Word: plutonium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Perhaps most ominous, the administration is seriously considering "solving" the waste problem by using waste plutonium from the civilian reactor program to make nuclear weapons. This measure would shatter once and for all the convenient fiction of an "Atoma for Peace" program completely distinct from its more sinister cousin, the military...
...begin with, Reagan lifted the ban imposed by Jimmy Carter in 1977 on reprocessing the uranium in spent fuel rods into plutonium, which is used in atomic bombs. That ban was supposed to help check the spread of nuclear weapons. Lifting it may in the long run help power companies get rid of some of the nuclear garbage piling up outside their plants, but its immediate impact will be small. Only one reprocessing plant now exists in the U.S., in Barnwell County, S.C., and it is operating as a research rather than as a commercial facility...
Breeders can be fueled by uranium or Plutonium, but they produce only the latter. Plutonium is a far handier substance for making bombs, and some skittish critics are afraid that Clinch River might become a target for terrorists seeking to cadge a few pounds of plutonium to make an atomic weapon. The reactor is designed to be cooled by liquid sodium, a highly volatile substance, and there are some doubts about the ability of the reactor to control a catastrophic leakage in the sodium ducts. "It is a much more dangerous and complex device than other reactors," says Vanderbilt...
...justify the costs. "There won't be a shortage of conventional uranium for at least 50 years," says Jan Beyea, a physicist on the staff of the Audubon Society. "Certainly there is no urgent rush to get into breeder technology." President Jimmy Carter, worried about the proliferation of plutonium, tried to stop Clinch River. Even Budget Director David Stockman, while he was a Michigan Congressman, opposed Clinch River, contending that the Government should not underwrite nuclear development for the private sector by building the reactor. He called the project "totally incompatible with our free-market approach to energy policy...
Technically, there is little doubt among experts that the Tammuz reactor, with modifications, could have produced bomb-grade plutonium. But the burden of proof that Iraq planned to do so still rested squarely on the Israelis...