How About a Megatons To Megawatts Program For US Nuclear Weapons? 146
Lasrick writes "Dawn Stover looks at the incredibly successful Megatons to Megawatts program, which turned dismantled Russian nuclear warheads into lower-grade uranium fuel that can be used to produce electricity. The 1993 agreement between the U.S. and Russia not only eliminated 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium, but generated nearly 10% of U.S. electricity consumption. The Megatons to Megawatts program ended in December, but Stover points out that the U.S. has plenty of surplus nuclear weapons that could keep the program going, without the added risk of shipping it over such huge distances. A domestic Megatons to Megawatts, if you will. This would be very cost effective and have the added benefit of keeping USEC, the only American company in the uranium enrichment field, in business."
Burn the Uranium in safe Thorium reactors... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Should've done it years ago.
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Unfortunately, the promise of Thorium fuel cycle based nuclear power grid comes with an proliferation risk of atomic bombs based on U-233 (the US already tested n in the Teapot-MET shot, and it is thought that at least part of India's arsenal is uses U-233).
So... not very safe.
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Except for one thing though: you need much more uranium-233 to build a fission-style nuclear weapon than uranium-235. Needing more fissile material means a much heavier nuclear bomb, and makes it not very practical for ballistic missiles and you don't want a heavier bomb on today's jet combat planes.
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Except for one thing though: you need much more uranium-233 to build a fission-style nuclear weapon than uranium-235. Needing more fissile material means a much heavier nuclear bomb, and makes it not very practical for ballistic missiles and you don't want a heavier bomb on today's jet combat planes.
This is false. The critical mass of U-233 is substantially less than U-235, it is about the same as plutonium which is the preferred material for modern light implosion bombs.
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U-233 is essentially worthless for bombs.
It's almost impossible to produce U-233 without U-232.
U-232 is a hard gamma emitter.
Hard gamma rays are a health hazard (will kill people manipulating it using normal manipulation methods), degrade explosives inside the bomb, and can be easily detected even from low earth orbit (300 Km away).
Operation Tea Pot was the only nuclear bomb made with U-233 to be tested (even then it was a mix of U-233 and Pu-239).
There are zero operational nukes with U-233.
This whole non p
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U-232 is a contaminant, not the fissile material itself. Teapot-MET utilized a plutonium spark plug simply because it was an implosion device (and it is thought that it would have worked without it - something the Indians proved at Pokhran). A gun type device needs no such trigger and is known to work with U-233... no testing needed (same as Little Boy - they knew it would work and it did).
>> There are zero operational nukes with U-233.
True according to unclassified literature which I happen to beli
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Nuclear is the ONLY power source that is practical to solve climate change. TODAY.
Solar and wind have already shown they need significant breakthrough on energy storage before they can get beyond 10% of grid power without extensive energy storage.
People that hate nuclear will find anything they can criticize and say, see, this is bad, forget nuclear.
But nuclear is the safest energy source in many countries, safer even then hydro, solar or wind.
There's essentially zero point in this non proliferation paranoi
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plenty of thorium reactor designs can burn spent uranium fuel. as other poster pointed out, what thorium reactor burns is U-233
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And these reactors are in widespread operation where?
I'm really tired of the claims about Thorium reactors. Until they are running in general operation they are pretty close to imaginary. A lot like fusion....
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hardly imaginary since real working research reactors have been built
Good time to be asking question about commercial reactors, since India is leading the field now, will have first thorium reactor going critical in Sept of this year and producing power for grid by 2016 with over 60 more being built by 2025. they want 25% of their power to come from thorium reactors.
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should add that China also has agressive thorium reactor program. China will have two research molten salt thorium reactors finished next year
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Re:Burn the Uranium in safe Thorium reactors... (Score:5, Informative)
No, proposed thorium breeder reactors like the LFTR breed Th-232 up into fissile U-233 and then fission that to produce energy and enough neutrons to continue the breeding cycle. The kickstarter fuel load with U-235 and Pu-239 initiates the breeding operation (hopefully, it's never been tested for real).
Breeding thorium has been done on a small scale in pebble-bed reactors using a small amount of thorium in the pebbles but relying on most of the fissiel fuel being U-235 to provide sufficient neutron flux to do the breeding which was not sustainable otherwise.
