Safeguards, and The Nuclear Industry (LONG, but good)
Mike Smith
This will be a bit long, as postings go. It will consist largely
of quotes from "The Curve of Binding Energy". I will be concentrating
on quotes biased against the safety of the nuclear industry, since
that is the point in question. The book, in total, is less biased
than these quotes will seem. Quotes will be marked with "TCoBE".
[text in square brackets will be a description of deleted text].
I am using this book since it is the source most close at hand.
Author is John McPhee; publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York.
The book, fourth printing, was printed in 1986. It is copyright 1974.
Due to this, some of the material will be a bit dated. (16 years).
Then again, Silkwood and TMI were a few years ago too ... and, with
the possible exception of plant closures, there hasn't been a lot of
activity in the (domestic) nuclear industry in the last decade or so.
JGdA has asserted several things. One is that there is a hard line
between the military nuclear sector and the civilian nuclear sector.
Another is that it isn't possible to make a bomb from power reactor
Plutonium. Yet another is that the safety record of nuclear power
is 'unblemished'. He has also held to a belief that Silkwood has
no bearing on the issue of safety in the nuclear power sector.
(Hope that is a fair summary, JGdA)
I will be presenting evidence to the contrary.
First, Silkwood. The key word here is 'safeguards'. What happened
with Silkwood was a failure of safeguards. In the nuclear world the
term safeguards has a very particular meaning. They are the steps taken
to assure that nuclear materials do not stray from where they belong;
even if folks are trying to steal them. Historically they have not
been good. (If this has changed in the last 16 years, I would love
to hear the details. The historical failure still constitutes a
'blemish' but it would be nice to know if that failure has been corrected.
Second, the hard line between military and commercial. Throughout
the following quotes there will be examples of crossover of personnel,
knowledge, materials, etc. between one sector and the other. I will
point some of these out as they are presented.
Third, bombs from power reactor Pu. At the bitter end there is a
passage from the book in which Ted Taylor, a very good fission bomb
designer, describes the properties of re-processed power reactor Pu
including Pu240 as bomb making material.
TCoBE: pg 26
Property of the Public Service Company of Colorado, the H.T.G.R.
contains a little over a thousand kilograms of fully enriched
weapons-grade uranium.
TCoBE: pg 26
General Atomic in San Diego, where the High-Temperature Gas-Cooled
Reactor was conceived and developed, is a beautiful complex
[description of plant deleted]. [description of getting plant
layout including materials storage areas from public reading room
of A.E.C. deleted] During a visit that Ted Taylor and I made there
one day, three move carts, with fifty four kilograms of U235 on them,
were standing near a big garage-type door that was open to the sunshine
outside. We went through the door and found a triple fencing system
and a guard in a small guardhouse. The three gates were open in the
three fences, and an unmarked pickup truck came in and zipped past the
guard, who was resting his chin on his hands and did not look up.
"The vault has an intrusion alarm," the plant manager told us. "A
big bumblebee will set the son of a bitch off. If someone came in
here and started shooting, though, he could get whatever he wanted.
One man with the right attitude could do it. [usability discussion
deleted]".
END TCoBE quote
It takes between 5 and 20 kilograms of U235 to make a bomb (depending
on ones skill level. So here we have between 2 and 10 bombs worth
sitting where anyone with a pickup and a gun can take it. It is
in a plant where a commercial power reactor was developed. To me,
this is a failure of safeguards.
TCoBE: pg. 38
The privately owned plants built to perform the chemical separation
of plutonium from used nuclear fuel are near West Valley, New York,
and Morris, Illinois. The West Valley plant has shut down for
improvements and will not reopen for several years. The plant at
Morris is a new one.* {* since this book was first published, the
Illinois plant encountered technical difficulties of apparently
insuperable nature, and it is not in operation. Nonetheless, the
description here is generally applicable to any commercial
reprocessing plant.} Fuel elements from reactors come to these
places in heavy steel casks [long description of process truncated]
... they are moved into a long central room called "the canyon."
