.
Weapons should be thought of as a form of insurance. In a perfect world, you'd never have to use it, but in the world we live in, it's foolish not to have it.
No. We should maintain our advantage over other nations. Especially China. After all China is probably building up a giant stockpile of nukes right now as we speak!!.
I realize this is /., so to rtfa is just crazy talk. But I did skim through it. We currently have 3000 retired warheads that are simply sitting in storage decaying. These aren't sitting on top of missiles. Or even being maintained. They are costing taxpayers who knows how much money to sit in a building somewhere. Since the cost of enriching this stuff beyond what is needed to generate power has alread done. This seems like an even bigger waste to me. As they would probably have to reprocess it to use in a weapon again anyhow.
They already were, as part of the first program. US HEU was also converted, mostly from stocks, since the U.S. primarily uses Plutonium bombs, both as fission warheads, and as triggers for fusion warheads.
Addressing the suggestion itself:
The HEU supply available from weapons is now too low to deal with demands of the power industry, which is why the program came to the negotiated close that it did in the first place.
The U.S. generally could deal with both the fuel availability problem and the Plutonium weapons "problem" by:
(1) fuel reprocessing, which was disallowed by executive order of then-president Jimmy Carter, This would solve the "nuclear waste" problem at the same time, as it's not actually "waste", it's actually "unreprocessed nuclear fuel".
(2) use of Plutonium reactors which could utilize said Plutonium in the first place (which would imply breeder/fast breeder reactors, which the U.S. doesn't build due to it's non-proliferation stance, which appears to be successful, since North Korea... er... wait...
(3) another START treaty involving both Russia and China, so that the warhead reductions would be mutual. The current number of warheads is approximately those needed to implement the Brookings Institute's M.A.D. policy in the first place, since you pretty much have to drop a warhead within 100m of a hardened target to ensure the destruction of the target, and there are that many hardened targets. Nuclear weapons aren't magical in their ability to destroy -- in fact, the cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan have considerably more explosive power than tactical nuclear weapons.
So in all, the proposal is unworkable until you reverse a U.S. fuel reprocessing policy set by executive order, reverse a U.S. reactor technology policy set by executive order, and then engage in arms reductions talks with people who are currently not on very good speaking terms with us due to recent foreign policy decisions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Lets read up a little bit on it before we compare LFTR reactors and nuclear processes to putting diesel in a gas car...
President Carter's reprocessing ban was in fact overturned by President Reagan. It costs money, lots of it, to reprocess spent fuel and the money to build commercial reprocessing plants wasn't forthcoming until about fifteen years ago when DoE funding was advanced to build a MOX fuel fabrication plant in South Carolina. The pricetag is now $5 billion, the plant is still unfinished and there are no confirmed customers for its MOX fuel in the US despite, it is claimed, generous subsidies. As far as I know there are no commercial reactors using MOX with recycled plutonium in the US at the moment.
Breeder reactors can't earn their way simply producing plutonium fuel other than for military purposes as cost-no-object operations. They need to generate electricity too and the operational experience of breeders over the past few decades is that they are not reliable and cost-effective to run especially these days when fracked gas-fired power generators can deliver electricity wholesale to the grid for about 3 cents/kWh. The French Super-Phenix breeder was intended to produce 1.2GW of electricity but it suffered problems and delays and was eventually shut down in part due to economic factors. Other breeders have had similar problems over the decades.
As for the START process it can take a decade or more to get something both countries can agree to -- President Obama signed off on the latest START agreement but it was begun by President Bush after the groundwork had been laid in President Clinton's term. The US (and Russia too) have to consider there are other unfriendly nuclear powers in existence today such as China with limited stocks of weapons but with intercontinental range. America's ready-for-use stockpile of about 2,000 deliverable warheads has to be able to deter more than Russia.
If my destruction is already determined, and there is no other way out, then having a way to convince the aggressor that he'll be going down with me is a perfectly valid tactic. Really, it's the only valid tactic on some situations.
The megatons to megawatts program was put in place because the USSR had fallen apart and the existing nuclear stockpiles of the old Soviet Union were in the hands of increasingly suspect generals in an increasingly corrupt and desperate situation.
It was in that context that the US offered to buy the nuclear fuel and give Russia money.
Compared to today... The US for all its troubles is not on the brink of civil war. Our nuclear weapons are not in danger of falling into the hands of terrorists.
So the program has no point.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Ummm, no. The economic factor for Super-Phenix shutting down was that it was an engineering prototype that pushed the envelope a bit too far in various directions. It broke in interesting ways, some due to the liquid sodium coolant, some because of the very intense neutron flux in a very small volume. The fact that the Greens fired a few RPG-7s at it in its early days had little to do with its eventual shutdown. This is La Belle France, remember -- see what they did to the Rainbow Warrior for what they think of Greenpeace.
The folks pushing next-generation breeders such as the assorted LFTRs, travelling-wave and other IFRs and the like have learned from the failures of the early breeder designs but it's likely they will run into other whoopsies themselves as they try to run productively for decades on end at 5 cents/kWh.
Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You misunderstand the true value of weapons.
If you have to use a weapon, that means you didn't have a big enough one.
Um, no. It's more likely that if you "have" to use a weapon, you already failed at something else that would have precluded the use, or threat, of force in the first place.
Personally, I would prefer that Plutonium be reserved for RTGs for space power. Outside of the inner solar system, solar-powered probes just don't cut it.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This is a different type of Plutonium. Not the he same thing at all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's more likely that if you "have" to use a weapon, you already failed at something else that would have precluded the use, or threat, of force in the first place.
Quite true. However, sometimes the thing that was failed was the attempt to convince someone else that you are sincere about being left alone.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Easily dis proven:
"Uranium mining in the United States produced 4.8 million pounds of uranium concentrate in 2013, the largest amount since 1997"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_the_United_States
With mines in 21 states, it is hard to imagine the scenario that you state
Well... we're really not supposed to look. Nothing to see here, move along.
All is fine. After all... almost no one dies in those accidents even when they do happen.
September 18, 1980 â" At about 6:30 p.m., an airman conducting maintenance on a USAF Titan-II missile at Little Rock Air Force Base's Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside (Van Buren County), just north of Damascus, Arkansas, dropped a socket from a socket wrench, which fell about 80 feet (24 m) before hitting and piercing the skin on the rocket's first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak. The area was evacuated. At about 3:00 a.m., on September 19, 1980, the hypergolic fuel exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material. An Air Force airman was killed and the launch complex was destroyed.
And then... there are things like this, which is not on the list above because it was not a nuclear accident.
Only a regular accident and a malfunction that still required the military to try to stop a nuclear launch by parking an armored car on top of the silo.
And these were just misplaced.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you can kill the same 10 million people with a smaller bomb and a more accurate missile
Making your weapon smaller and more accurate DOES make it less scary.
Violence is scary. Random, indiscriminate violence is more scary.
I would counter your argument with the suggestion that a ridiculously large, but clumsily inaccurate weapon is far more scary than a weapon that only hits its intended targets.
If all I have are precision weapons, then all you need to do to be safe is make sure not to piss me off. If I have extremely powerful weapons with "unreliable" targeting, then it might be in your best interest to also put pressure on your neighbor to not piss me off.