A worry with most of the LFTR designs is that commercial companies will have access to bomb-grade Pu-239 which can be chemically extracted from the kickstarter fuel load. MOX fuel for conventional PWRs has too much Pu-240 in the mix to build functional weapons from.
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I believe it has been tested for real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
A worry with most of the LFTR designs is that commercial companies will have access to bomb-grade Pu-239 which can be chemically extracted from the kickstarter fuel load.
Do you believe that anyone can keep an industrial level plutonium purification process secret for long? Wouldn't you think that both the government and the private corporation would be highly motivated to make sure that no fissile material leaves the reactor site? The nice thing about using plutonium as fuel is that it has value now. Currently plutonium is worthless except to those that want to make bombs from it. People tend to not
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No *the LFTR* has not been tested for real.
If you read the fine article you linked to you will discover the reactor in question at Oak Ridge did not use thorium at all. It only used molten salt with U-233 and later on U-235 as fissile material. Breeding thorium up into something fissile in a molten-salt stream is much trickier with all sorts of problems which at the moment have only been dealt with in Powerpoint slides and a lot of handwaving by LFTR proponents.
As for the impossibility of keeping a Pu purif
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Ignore LFTR then. We have shown that molten salt reactors can burn a mixture of U-233, U-235, and Pu-239. Burning any one of them alone in the reactor does not take a leap of faith even if not shown experimentally.
What alternatives do we have? What alternatives make sense? Making economic sense would likely be a big factor in the choices. We can leave the plutonium sit. It can sit in ready made bombs that can be stolen. It can sit in spent PWR fuel where the plutonium is essentially refining itself i
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The LFTR system requires breeding thorium up into U-233 which requires a dense neutron flux, a lot denser than conventional fission reactors. Pu-239 is very good for this but the presence of Pu-240 in the fuel stream degrades that neutron economy as fissioning it produces fewer neutrons than Pu-239. MOX can be burned in existing nuclear reactors with some care to produce useful energy since the U-235 present in the fuel produces a large surplus of neutrons which fissions the Pu-239 and the Pu-240.
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Everything you say about MOX fuel in conventional reactors also applies to LFTR. So long as there is enough U-235, or U-233, to offset the presence of the Pu-240 the LFTR will have sufficient neutrons to get critical. The nice thing about LFTR is that it avoids the requirement for expensive fuel processing, the fuel does not have to be manufactured into pellets.
The problem with currently used reactors is that once the fuel is spent it must be disposed of or processed again. LFTR, as most every MSR, the f
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The continuous-process system envisaged by LFTR enthusiasts needed to purify the molten-salt stream and prevent the reactor from shutting down due to poisoning can be tapped to extract any particular element with a bit of surreptitious work, and that includes extracting pure kickstarter U-235 (which is easy to make a bomb from) or pure kickstarter Pu-239 (trickier to weaponise but still possible) or U-233 bred from thorium (which also works as bomb material but not as well as U-235).
Current conventional rea
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The continuous-process system envisaged by LFTR enthusiasts needed to purify the molten-salt stream and prevent the reactor from shutting down due to poisoning can be tapped to extract any particular element with a bit of surreptitious work, and that includes extracting pure kickstarter U-235 (which is easy to make a bomb from) or pure kickstarter Pu-239 (trickier to weaponise but still possible) or U-233 bred from thorium (which also works as bomb material but not as well as U-235).
Removing fuel from a running reactor, and thinking no one will notice, is insane. Thinking you're going to be able to remove weapon grade material from a running reactor is beyond insane. Once that reactor reaches critical there's going to be all kinds of interesting isotopes created. The plutonium will quickly be contaminated with Pu-240 and the uranium contaminated with U-232.
Current conventional reactors produce a mixture of Pu-239 and Pu-240, useless as bomb material, in spent fuel since the operating cycles last for a year or more between refuelling and some of the Pu-239 undergoes another neutron capture to make Pu-240. Pu-239 can't be separated from Pu-240 without great effort; the centrifuges or other enrichment equipment needed could purify U-235 from raw uranium much more easily.
Same goes for MSR. The operators of the reactor are not going to remove any fuel until they can sustain a critical state with b
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no, read your link and educate yourself. Thorium is not fissile, the thorium is "fertile material" that is transmuted into the nuclear fuel that is "burned" (fissioned). That fuel is U-233.