... Fuel rods are chopped up, [analogy], by a mighty guillotine
that cleanly severs steel. Now all the small cuttings are dissolved
in nitric acid, [more physical description] where the addition of
reactive chemicals - tributyl phosphate, dodecane - effects the
separation of plutonium and unconsumed uranium not only from each
other but also from a variety of radioactive fission products, [list]
At the far end of the canyon, uranium hexafluoride comes out through
a hole in the wall. Plutonium-nitrate solution pours from a nearby
spigot.
General Electric owns the chemical-reprocessing plant at Morris.
[descripton of remote location] Only about 15 people are needed to
run it, although that is the figure for nighttime ghost-shift, and
more are there by day. [description of so-so security systems]
The plutonium from the spigot- no longer contaminated with radioactive
fission products- goes into slim stainless steel flasks, about four
feet tall, with a five-inch outside diameter. Each flask contains
ten litres of plutonium-nitrate solution- roughly two and a half
kilograms of plutonium. Richard Fine, a chemist who had worked at
Hanford in 1944 and had stayed twenty years before coming to Morris,
said to us, "Plutonium should be better protected than money. That
fence out there could be gotten over easy as pie. You could back a
car up to it. Along the back side, you could dig under it."
Burton Judson, the plant manager, said, "If you want to, you
can build scenarios straight through 'Mission Impossible.' Sure,
you could storm this place. If twelve people drove up with guns
and a truck, they could take it. Those double doors to the
plutonium-storage corridor are just doors. [etc.]"
TCoBE pg. 41
Judson, rapid of speach, candid, was a chemical engineer, still
in his fourties, educated at M.I.T. He used phrases like "dad-gum
complicated" to describe his amazing reprocessing plant, and on
its complications he held a patent. [some concerns about security
and materials accounting deleted] At the end of a run, the amount
in the batch is measured and the small difference [from the
prior estimate] is noted. Someone in the plant who wanted to take
plutonium home with him could probably do so without detection
if he never became greedy but always operated so as not to widen
alarmingly this margin of difference.
TCoBE pg. 43
John Van Hoomissen was at the Morris plant when we were there. He
was based in California and was in charge of nuclear-materials
management for all of General Electric. [org chart deleted]
"All sampling here is centralized in one gallery," he said. "This
safeguards against someone bleeding the sampling line. That could
never happen here at Morris, but I'll show you other places where
it could happen, because funny little sampling lines are run in
here and there, and on a given night someone could run a funny
little sampling line off to a clandestine place. The thief
wouldn't have to worry much about radiation. [more description]"
[discussion of extream toxicity of plutonium abreviated]
You could hold an ingot of plutonium next to your heart or brain,
fearing no consequences. But you can't breathe it. A thousandth
of a gram of plutonium taken into the lungs as invisible specks
of dust will kill anyone- a death from massive fibrosis of
the lungs [quickly]. [more description of other toxic effects].
END TCoBE quote
Here you have the folks who run the commercial reprocessing plant
stating that Pu can be fairly easily pilfered, or taken by force.
Starts to look like the commercial sector can have Pu leave the
plant just like KM did ...
TCoBE pg. 49
Plutonium-uranium fuel pellets are made at Cresent by Kerr-McGee,
[for Hanford Fast Flux Test Facility]. So does NUMEC (Nuclear
Materials and Equipment Corporation), in Leechburg, [for Hanford].
Fuel rods for plutonium recycle are being made by General Electric
at Pleasanton, by United Nuclear in Pawling, by Nuclear Fuel
Services in Erwin, and by Westinghouse in Cheswick.
END TCoBE quote
Gee, looks like everybody's doing it. Some for A.E.C test systems
(would they be military or commercial?) and some for plutonium
recycle which was defined earlier in the book as being the re-use
of plutonium for power generation. The book goes on to describe
the Westinghouse product as being for a pilot breeder plant.
TCoBE pg.50
In 1971, the Kansai Electric Power Company removed some fuel
assemblies from its Mihamma No. 1 reactor [location]. [They]
were shipped to England. They went to Windscale - a reprocessing
plant in Cumberland. Later that year, the fifty kilograms of
separated plutonium, in oxide form, was shipped by BOAC to
Kennedy International Airport. [travel details] the material was
was met by a man from Westinghouse and was loaded onto a truck
[transport details]. In Cheswick, the fifty kilograms of Japanese
plutonium were fashioned into pellets of mixed plutonium and
uranium oxides, and [made into rods to be shipped back to Japan].
