Word: plutonium
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...France, a reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague, near Cherbourg, stores its nuclear waste in giant steel tanks. But the tanks leak. The storage area has reached three times the acceptable levels of radiation. Traces of plutonium are being found along the Normandy coast, and crabs in the area have begun to show ulcerous sores...
Examples like these underscore one of the most frightening challenges of the atomic age: how to get rid of a rising flood of radioactive sludge that results from reprocessing uranium to extract plutonium, which is used to make atom bombs and as fuel for fast-breeder reactors. At the moment there is no technology for disposing of this deadly garbage. But the stockpiles of nuclear waste smoldering away in upstate New York are only part of the problem. In addition, each of the nation's 65 nuclear generating stations also produces waste in the form of spent uranium fuel...
FACT: One ounce of plutonium is potentially equivalent to 200 million lung cancer doses. Four tons of plutonium are already missing in the U.S. alone...
...every year. There are over 28 different radioactive substances routinely emitted from these nuclear reactors, all of which are ecologically dangerous and some of which, such as strontium-90 and cesium-131, will be a disposal problem for 600 to 1000 years. The most deadly emission, of course, is plutonium. Its lethality is such that one-millionth of a gram is sufficient to cause lung cancer--and a large reactor annually produces 400 pounds. Once produced it must be stored safely for 250,000 to 500,000 years...
...addition to this potential for ecological and human devastation, the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation must be considered: atoms for peace means atoms for war. Reactor fuel and waste can both be used to produce nuclear bombs. Only 17 pounds of plutonium, about the size of a grapefruit, is needed for an atomic device. As the nuclear industry expands, therefore, it increases the risks of nuclear war by making bomb-potential material available to countries with "peaceful" reactors, many of which, including India, Israel, Egypt, South Africa and Brazil, have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty...