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New Russian method to decommission plutonium
Getting rid of weapons-grade plutonium is expensive, and
there's a lot of it around due to the disarmament treaties.
According to Itar-Tass,
Russian scientists have found a method to convert it into
usable reactor fuel to power existing nuclear power stations.
Since when did the Russians not come up with something that kicked ass?
I'm not sure what the difference is but the CANDU's reactors developed by Atomic Energy of Canada already use weapons grade plutonium as a reactor fuel....
The US government has been looking at shipping their excess weapons grade plutonium ( some 50,000+ tons ) to Canada to have it dispossed of in the CANDU reactors...
The only problem right now is ensuring both the environmental safety of such a shipment and also ensuring that some terrorist group doesn't try to steal a little..... it is my understanding that it only takes around 1.5lbs to make a nuclear weapon so 50,000+tons...we you know what I'm getting at.
So my question is whats the difference here? is it somehow cheaper, or is it some way to retrofit the russian's already existing nuclear reactor designs?
Obviously not. If you did, you would know that the article is about a new process ( which produces far less radioactive waste ) to convert the plutonium into fuel rods, not the fact that they are useing plutonium for nuclear fuel.
I think the problem with the sodium-cooled reactor was that sodium explodes when it comes in contact with oxygen.
Saw a thing on PBS about that. They were talking to the guy who was head of Argonne Nat'l Lab. (I think that's where it was). He made it sound like the technology was nearly done at the time funding was cut. They had actually run a test where they shut off all the coolant (trying to cause a meltdown) and the reactor just shut itself down. No mechanical interactions or chance of failure. Nifty technology. The guy was saying it was a shame that funding got cut because we'd just end up buying the technology from France eventually, but I hear that they've also stopped research. Sounded like a terrible mistake to me. From what I've heard, an bunch of integral fast breeder reactors (or whatever it's called) could provide over 100 years of power for the US using the existing supply of fuel...wow! 'Course, the Pres needed something to say he was pro-environment. So what the hell, cut some funding for something that has the word 'nuclear' in it. Dammit, I'm getting all worked up now....
I thought the tricky part for terrorists or those evil countries (hey, I keep up on the propaganda...they're evil!) was not really getting the plutonium, but creating the delivery method.
Can't just hurl an A-bomb across an ocean with a big rubber band...well, I suppose you could, but it might not really give you the results you were looking for....you'd end up on a new Fox show called The World's Funniest Terrorists...
Why would we want to blow the moon out of orbit? Wouldn't this cause at least as much damage as, say the rocket exploding on the way? The moon is an integral part of our planet's system too.
Am I wrong?
LoppEar
By the end of 1990, the WORLD had produced about 600 metric tons of plutonium.
:)
The U.S. certainly doesn't have 50,000 tons
- Speed
1) Reactors can already use plutonium as fuel, it must simply be mixed with something else first. (what it is mixed with usually doesn't matter, you just must dilute it)
2) We wouldn't have a problem with weapons grade plutonium if we would just mix it with stuff to make it fuel grade so it can be used in reactors. In order to use fuel grade plutonium to make weapons you must process it again, not something that a terrorist would be able to do. However we don't do this because the american public is so stupid that they believe that plutonium is somehow (magically I suppose) more dangerous than Uranium, therefore they don't want it to be destroyed in reactors, they would rather just dig a big hole and dump it in so that some idiot can dig it up later. That's the sad truth.
3) Breeder reactors are not allowed because they produce plutonium, see section 2. Also waste reprocessing isn't allowed because it produces plutonium, see section 2.
4) The american people hate nuclear power because it produces so much waste which must be disposed of. This wouldn't be a problem at all, because breeder reactors produce far less waste and even most of that could be reclaimed by reprocessing, but see section 3.
5) Nuclear power is seen as dangerous because people have an unnatural fear of radiation (despite the fact that we each receive thousands of times the dose nuclear power could give us from natural sources every day even if this weren't the case, I would rather deal with a little radiation than die because my lungs are destroyed by smog) and because nuclear power plants produce so much waste, see section 4.
6) We would have an almost unlimited supply of cheap, non polluting energy if it weren't for the anti nuclear activists who stirred our country into such a frenzy. We would have the tiniest fraction of a percent of the waste we have now, and wouldnt' have huge mounds of plutonium sitting around. Beyond that, all the waste we did have would be easier to store, because the Uranium, and Plutonium left in the waste (see section 4) is what makes it so problematic.
This is why I hate Anti-nuclear activists, I have yet to find one who knew what they are talking about. I also rarely find anyone else who knows the subject at all, yet they are usually still dead set against nuclear power.
Send comments here: Iwadasn@aol.com
And the good ol propaganda machine caught another one. Pu may be able to cause cancer in small amounts but the probabilty is VERY small. Po has a similar process by which it causes cancer, multiple alpha decays from a lodged particle in the lungs. Guess what, tobacco is loaded with Po. If a microspec of Po is good enough to kill you than one drag is enough to kill you.
The probability is there, its just VERY small. Same as with specs of Pu. Just check on the guys in the original Pu machine shops, did they die of lung cancer? I think you would get a considerable amount of Pu particles on a metal lathe.
For the moon to travel with sufficient velocity for it to manage one star system per week ( ie, per episode ) from the point of view of the people on the moon, it would need to be travelling at about 99.999% of the speed of light.
At this velocity, time dilation would make the traversal time seem like a week, but likewise, the transit time per star system would also be time-dilated and in the range of a few seconds.
Somehow, I don't think a three second episode per week would be very entertaining. But then you probably never heard of Einstein or his theory of relativity either.
namely selling the stuff to Iran or firing it at people...
Actually, you need to steal much less Pu to have creative, harmful uses for it ; in its metallic form, Plutonium is extremely cancerigen.