END TCoBE quote
Hmmm. Looks like Westinghouse is playing in both the R&D and
commercial sectors, at least. Don't suppose they do any military
contract work ... Then there is the issue of Japanese fuel
going to a British reprocessing plant, then to an American fuel
rod plant. Gee, which American agency is it that regulates
the foreign governments; is it the DOE or the DOD or the AEC or ...
Starting to look like it isn't just a question of which US
agency regulates which activites on US soil. Don't suppose
that any of the US companies are multinationals ...
TCoBE pg. 51
For many years, West Valley was the only place in the country
where fuel from commercial reactors was reprocessed. The plant
there, which belongs to Nuclear Fuel Services, is much like the
one at Morris [physical description]. I went there with Ted
Taylor one day. "We're sort of proud of our pickle works," the
plant manager told us. [detail] His name was James Duckworth,
and he was a chemical engineer who had worked for fourteen years
Hanford before coming to West Valley, in 1967. A thoughtful,
practical, kindly person, he was worried about the international
aspects of safeguarding so-called special nuclear material [family
description and worries deleted] He agreed that a pickup truck
containing two people and two guns would constitute a force
sufficient to remove from the plant as much plutonium as the truck
could carry [22.5 kilograms in containers].
END TCoBE quote
Isn't this the second or third time we've seen someone working at
a commercial site who spent alot of years at Hanford? I though
Hanford was a Military site, or was it an R&D site. Hmmm, maybe
there is a lot of personnel movement between the sectors. (And
then there are those ex-Navy guys moving into private plants).
To me running a plant such that 2 guys with guns and a pickup
can steal 22 kilograms of a highly toxic substance isn't exactly
stellar safety performance. I would count that as a blemish on
the safety record. (Then again, as someone who has a responsibility
for some of the security of our machines here, I may be over sensitive
to what constitutes a blemish. Toxics security is something I
would consider to be part of safety. I'd hate to think what
would happen if one of the many many crackpot groups in the world
decided to sprinkle a few kilos of plutonium in D.C.) Is there
really that much difference between one suicidal crackpot doing
an inside job or two suicidal crackpots doing an outside job?
Looks to me like Silkwood may have been, by far, the lesser evil.
It certainly looks like it wasn't due to extream safeguards by
the commercial sector.
TCoBE pg. 63
[about 1955]
The United States government offered to become the insurer of
power plants. The United States government would help build
demonstration reactors. The United States government would
lease slightly enriched uranium at an attractive price and
buy back unwanted plutonium at an even more attractive price.
[history of regulatory changes]
A semantic distinction developed between safeguards and
safety. Safety meant environmentalists snapping about
emergency core-cooling systems, [and stuff]. Safeguards
meant keeping track of and protecting the materials that could
be turned into bombs.
END TCoBE quote
Two things here. What are we to make of the US Gov't involvement?
Does this make four sectors? Mil, Com, R&D, and Gov't? But the
Gov't was doing Mil stuff and promoting R&D; and here it was doing
things for the Commercial sector. (and threatening to go into
the electrical power business itself if needed). Golly, those
lines are getting blurry ...
Ah, here's the answer on safety! 'Safeguards' isn't 'Safety'!
No wonder things like a little Pu missing here or there isn't
a safety issue ... No wonder the commercial safety record is
so 'clean'... what can't be called {R&D, Mil, Gov't} can be
called 'Safeguards'; and none of those are a safety issue! How neat.
TCoBE pg. 67
Russell Wischow is a nuclear C.P.A., more or less. He is president
of the Nuclear Audit & Testing Company, which is based in Washington.
[description of pragmatic safeguards attitude].
... he had once taught in the reactor school at Oak Ridge and had
worked for some years in West Valley.
[stuff]
"I guess this is a dangerous statement, but I'm going to make it
anyhow. If there were real intent to divert material, you could
get away with it. You can't be greedy. You have to work within
the limits of measurement. What are we trying to do - keep a
bomb out of the hands of a country or a few grams out of the
hands of a group? If you want a few grams of plutonium, you can
steal that almost anyplace in the country. "
[gripe]
"I can't believe that a company would divert. Individuals, yes.