I see why you posted as an AC... (Score:3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Lets read up a little bit on it before we compare LFTR reactors and nuclear processes to putting diesel in a gas car...
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Nope.
Most thorium reactor designs could operate with a decent percentage of U-235 and/or Pu-239 in their fuel mix.
In fact, those without a external neutron source usually *require* just that to sustain the Thorium breeding cycle at low output levels.
Re:Burn the Uranium in safe Thorium reactors... (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. Thorium reactors could run exclusively on U-235 long term. It would be stupid to run them long term on U-235, but possible. But for startup, that's just what is planned to do. Thorium reactors could be started with a mix of U-235, Pu-239, Pu-240 and U-233.
Th-232 is a fertile material, U-233 is made from Th-232 after the reactor is running.
Once the reactor is in full operation, it makes more U-233 than it consumes, hence a breeder. Not all reactors that run Thorium are breeders (make more U-233 from Thorium than it consumes U-233).
Little U-233 is available worldwide, USA stockpiles are less than enough to start 10 Thorium reactors (even the designs that need the least fissile material in operation). Thorium reactor designs that need a larger fissile inventory might consume that U-233 just to startup two reactors.
The real problem with thermal reactors is U-238 making Pu-239, and Pu-239 only fissioning 2/3 of the time with thermal spectrum neutrons. When Pu-239 don't fission it makes Pu-240 leading to Americium and Curium production, leading to eating away extra neutrons.
The problem is that U-238 -> Pu-239 -> Fission or Pu-240 cycle in the thermal spectrum makes only 1.9 neutrons for each 2 consumed.
But if you have a stockpile of Pu-239, it only takes one neutron to make 1.9 neutrons on average, so it could startup a Thorium LFTR, producing U-233 from Th-232, and whatever Pu-240, Am-241 and Curium is made is kept in the reactor until it fissions.
Perhaps you mean for a Thorium breeder reactor (that makes as much U-233 as it consumes, or a little more), shouldn't be fueled with U-235, since it's a rare isotope (hundreds of times more rare on earth than Th-232), so it's not a good idea to run a Thorium reactor with U-235 on purpose.
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What mess ?
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I spent 200 hours studying current nuclear technology reactors and proposed reactors.
Molten salt fueled reactors are wayyy safer that what we have.
But current reactors are safe, Fukushima was a 1960s design, Chernobyl was a copy (spied) of a USA design before the USA fixed a serious flaw (decades earlier).
Even current light/heavy water reactors are an order of magnitude safer than the reactors that suffered accidents in the past.
Nobody died from Fukushima, zero. No cancer cases also. There are some interest
Because 'Murica! (Score:2, Insightful)
Because Anti-America (Score:2)
We couldn't possibly give up our strategic advantage in an area that has almost no usefulness in this period of time!
Tell it to the Chinese [washingtontimes.com] and Russians [thenewamerican.com].
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Nuclear weapons are only useful as a deterrent, and given that China doesn't have all that many, and Russia slashed its stockpiles significantly (which was the whole point of MtM), US has supplies way in excess of what it actually needs.
Re:Because 'Murica! (Score:4, Insightful)
We couldn't possibly give up our strategic advantage in an area that has almost no usefulness in this period of time!
We could give up our strategic advantage, but it would be exceedingly stupid.
Weapons should be thought of as a form of insurance. In a perfect world, you'd never have to use it, but in the world we live in, it's foolish not to have it.
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You misunderstand the true value of weapons.
If you have to use a weapon, that means you didn't have a big enough one.
Much better to have a weapon that is big enough, and scary enough that you don't ever have to actually use it.
Re:Because 'Murica! (Score:4, Insightful)
You misunderstand the true value of weapons.
If you have to use a weapon, that means you didn't have a big enough one.
Um, no. It's more likely that if you "have" to use a weapon, you already failed at something else that would have precluded the use, or threat, of force in the first place.
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It's more likely that if you "have" to use a weapon, you already failed at something else that would have precluded the use, or threat, of force in the first place.
Quite true. However, sometimes the thing that was failed was the attempt to convince someone else that you are sincere about being left alone.
LK
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Quite true. However, sometimes the thing that was failed was the attempt to convince someone else that you are sincere about being left alone.