;-) )
Put a few *grams* of plutonium metal powder in the ventilation system of your favourite business tower, and suddenly more than a half of people inside catch (and die from) lightning fast cancers.
A few kilograms are enough to build an A bomb, this is not sufficient, however : you need to [build|find] initiators, a beryllium(*) shielding (or steal _lots_ of plutonium), etc.
However, there's the poor man's radiologic bomb, a variation on the "deadly powder" theme. Basically, you put your 750g of plutonium into metallic powder form (maybe metal-oxyde powder is good too) around a classic explosive warhead, on top of your favourite 500km-range missile, and let that device explode on your preferred neighbour's capital city. Sit back, relax, and watch the population suffer and die. (you might want to check the wind's direction before letting the device go off
Fortunately, the radiologic bomb doesn't have the sex-appeal of a "real" A-bomb for third-world countries leaders, and those who tried to play with nukes always preffered to invest ten times more money into stuff which does nice mushrooms and can be seen by every single sismograph in the world rather than a cheap but still quite deadly bomb. But a terrorist group with a clue might really make some of our live much less comfortable.
(*) Beryllium is actually much more controlled than U or Pu proper, because you need much less in a bomb, but if you can cover your fissile materials with Be you can vastly improve the yield. Even the first Los Alamos device had a Be coating. Basically, what this does is reflecting the neutrons which would otherwise escape the device back into the core, so they get another chance to interact with a fuel atom.
We've been able to do this for quite some time. They're called Breeder reactors. They produce Plutonium as a byproduct of a slightly altered reaction. This plutonium can then be used in the reactor for power.
The next advance in nuclear power will be shrinking the reactors to the point that it wouldn't matter even if they did melt down because they would simply use up all of their own power in this melting. No excess energy.
something clever
No, I was just commenting that we have had a reactor that could use plutonium as its fuel for a while. I'm not sure why these other breeder reactors aren't used for this same purpose. probably because its too damn expensive to transport the relatively unstable plutonium. People are worried about hijacks, train wrecks, car crashes, terrorist activity, radiation leakage and lots of other things that may or may not be realistic. If they can use these in a standard reactor, though, that is probably very different from the way they are used in a breeder. I just claim what I learned in Physics 101 Energy and the Environment, and that was just a side note.
something clever
On Sept. 13, 1999 a nuclear disposal dump on the Moon explodes, hurling it out of orbit...You can make it happen!
Get the Russians to use their heavy lift boosters to send all excess nuclear fuels to the moon!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Bah...You all loose Geek Points for not knowing SPACE:1999, that almost horrible series that had the best intra-system space craft (The Eagle) of any TV series or Movie...
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Posted by The [not so] Little Hacker:
This is not a reactor that uses weapons grade, it's a way to convert weapons grade into fuel rods for other reactors
For those who are not in the US, this seems like a big deal here because it is illegal for power plants to recycle their waste. The reasoning is that if a criminal got into the process they could at some point get weapons grade plutonimun in quanities enoguh to make a bomb. Instead of requireing high security for such plants they are illegal here, and so power companies are asking the goverment for a pit they can dumb the waste in. The US military is not subject to these laws, and so they don't have this waste problem, however anouther law makes it illegal to turn civilan waste into military uses including powering a land based reacter they could run.
I don't agree with any of the above, but that is the way it is.
Your military against the US. Okay just against California. Its the only way to prove yourself.
~
But seriously, transporting it makes it a target. Storing makes it a target. Me thinks that people simply want to get there hands on it no matter what.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
I don't expect those soldiers are badly paid. I would expect the US would make sure of that.
I hope you're kidding... imagine one of those booser rockets exploding.. now imagine millions of people/animals/plants dying of radiation poisoning from all the radioactive material that just got scattered all over the upper atmosphere and is now coming down everytime it rains.
Save the rats!
--
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
Hell, get me 100 Kg of weapons grade uranium.
;)
Then things are gonna change... Oh, yearh !
Excellent idea! Lets have loads of weapons-grade plutonium trundling through a semi-anarchic country, guarded by underpaid soldiers and travelling to dated and dodgy power stations.And if a little goes missing here and there, well who's going to notice anyway?
You are, when some idiot decides to hasten the second coming by nuking the major city of his choice.
I meant in Russia. But even in Canada, a truckload of prime nuke fuel makes a pretty hot target for a terrorist with ambitions.
Talk about a bad idea with a good one. Russia is in a major energy crisis, they need to have good clean mass power.
But, with Russian standards still way below ours... Do we need another possible Chernobyl?
Yes, breeder reactors have been around for some time, and we've been using them a lot here in Canada, and selling them to other countries (such as India) for a while too. Modern-day CANDU reactors can handle:
This is what I learned from the Internet, more info at the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) website for any interested. It's interesting actually.
~Sentry21~
Whatever happened to that idea?
(A sodium-cooled breeder that could use
metallic fuel rods - it could eat waste
products from other reactors, weapons-grade
Pu, you name it).
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
..yeah, when my friends from Institute for Nuclear Physics have not seen salaries since June...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
For more information on Pu disposition see: http://www.doe-md.com
Pu-239 can be used as fuel in standard thermal reactors in the form of mixed oxide (MOX). The fuel is 5-15% Pu-239 by weight depending upon the amount of the other Pu isotopes (240, 241, 242).
As far as I recall, the reason here had to do with the transport problems: How sure are you that weapons-grade plutonium will move from A to B without mishap? How willing are you to bet on it?
Bernard L. Cohen talks about terrorist scenarios regarding Plutonium in his book "The nuclear energy option : an alternative for the 90s." (Previously published as "Before It's Too Late : A Scientist's Case For Nuclear Energy.")
-Zoyd