To nuke or not to nuke?

[cheerful_deviant]

Interesting article.

US plans to make Plutonium again

I'm not really sure where I come down on this issue. I realise that the material is very useful in some applications. In fact, in some applications, such as deep space exploration, there is no viable alternative.

But looking at the numbers is a little scarry.

$1.5 billion to produce 330 pounds? That works out to about $280,000 an ounce.

For comparison, Gold is currently running about $440 an ounce.

Also, 50000 barrels of waste to produce just 330 pounds? Figure a barrel weighs in at between 400 and 450 pounds depending on the material inside and you have about 21 million pounds of waste. Radioactive waste I might add.

 

[Weird Harold]

$1.5 billion to produce 330 pounds? That works out to about $280,000 an ounce.

Also, 50000 barrels of waste to produce just 330 pounds?

It's not like they're going to produce all of that Plutonium or all of that waste immediately; this is a 30 year plan -- or only about 11 pounds a year and 1,667 barrels of waste or slightly less than a pound of Plutonium and just under 140 barrels of waste per month.

Neither the Plutonium nor the waste is going to be accumulating at the production facility -- the Plutonium is going off to play battery in whateve rsecret projects they're making it for and the waste is going to be shipped off to a storage facility for nuclear waste.

I'm not going to try to claim that Plutonium or the waste aren't hazardous materials but the situation is far less than the NYTimes article makes it out to be and the hazards are much less than the anti-nuke lobby portrays them.

In thirty years, $1.5 billion is going to be pocket change for a minimum wage worker anyway, so the expense isn't that great either -- only $50 Million a year, which is less than is spent on almost any other government endeaver and less than is spent on military operations or welfare in a month.

 

[jill999]

We in the States have wasted the past 30 years burning oil and letting our nuclear programs go dormant. Well now let's see what the price of oil is now. $60.00 and moving up rapidly. We better start some new power plants using nuclear fuel before we use up all of the oil.

I think plutonium is one of the residual elements in spent uranium rods. If memory serves me correctly the U S government use to run a facility on the Savanah River to process the plutonium from the fission by products.

Watch those protons and nutrons carefully or we will create a chain reaction.....Oh my.

One other advantage, no greenhouse gases.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I think plutonium is one of the residual elements in spent uranium rods. If memory serves me correctly the U S government use to run a facility on the Savanah River to process the plutonium from the fission by products.

Yes. The Pu in reactors almost all Pu-239. I believe that's the Pu that can be used in atomic bombs (not absolutely positive about this, but I think so.)

Pu-238 is not good for weapons, but is a great source of heat for powering batteries for space and undersea crafts. Pu-238 can only be made by bombarding atoms of Neptunium with neutrons. That's probably how they intend to make it in Idaho Falls.