Even more often, the "failure" was a hesitation to meet the unreasonable demands of an aggressor who wants you to relinquish possession of something valuable.
Violence is a two party game, you can't simply "choose" to never be involved in it.
What you can choose is whether or not you want to be the loser every time you are forced to participate.
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Quite true. However, sometimes the thing that was failed was the attempt to convince someone else that you are sincere about being left alone.
Even more often, the "failure" was a hesitation to meet the unreasonable demands of an aggressor who wants you to relinquish possession of something valuable.
Violence is a two party game, you can't simply "choose" to never be involved in it.
What you can choose is whether or not you want to be the loser every time you are forced to participate.
I do recognize the validity of your point. However, the difference between us is that I see the use of violence as more likely a missed opportunity to have prevented violence in the first place, while your point of view is to always, as a priority, prepare for violence first and foremost.
Given recent history - the Iraq war, and those assholes who murdered people in Florida, and Florida, and Florida again because they carried a gun and seemed eager for a chance to use it - I believe pursuing my point of vi
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IOW, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" -- Salvor Hardin [wikipedia.org]
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If you can kill the same 10 million people with a smaller bomb and a more accurate missile
Making your weapon smaller and more accurate DOES make it less scary.
Violence is scary. Random, indiscriminate violence is more scary.
I would counter your argument with the suggestion that a ridiculously large, but clumsily inaccurate weapon is far more scary than a weapon that only hits its intended targets.
If all I have are precision weapons, then all you need to do to be safe is make sure not to piss me off. If I have extremely powerful weapons with "unreliable" targeting, then it might be in your best
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No nuclear weapon is a precise weapon. Even the least accurate ICBM in the world will make little difference compared to the blast radius of any nuke.
Even a low yield nuke will produce fallout that the winds will blow, are you pretending to control the winds too ?
Current USA and Russian nukes are so compact there is very little (if anything) that can be done to reduce their size significantly.
This looks like the missile gap argument in the JFK times. There was no missile gap. It was a policy of trying to cr
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Indeeeeed! (Score:2)
Because all your adversaries are completely logical and reasonable robots. Also, infallible. Just like you!
Nobody will EVER use such a weapon in anger, madness of through accident and lack of oversight.
I for one have never ever dropped a hammer on my foot, I'm sure that bureaucracies of the world are perfectly capable of not doing the same only with nukes.
After all... weapons of war and killing are actually tools of peace and love.
Every year people gather in Hiroshima in "thank god for nukes or many people
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Your thinking is shallow.
At the end of the day, there is no such thing as a weapon of war. There are just weapons. There is no such thing as a tool of peace. There are just tools.
They are all just objects. Like pebbles or fallen branches. The don't *do* anything. They just exist. That's all. They don't endorse causes or have a political agenda. They just sit there and exist, perfectly content to do absolutely nothing and be perfectly harmless for the rest of eternity.
What matters is *who* has posse
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Your thinking is beyond delusional.
Other than waging war what is the everyday use of tanks, artillery shells, nuclear submarines, grenades, bombs, high caliber bullets, biological and chemical weapons, flame throwers and Gatling guns? Just to name a few.
They are all just objects. Like pebbles or fallen branches.
Here... try this fun mental exercise.
Someone sends you flowers. No card or anything.
Next day someone sends you a spent 9 mm casing.
Did those flowers suddenly become a possible sinister threat or has that spent casing become romantic?
Feel free to switch the o
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That may be a valid point, but it is an argument for *upgrading* weapons, not eliminating them.
Re:Because 'Murica! (Score:5, Funny)
Ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster.
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Nuclear weapons don't work that way, You can't take some of the Uranium or Plutonium out and make a smaller yeild weapon.
In fact the warheads in the US strategic arsenal have Thermonuclear warheads (hydrogen bombs) with a small nuclear fission trigger. If you take out some of the fissile material in the trigger its not going to go boom at all.
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Ssshhh. Don't tell anyone, but we already did that years ago.
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The problem with people who have nuclear weapons is that they tend to bully around in other areas. The US would act much more to its actual proportions if it were not backed by nuclear weapons. The same goes for all the other jerks with nuclear weapons.
Beside that. The US could easily dismantle have of their arsenal without jeopardizing their present strategic
"advantage".
