Word: plutonium
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...Americans use plutonium 238, an isotope whose main radiation consists of alpha particles that cannot go through paper or clothing and would have to be swallowed or inhaled to be harmful to humans...
...employ nuclear power supplies more frequently in earth orbit. Furthermore, to generate high power (100 kilowatts or more), they use a fission process, which produces radioactive strontium 90, cesium and iodine - all far more threatening to human life than the alpha particles generated by the U.S.'s plutonium 238 fuel...
...will not turn France into an international nuclear trash heap. The French plants will dispose of light radioactive and liquid wastes in containers buried either at sea or underground. But the more potent solid radioactive garbage will be shipped back to the countries that produced it. As for the plutonium produced from the waste, it will legally belong to the country that owns the fuel; whether the plutonium is also returned depends on international treaties yet to be worked...
...next March's elections, charges that the policy of headlong nuclear expansion was reckless, "launched like a railroad engine at 400 kilometers an hour." In August, some 30,000 protesters tried to slow the train down by staging a noisy demonstration at Super Phenix, the big French plutonium breeder reactor east of Lyon. Now there is concern about a new element in the government's aggressive program. It is a plan to help pay for the country's nuclear expansion by making France a major dealer in that growing international commodity, "spent" atomic fuel...
...form of long, needle-like rods encased in zircaloy metal sheaths. Once these rods have been used in a conventional reactor, the utilities normally keep them in large storage tanks that resemble swimming pools. But in reprocessing, the spent fuel is removed from the sheaths; usable quantities of plutonium and uranium are then separated from the waste and prepared as reactor fuel. Reprocessing thus not only allows utility companies to get more energy out of their nuclear fuel but also provides them with a way out of an increasingly difficult waste-storage problem...