Energy NW asked not to use plutonium reactor fuel (WA)

[jpak]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014123839_apwareactorfuel1stld.html

Friends of the Earth is calling upon Energy Northwest not to consider using nuclear reactor fuel derived from weapons-grade plutonium at its Columbia Generating Station at Hanford.

The environmental organization says it has obtained Department of Energy documents that say the public power consortium is evaluating the potential use of plutonium mixed oxide fuel at the reactor. It says the use of such fuel poses unacceptable risks and costs.

The government says the fuel could produce energy while disposing of plutonium from abandoned nuclear weapons. The Energy Department is building a plant in South Carolina to make the fuel.

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[RC]

1. From the Comments --

"This is just another anti-nuke scare article written by people that are against nuclear energy because they were told it is bad and either don’t have the capacity or the interest to determine for themselves if what they have been told is correct or not. Hello!??! All nuclear reactors create plutonium as they burn the Uranium in the core. A significant amount of the energy they produce comes from burning the plutonium they produce already. How is blending down and then burning some weapons grade plutonium any different in terms of safety than burning the plutonium that the core produces already? Wake up and learn to think for yourself please!"

[phantom power]

2. What does "Friends of Earth" want to do with the weapons-grade plutonium?

I seriously don't get the opposition to burning this stuff up and getting some energy out of it. It's not like it magically goes away if you leave it laying around unused.

:shrug:

[jpak]

3. Incorporate it in a ceramic matrix and bury it

faster and cheaper

MOX was a very expensive bone thrown to the nuclear industry.

[Nihil]

6. So why isn't this an acceptable answer for the rest of the nuclear waste?

> Incorporate it in a ceramic matrix and bury it
> faster and cheaper

If it's good enough for the nuclear waste that you don't like here,
why isn't it good enough for the nuclear waste that you don't like
anywhere else?

You know, the stuff that people go into screaming hissy-fits about
every time someone mentions "nuclear power" and/or "waste storage"?

:shrug:

[Nihil]

10. *crickets*

:shrug:

[Nihil]

11. No answer yet?

:shrug:

[Confusious]

17. Because if it's used for anything good

Then they have a harder time demonizing it. That's why they oppose any solution to anything nuclear.

i.e., nuclear waste. No nuclear waste, more people would drop their objection to nuclear power. So they oppose any solution to nuclear waste.

[Nihil]

12. Strange how this post has remained unanswered ...

.. it's almost as if the people concerned were embarrassed about
having stumbled over the truth and hoped that it would just go
quietly away before anyone else noticed ...?

:think:

[Statistical]

14. Exactly.

Logical thinking isn't the strong suit of the anti-nukkers. Emotional based pleas is what they commonly rely on.

[Nihil]

16. Gosh ... still no laughing smilies with a reply that acknowledges ...

... that they actually made an honest answer ... albeit by mistake ...?

[Dead_Parrot]

18. presumably, it is...

Good to know that's all sorted, then.

[joshcryer]

7. It could be unburied.

Drop it into the deepest oceanic trenches.

Of course, it is better spent being made into energy.

[Statistical]

13. Which means it could be unburied in the future and new weapons made from it.

Burning it up in reactor makes creation of a weapon far far more difficult.

As someone else pointed out.... If bury weapons grade material is the "solution" then why isn't burying all spent fuel the solution.

The same people who oppose a deep geological repository say we should bury nuclear weapons rather than permanently render them non-weapons grade in a reactor.

[NNadir]

4. Um, so what we have here is another anti-intellectual posting crap from other

anti-intellectuals as a mode of validation?

The world doesn't give a rat's ass what anti-nukes think. Plutonium fuels are in use in Belgium, France, and Japan.

China which has 25 nuclear reactors under construction, any one of which will produce more energy than all the solar facilities in the United States, is building a reprocessing plant, as is India.

Who cares what backwoods rubes think?

[jpak]

5. LOL!!!1111

:rofl:

[GliderGuider]

8. That's all you've got isn't it?

That stupid smiley. Nothing else, just a smiley.

[jpak]

9. I'm sorry, he really does make me LOL!!!11

:rofl:

But if you really want to know - the best solution for plutonium is to incorporate it into ceramic with a healthy does of 137Cs and 90Sr (to make difficult for radioactive potential bomb makers to handle), encapsulate it...

and bury it in and absorptive mineral bed

real deep

Faster better cheaper than MOX fuel which really doesn't burn it up - a significant portion remains in the spent fuel - which is rendered even more difficult to handle and process - it's just plain stupid.

yup

[Statistical]

15. More difficult to handle and process.

Exactly. More difficult to handle and process as a nuclear weapon.

Spent MOX is non-viable for producing weapons. Any country sophisticated enough to do the very complex, costly, and dangerous post-processing to get separate the nuclear grade material could simply build a uranium pile reactor (1950s technology) and convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium.

Adding other isotopes isn't a viable deterrent. Using mass seperation one can regain nearly "pure" plutonium.

The advantage of burning up MOX is a significant fraction of the Plutonium becomes Pu-240. Pu-239 is the isotopes useful for making bombs. Too much Pu-240 and you can't get a critical mass. Weapons grade Plutonium contains 7% Pu-239. Above 20% Pu-240 it becomes impossible to sustain fission in a bomb. Spent MOX plutonium mix is roughly 40% to 55% Pu-240.

Unlike adding other isotopes Pu-239 and Pu-240 have similar mass some seperating is nearly impossible. The US DOD never found a viable way to seperate Pu-239 from Pu-240. Instead starting with fresh uranium they simply built reactors that optomized the output to have a very high 95%+ Pu-239 to Pu-240 ratio.