Re:Sherriff Bart (Score:4, Insightful)
If my destruction is already determined, and there is no other way out, then having a way to convince the aggressor that he'll be going down with me is a perfectly valid tactic. Really, it's the only valid tactic on some situations.
Am I the only one who is surprised? (Score:2)
Given all the governmental fuck-ups lately, I'm surprised we haven't seen any missiles being launched inadvertently.
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They probably continue to apply lessons learned long ago [yarchive.net]. Unfortunately technology screw-ups are often easier to fix than policy screw-ups, or "you have to pass the bill to see what's in it," and we can only guess what will happen.
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Well... we're really not supposed to look. Nothing to see here, move along. [wikipedia.org]
All is fine. After all... almost no one dies in those accidents even when they do happen.
September 18, 1980 â" At about 6:30 p.m., an airman conducting maintenance on a USAF Titan-II missile at Little Rock Air Force Base's Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside (Van Buren County), just north of Damascus, Arkansas, dropped a socket from a socket wrench, which fell about 80 feet (24 m) before hitting and piercing the skin on the rocket's first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak. The area was evacuated. At about 3:00 a.m., on September 19, 1980, the hypergolic fuel exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material. An Air Force airman was killed and the launch complex was destroyed.
And then... there are things like this, [latimes.com] which is not on the list above because it was not a nuclear accident.
Only a regular accident and a malfunction that still required the military to try to stop a nuclear launch by parking an armored car on top of the silo.
And these were just misplaced. [washingtonpost.com]
From who? (Score:1)
...the nation doesn’t need much more than 1,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons to maintain a “strong and credible” deterrent against the possibility of a nuclear attack.
A THOUSAND warheads are needed as a deterrent? I would think a few dozen at most in case China gets a bit bold. But there's a few more decades of wealth transfer from the US Middle Class to China, so it's not going to happen.
A couple is more than enough for N. Korea. France and England won't use theirs ever - let alone on us. And Israel, well, bombing the US would be like bombing themselves.
And Russia? Please. They're having too great of a time now NOT being a World power which is a lesson we in the US sh
The math of MAD ... (Score:2)
A THOUSAND warheads are needed as a deterrent? I would think a few dozen at most in case China gets a bit bold.
Its not about the number of missiles that you start the day with, its about the number of missiles that are left after you have been hit in a first strike.
The reason for such a large number of warheads is survivability. No weapon is 100% effective. However lets assume a hypothetical weapon that destroys its target 99% of the time. If this weapon is used to attack 1,000 warheads then 10 warheads will survive and be available for a counterattack. This is the mathematics of MAD. No matter how badly you are
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The thing is an aggressor who launches a first strike is committing suicide even if you don't retaliate. The nuclear winter will kill them.
Recent studies have shown that the original 1980s nuclear winter theory was in actual fact optimistic, in reality had the USSR and NATO exchanged, "nuclear winter" would have been a misnomer, really "nuclear six month long night followed by 10 year nuclear winter" would be more accurate with daylight levels not even reaching that of a moonlit night. A simulation was also
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This argument only makes sense without the boomers. With the boomers there's just no justification of a huge stockpile of nukes. The boomers alone can level every major military base and major city in Russia and are still left with 2/3rds of their capacity. In reality they would be tasked with striking targets in doubles, such that even if a number of them were destroyed prior to launching it would still be doom for Russia. And would in the end still be left with a lots of extra nukes to finish the job if r
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... SDI was itself a con-game and threw the USSR into debt spiral as they attempted to outspend the US on systems...
SDI was a fairy tale, true, but ascribing the collapse of the Soviet Union to it is also a fairy tale. The Soviet Union was already heavily overspending on defense before Reagan was elected. By the 1970s they had developed a completely militarized economy - the civilian economy was little more than a way of disposing of goods that failed to meet military standards (a permanent "war surplus" economy). And it was a staggeringly inefficient economy. The economic outputs of Soviet industry were worth less than
doubtful. (Score:2)
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And they are correct. Pansy ass.
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The thing about nukes and MAD is that it is counterintuitive. To have peace in a world with nukes you actually need more than 1x the amount required to have a robust counterstrike. When nuclear disarmament reaches so called reasonable levels say UK,France, China levels the danger is actually greater since you slip below the megadeath that has kept chemical weapons and nukes deeply inside national pockets for almost 100 years. As long as there is a superpower who is not worried about a decapitation strike
Umm no (Score:2)
Do you have any idea how much it takes to create weapons grade uranium? Umm no.
