Scientists in Las Vegas to consider recycling spent nuclear fuel

[phantom power]

LAS VEGAS About 120 scientists from around the world are meeting in Las Vegas this week to consider ways to recycle spent nuclear fuel.
One expert attending the conference at U-N-L-V compares reprocessing and transmutation to an alchemist's dream of turning lead into gold.

But event host Gary Cerefice says the feasibility of the process hasn't been shown yet at the engineering level.

An Energy Department expert says reprocessing and transmutation won't change the need for a repository the Energy Department wants to open in 2010 at Yucca Mountain -- 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But he says it might reduce or eliminate the need for future repositories.
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=2547672

[Massacure]

1. GOOD!!!

Reprocessing creates plutonium which can be used in bombs, however since Bush is developing bombs anyways, recycling spent fuel to reuse and reduce waste is a good idea.

[NNadir]

2. Actually no, it doesn't.

Recycling does not "create" Plutonium. It isolates it. There is a huge difference between the two.

Plutonium that has been recycled one or more times through a nuclear power reactor is much, much, much, much less suitable than plutonium that has been prepared for the purpose of making nuclear weapons. The latter is extremely expensive since it is made by removing fuel from the reactor at extremely low burn-ups and engaging in concentration of very very dilute solid solutions. The typical irradiation cycle to make weapons grade plutonium is less than two months, depending on the weapon design and specifications. Fuel removed from nuclear power stations has generally been irradiated for a period of years. Fuel that has been recycled continuously will have an isotopic mixture that might well make for de facto weapons useless plutonium, particularly if the plutonium is burned with some Neptunium-237, Americium-241 (or Plutonium-241), and/or U-236. Among the complications that recycled fuel introduces in weapons design is very low nuclear yield, excessive heat discharge, destruction and/or rapid decomposition (through irradiation) of the chemical propellants/implosion elements, premature detonation and accidental criticality.

The ONLY - and I do mean ONLY - way to nuclear disarmament involves fissioning/denaturing weapons grade plutonium. Pretending that weapons grade does not exist or that if we hold our breath long enough it will go away (the Ostrich strategy) requires that the risk of nuclear war will remain as high as is possible for as long as is possible.

Note it is impossible to ELIMINATE the risk of nuclear war - a stark reality since 1945 or even before, but it is very, very possible for people who think to MINIMIZE THE RISK of nuclear war. Plutonium recycling on an industrial scale is a huge first step in this effort.

[Massacure]

3. I guess that was a bad choice of vocabulary.

However, I'm not a nuclear scientist for a very good reason. I'm only 16. :P

[NNadir]

4. Being 16 doesn't prevent you from being a nuclear scientist, but

thanks for being here.

BTW, I apologize to you not only if I've been rude, but also for what my generation has given your generation. Hopefully we'll be able to leave you the tools to ameliorate our awful mess.

[phantom power]

5. accidental criticality? Oopsie!

[NNadir]

6. It's happened. Several US weapons scientists were killed in such an

accident in 1946.

They were assembling the hemispheres on a plutonium bomb core using a screwdriver and somebody sneezed.

The presence of Plutonium-240 and Plutonium-238, both neutron emitters because of spontaneous fission, potentiate this kind of accident.

Such an accident also happened in a commercial nuclear power operation in Japan a few years ago, killing several workers working on a solution of highly enriched Uranium for a breeder reactor. (This type of operation is somewhat exotic and atypical in commercial operations.) These people to my knowledge represent the only people have killed in the West by nuclear power operations.