If any segment of the industry wanted to divert, it could - gram
quantities, kilogram quantities. When you found out, it would be
too late."
[gripe]
Before forming the Nuclear Audit & Testing Company, Wischow
was director of Nuclear Materials Safeguards at the A.E.C. He
was replaced by Charles Thornton, whose experience went back to
the Manhattan Project. Thornton helped set up the labs at Oak
Ridge in 1943, and worked on isotopic separation there. I sought
him out at the [meeting of the Atomic Industrial Forum and
the American Nuclear Society]. [physical description] These were
some of the things Thornton said:
"All the guys who tell you that American industry is experienced
in protecting its vital materials - that's a crock. Mankind has
never handled as dangerous a commodity as plutonium. We have
never developed the skill. Plutonium is worse in its toxicity
than as a bomb. [cost of plutonium]. If the Black September
organization had a hundred grams of this material they could
wreak havoc."
END TCoBE quote
Well, here we have a couple of more Big Guns who seem to have worked
all over the map in the {1,2,3,4,n where n is large} nuclear industries.
Sure would be easier to just call it one industry. It seems to be
one to the people who work in it; and what am I to make of the
'American Nuclear Society'? It it the commercial branch? R&D? Mil? Gov?
And what do these two folks have to say about materials safety?
That it isn't. That any crackpot who wanted to could do far worse
than Silkwood did (assuming that someone didn't do it to her...)
and could do it from commercial sites. This, to me, constitutes
a blemished safety record. You don't need to have someone die as
a result of a failing for the failing to have existed.
TCoBE pg. 21
There is a new kind of power reactor, know as the H.T.G.R., that uses
a great deal of fully enriched uranium and is so promising that
it may one day predominate over the type now in use.
The only American diffusion plant now producing fully enriched
uranium is at Portsmouth, Ohio. The material, UF6 in solid form,
is shipped [by air or truck] to conversion plants that turn it into
uranium oxide or uranium metal - which ever the customer wants.
[size of shipment] Conversion facilities are in Hematite, Misouri;
Apollo, Pennsylvania; Erwin, Tennessee. Then the oxide or the
metal is shipped on, again by air or truck, to fuel-fabrication
plants, which are in Cresent, Oklahoma; New Haven, Connecticut;
San Diego, California; Lynchburn, Virginia. [description of
material and shipping containers]
One place where nuclear submarine fuel is made is [street in]
New Haven. [description] So there are half a dozen scrap-recovery
plants in the country, and United Nuclear's, for example, is in
Wood River Junction, Rhode Island [physical description].
[list of other sites and many security failings deleted]
A great deal of fully enriched uranium oxided has [gone by truck]
to General Atomic, in San Diego. Something over a thousand kilograms
that has come to San Diego this way has been turned into particles
of uranium dicarbide, mixed with thorium dicarbide [further technical
info] Roughly [large quantity] travelled [truck route] to the
Fort St. Vrain power station near Platteville, Colorado [to make
H.T.G.R.] [difference from LWR]
Property of the Public Service Company of Colorado, the H.T.G.R.
contains over a thousand kilograms of fully enriched weapons-grade
uranium. Southern California Edison has ordered two that are
twice as big. Philadelphia Electric has ordered two H.T.G.R.s,
each three times the size of the one at Fort St. Vrain. Delmarva
Power & Light has ordered two like [So. Cal.]. A Japanese industrial
complex is considering one for the heat alone.
END TCoBE quote
Well, well, well. Here we have ONE plant making uranium for submarines
and for a commercial power plant. I have no idea if the other H.T.G.R.s
were ever built; but at the time there didn't seem to be a whole lot
standing between the military and commercial sides of the uranium
business. Of course, times have changed. Noone would ever think
of building a commercial H.T.G.R. today. They would never get the
uranium for it from a military source. Right.
As a side light, the frequent shipments of material by regular air
and commercial truck carriers was stated to be the most vulnurable
part of the whole system when it came to the potential theft of
nuclear materials, special or otherwise.