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Russians sold it, company declared bankruptcy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Russians got stiffed.
I know a lady who worked for the company at the time.
She also got stiffed to the tune of 10K un-reimbursed travel expenses.
But nothing like the Ruskys. Who learned the hard way about western bankruptcy laws.
BTW the company owner is still wanted in Russia, but what he did is not illegal in the USA, so no extradition.
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Any sources for this? I don't see any mention of MTs to MWs in the various articles about the bankruptcy or any mention of the Russians as creditors.
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The dude now owns a big chunk on the Colorado Rockies. I should be posting anon...but I like to live dangerously.
My source was a former employee, she stated the scam ran to a cool billion. I don't think there are any American journalists who dug into this. Perhaps a Rusky source. I understand they are still butt hurt.
Massively wasteful (Score:3, Interesting)
To take highly enriched U235 or Plutonium, that has cost 100k's per kg to produce, and convert it to a lower grade fuel. Even if you don't like nuclear weapons there are myriad potential future non-military uses that may crop up that will need highly enriched fuels, like:
Nuclear interplanetary rockets, Space nuclear power reactors, nuclear aircraft, trains,trucks, tractors, earthmovers, and (less likely) nuclear ships, where weight is critical or small size for shielding or safe containment in event of a crash is critical. We are going to run out of fossil fuel eventually and will still need high density power sources for transportation and primary production.
In the case of aircraft, nuclear power may offer the only long term solution for transporting billions of wealthy future-humans around the world at the high speeds they will demand without fucking up the stratosphere like any combustion based propulsion does.
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Wow. A post from the 1950's. I didn't think we even had computers then.
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Are you serious? Nuclear powered aircraft? I can see nuclear powered ships, even trains, but not anything that flies. Nuclear power gets more efficient the bigger it is. That makes it perfect for things like ships at sea. The bigger the ship the less material it takes for the cargo carried. The bigger the ship the less crew needed for the cargo carried. The bigger the ship the smoother the ride. That is why we already have nuclear powered ships at sea.
Things that need to be fast need to be light. R
They already were, as part of the first program. (Score:5, Interesting)
They already were, as part of the first program. US HEU was also converted, mostly from stocks, since the U.S. primarily uses Plutonium bombs, both as fission warheads, and as triggers for fusion warheads.
Addressing the suggestion itself:
The HEU supply available from weapons is now too low to deal with demands of the power industry, which is why the program came to the negotiated close that it did in the first place.
The U.S. generally could deal with both the fuel availability problem and the Plutonium weapons "problem" by:
(1) fuel reprocessing, which was disallowed by executive order of then-president Jimmy Carter, This would solve the "nuclear waste" problem at the same time, as it's not actually "waste", it's actually "unreprocessed nuclear fuel".
(2) use of Plutonium reactors which could utilize said Plutonium in the first place (which would imply breeder/fast breeder reactors, which the U.S. doesn't build due to it's non-proliferation stance, which appears to be successful, since North Korea... er... wait...
(3) another START treaty involving both Russia and China, so that the warhead reductions would be mutual. The current number of warheads is approximately those needed to implement the Brookings Institute's M.A.D. policy in the first place, since you pretty much have to drop a warhead within 100m of a hardened target to ensure the destruction of the target, and there are that many hardened targets. Nuclear weapons aren't magical in their ability to destroy -- in fact, the cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan have considerably more explosive power than tactical nuclear weapons.
So in all, the proposal is unworkable until you reverse a U.S. fuel reprocessing policy set by executive order, reverse a U.S. reactor technology policy set by executive order, and then engage in arms reductions talks with people who are currently not on very good speaking terms with us due to recent foreign policy decisions.
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President Carter's reprocessing ban was in fact overturned by President Reagan. It costs money, lots of it, to reprocess spent fuel and the money to build commercial reprocessing plants wasn't forthcoming until about fifteen years ago when DoE funding was advanced to build a MOX fuel fabrication plant in South Carolina. The pricetag is now $5 billion, the plant is still unfinished and there are no confirmed customers for its MOX fuel in the US despite, it is claimed, generous subsidies. As far as I know the
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As for the START process it can take a decade or more to get something both countries can agree to -- President Obama signed off on the latest START agreement but it was begun by President Bush after the groundwork had been laid in President Clinton's term. The US (and Russia too) have to consider there are other unfriendly nuclear powers in existence today such as China with limited stocks of weapons but with intercontinental range. America's ready-for-use stockpile of about 2,000 deliverable warheads has to be able to deter more than Russia.
This is a crucial thing to remember......any nuclear weapons strategy that ignores China is ignoring the reality of the modern world. It's not just Russia and the US anymore.
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The French Super-Phenix breeder was intended to produce 1.2GW of electricity but it suffered problems and delays and was eventually shut down in part due to economic factors. Other breeders have had similar problems over the decades.
We should come right out and say that the economic factors leading to the shutdown were largely driven by Greenpeace, and that the economic factors in most use of nuclear energy projects are driven by political, rather than engineering issues.
Re:They already were, as part of the first program (Score:4, Informative)
Ummm, no. The economic factor for Super-Phenix shutting down was that it was an engineering prototype that pushed the envelope a bit too far in various directions. It broke in interesting ways, some due to the liquid sodium coolant, some because of the very intense neutron flux in a very small volume. The fact that the Greens fired a few RPG-7s at it in its early days had little to do with its eventual shutdown. This is La Belle France, remember -- see what they did to the Rainbow Warrior for what they think of Greenpeace.
The folks pushing next-generation breeders such as the assorted LFTRs, travelling-wave and other IFRs and the like have learned from the failures of the early breeder designs but it's likely they will run into other whoopsies themselves as they try to run productively for decades on end at 5 cents/kWh.
Re: (Score:1)
While I don't think Super-Phenix was a ever going to be a success in making money by generating power. It was never given a chance to succeeded and prove it self, most of its months of inactivity where due to political opposition and administrative problems created by that opposition. Am guessing things like it took five months to get the okay to order the parts we needed six months ago and the manufacture has since gone bankrupt and we need to find and approve a new source who will also face political pres
Re: (Score:2)
in fact, the cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan have considerably more explosive power than tactical nuclear weapons.
There is no sensible need to have tactical nuclear weapons. They do nothing for MAD, since they are not all that destructive, and they just encourage proliferation.
Re: (Score:2)
in fact, the cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan have considerably more explosive power than tactical nuclear weapons.
There is no sensible need to have tactical nuclear weapons. They do nothing for MAD, since they are not all that destructive, and they just encourage proliferation.
Your position differs with that of some of the best games theorists and strategic thinkers on the planet:
http://www.brookings.edu/~/med... [brookings.edu]
http://www.brookings.edu/~/med... [brookings.edu]
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/fi... [nrdc.org]
I'll trust them, until I see your equivalent credentials.
Re: (Score:2)
The US has pretty much given up on tactical nukes.
Even from the first of your links: "Most allies today see U.S. tactical nuclear weapons as being of political rather than military significance".
Russia wants tactical nuclear weapons to handle the fact that their conventional forces are inferior to both NATO and (probably) Chinese forces. They are hoping that they would be able to use those weapons in a conflict without triggering the use of strategic nuclear weapons. This is the very opposite of MAD.
Re:They already were, as part of the first program (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I would prefer that Plutonium be reserved for RTGs for space power. Outside of the inner solar system, solar-powered probes just don't cut it.
Re: (Score:3)
This misses the point of the initial program (Score:3)
The megatons to megawatts program was put in place because the USSR had fallen apart and the existing nuclear stockpiles of the old Soviet Union were in the hands of increasingly suspect generals in an increasingly corrupt and desperate situation.
It was in that context that the US offered to buy the nuclear fuel and give Russia money.
Compared to today... The US for all its troubles is not on the brink of civil war. Our nuclear weapons are not in danger of falling into the hands of terrorists.
So the program has no point.
Re: (Score:3)
The Practice was never about economical source of nuclear feel as you say. It was to avoid a security nightmare where there would be large quantities of un accounted for nuclear weapons, and ideally to prop up the Russian Federation at the same time, least it become a failed state. Failure certainly did look possible in the early 90s.
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It was economical for the Russians. It was security for the US.