TCoBE pg. 213
I don't think Taylor heard or noticed the rain [on the roof].
He was audible enough above it [as he was describing a
clandestine bomber building a bomb:]
The dead center of an implosion system is known as the
pressure spike, and it is ordinarily filled with an initiator.
In a bomb made with plutonium from a power reactor--plutonium
stolen from the nuclear-power fuel cycle-- no initiator would
be needed, because enough plutonium-240, which fissions
spontaneously, would be present to do the job. Government
bombs contain very little of it, because its spontaneous fissioning
would set off a chain reaction too early in the implosion and thus
lower considerably the yield of the fireball. [description of the
difference between Pu production reactor and power reactor fuel
residency times and isotope results]. Civilian power reactors
allow their fuel to burn a lot longer - so the resultant plutonium
includes an amount of 240 very likely to set off a bomb too soon
after the moment of criticality. This may lower the yield - but,
even so, not to a level unacceptable to a clandestine bomber, who
receives as a kind of dividend the presence of an automatic initiator.
END TCoBE quote
Well, John, what are your credentials as a Genius Bomb Designer?
How many bombs have you had work on the first shot? Dr. Taylor
has had quite a few so I hope your PhD. and bomb experience are
better than his, 'cause he seems to think that power reactor
Pu, post re-processing plant, can be used to make a bomb that
explodes - Pu240 and all. You do have a PhD. in Physics don't you?
You have designed several (dozen?) fission bombs haven't you?
So there we have it. Pu240 contaminated re-processing plant
plutonium can be made into a bomb. Silkwood is a small example
of a generic problem with safeguards throughout the nuclear
industry. It's mighty hard to see those lines dividing the
world neatly into Military and Power when people, plant,
material, companies, Societies, et. al. seem to flow from one
side to the other with startling frequency.
This is all I have time to post for now. I won't be able to do
a marathon posting like this again for a while, so this is
going to have to stand as my evidence for a while. I would
suggest attacking it on the basis of age and claiming that
everything has changed in the last 16 years and it's a brave
new world now. I think attacking the credentials or honor of
the quoted people will be a dead end. Oh, and in your attacks,
please quote the people, list their credentials and perhaps
a brief biography sketch (as done here) and cite the source.
As of now I think I've posted complete bibliographic citations
for about 18 or 20 differenct works (on various topics) in the
last few weeks (16 in one posting) and darned if I can't remember
a single one from JGdA ... but maybe I just missed them or
didn't notice the publishers name and location...
--
E. Michael Smith e...@apple.COM
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe
I am not responsible nor is anyone else. Everything is disclaimed.
Curt Lindner
Well, I read about half of it, that was enough.
As I will say for the third time in this group, there are NO
reprocessing plants for COMMERCIAL spent fuel in the US.
West Valley, NY was a demonstration plant run by the DOE for ONLY
a couple of years. It took fuel from Big Rock Point, and the Robert
E. Ginna commercial facilities, and all SNM (Specil Nuc. Material)
still on site there is in the form of intact spent fuel
assemblies which will be shipped to hanford before October of this
year.
This is probably the one case where DOE interacts with commercial
utilities, and the NRC (not the AEC there Mikey boy, it was dissolved
to the NRC when the DOE was created in the mid 70's).
DOE has been given the responsibility to find a final resting
spot for all spent fuel from commercial reactors. Through the
Office of Civilian Rad. Waste Managment, the DOE is creating
a program to transport and permananently store this spent fuel.
If this is interaction between industries than it is only a small interaction.
the Bottom line to this reprocessing worry is that NO SPENT FUEL IS BEING
REPROCESSED IN THIS COUNTRY. Its cheaper to mine and enrich fresh U
Uranium than to reprocess the old. Besides, in today's spent fuel,
there is virtually no fissile material left to recover.
THE HTGR or FORT ST VRAIN Facility
Is in the final stages of its lifetime. For many years, It has been
using a 20% enriched fuel I believe, not the FULLY enriched fuel
Mike quoted from the OUTDATED BOOK.
The parts of the book you quoted from make the whole book sound as
if it were written in the classic 20-20, 60 minutes, Geraldo sytle
of journalism. If you can find a more up to date book, listing
similiar quotes from these places, post it here, otherwise, leave
that 1955 circa material home.