We paid them for the uranium. If it were security on both sides they would have not wanted the money.
We paid them. It was economical for them.
We need the fuel! Other factors at play (Score:1)
The USA was probably the richest in uranium on earth. Now we have none, it's all gone except for a negligible amount in the grand canyon and the public is opposed to destroying grand canyon to get at it. The USA imports the stuff today.
Yes, we do process it for others; apparently, just a single corporation does, so it's not all ending up used in our own nation. We've sold it for power and weapons for other nations. I'm sure somebody is making a billion being the middleman between India and Pakistan in a nu
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Easily dis proven:
"Uranium mining in the United States produced 4.8 million pounds of uranium concentrate in 2013, the largest amount since 1997"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_in_the_United_States
With mines in 21 states, it is hard to imagine the scenario that you state
Re: (Score:2)
We have never given nuclear weapons to Israel. And the Israelis are very far from terrorists in any case.
What about the Israelis? (Score:2)
Don't they have surplus nuclear warheads? Or do you think they're going to use them all?
No shortage of reactor-grade uranium (Score:2)
There's no shortage of reactor-grade uranium in the US. U.S. Enrichment is planning a bankruptcy due to lack of demand. URENCO's centrifuge plant in New Mexico is in full operation. New centrifuge plants are orders of magnitude cheaper to run than the old gaseous-diffusion plants like K-25 at Oak Ridge. They're also much smaller; K-25 had several mile-long buildings, while URENCO's plant is about the size of two Walmarts.
Reduce, reuse, recycle (Score:2)
could also be an pretext to keep up the production (Score:1)
US HEU downblending program already in Place... (Score:2)
U.S. HEU Disposition Program [energy.gov] has been up and running for several years now.
There are even plans for down blending weapons grade Plutonium [nytimes.com] and burning the resulting MOX fuel in various reactors.
.
Only 1 Megawatt for a 1 Megaton? (Score:1)
fraud (Score:2)
Being a little unhappy here. These people are in bankrupcy. Their tech is 70 years old and they cannot figure out the tech to do better. Their senators just got done raping me and everyone in the Northwest in order to try to keep them afloat.
reactor fuel is easy and cheap to come by. And I am sure if we need some the iranians can supply us.
But we are not even getting close here to the real deal. Damn.
Re: (Score:1)
Probably pretty low % of US nukes are HEU, the oldest current nuclear bomb (B83) which is being phased out is a plutonium device:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/B83.html
There are 2,700 retired, but still intact, nuclear warheads, but it is not stated what design they are:
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/70/1/85.full.pdf
Just for curiosity sake, what are the processes available for using the plutonium from modern US weapons to generate energy?
FTA, there is a current US stockpile of 595 tons of HEU (
Re: (Score:2)
> Just for curiosity sake, what are the processes available for using the plutonium from modern US weapons to generate energy?
Plutonium can be used just as easily as U-235 as the real nuclear fuel.
Current nuclear reactors (water cooled, solid fuel) are extremely inefficient being able to use from 0,65% and 1% of the nuclear fuel. So at least 99% of the original nuclear energy in the fuel is unused, but can be used after.
So they make MOX fuel which is a blend of natural or depleted uranium with 7% of Plut
Re:No we should not (Score:5, Informative)
No. We should maintain our advantage over other nations. Especially China. After all China is probably building up a giant stockpile of nukes right now as we speak!!.
I realize this is /., so to rtfa is just crazy talk. But I did skim through it. We currently have 3000 retired warheads that are simply sitting in storage decaying. These aren't sitting on top of missiles. Or even being maintained. They are costing taxpayers who knows how much money to sit in a building somewhere. Since the cost of enriching this stuff beyond what is needed to generate power has alread done. This seems like an even bigger waste to me. As they would probably have to reprocess it to use in a weapon again anyhow.
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As they would probably have to reprocess it to use in a weapon again anyhow.
The Pentagon's logic is probably that reprocessing would be less expensive that creating new material should they desire new warheads.
Re: (Score:1)
The Pentagon is right; the US shut down its last nuclear warhead proction facility over 20 years ago, and has no capability to manufacture new weapons anymore.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/solutions/us-nuclear-weapons/us-nuclear-weapons-facilities.html
Old warheads must be maintained, as we can no longer make new ones.