Curt
PS if you want to address some points more specifically, fine. I'll
refrain from refuting a 400+ line spew of propaganda.
Mike Smith
>Well, I read about half of it, that was enough.
I see. If I post a significant quantity of information then it is
too much to bother reading, but if I don't then I have no evidence.
Sounds like a catch 22 to me.
>As I will say for the third time in this group, there are NO
>reprocessing plants for COMMERCIAL spent fuel in the US.
Oh, and now I see even more. We have to limit our discussion to
the US, not the whole international nuclear industry.
>West Valley, NY was a demonstration plant run by the DOE for ONLY
>a couple of years. It took fuel from Big Rock Point, and the Robert
>E. Ginna commercial facilities
And particular spans of time. Gee your making this hard on me.
Perhaps you could state what years and locations are acceptable
as evidence? I would prefer that the time interval be one
contiguous chunck. Dropping out inconvenient years here and there
would be a bit much ... Then again, it does make it easier to
ignore a problematic plant or two ...
>This is probably the one case where DOE interacts with commercial
>utilities, and the NRC (not the AEC there Mikey boy, it was dissolved
>to the NRC when the DOE was created in the mid 70's).
And the source quoted was copyright 1974, so it was correct in stating
AEC. Or do I have to have history rewritten too? Golly, that would
make it real hard to prove a point ...
>DOE has been given the responsibility to find a final resting
>spot for all spent fuel from commercial reactors. Through the
>Office of Civilian Rad. Waste Managment, the DOE is creating
>a program to transport and permananently store this spent fuel.
>
>If this is interaction between industries than it is only a small interaction.
That, plus people, materials, ... read the rest of the 'LONG' posting.
>the Bottom line to this reprocessing worry is that NO SPENT FUEL IS BEING
>REPROCESSED IN THIS COUNTRY. Its cheaper to mine and enrich fresh U
Oh, yes. Now that we are restricted to today and this country...
The statement I was rebutting was that the RECORD for the
power sector had no blemishes. I guess it's not fair to use
historical record to rebut a statment about the record ...
>THE HTGR or FORT ST VRAIN Facility
>Is in the final stages of its lifetime. For many years, It has been
>using a 20% enriched fuel I believe, not the FULLY enriched fuel
>Mike quoted from the OUTDATED BOOK.
Please cite your source. If, in fact, the book is wrong on that
point; then I will withdraw that single example and cast some
doubt on the other statements it makes. Till then it is your OPINION.
Does being in the final stages of its lifetime subject it to being
removed from the historical record? From the present day facts?
Sorry, but I have a hard time with the business of changing history
to suit ones goals ... not my style, I guess.
Per the book being outdated. I stated in my posting that it was
a bit old. But since the point of contention was historical it
should be an acceptable source. Somehow I didn't think that
history was subject to becoming outdated. If you don't like the
source you are free to post your own. I would love to have
a selected reading list.
>The parts of the book you quoted from make the whole book sound as
>if it were written in the classic 20-20, 60 minutes, Geraldo sytle
>of journalism.
As I stated in the 'LONG' posting, the quotes were selected to
support a particular set of assertions which would cast it in a
much more anti-nuke light than it deserves. It isn't pro-nuke,
but most of the book is only somewhat anti-nuke.
>If you can find a more up to date book, listing
>similiar quotes from these places, post it here, otherwise, leave
>that 1955 circa material home.
Since I have cited and quoted a source, and others have not; I
believe that the usual obligation is for the folks with no
citations to dig up their own. I don't mind this debate, though
it is taking more time than it deserves, but I don't feel an
obligation to do your part of the work for you. BTW, the
copywrite date was circa 1974, not circa 1955 ...
>PS if you want to address some points more specifically, fine. I'll
>refrain from refuting a 400+ line spew of propaganda.
Ah, I see. Quotes from managers of DOE run plants, from folks who
work for nuclear industry employers, from people who built bombs
for a living; these are propaganda. One presumes, then, that the
only non-propaganda are the opinions you post?
If you want to address some points more specifically, fine. Read
the evidence I've posted first and refute it. Otherwise I'll
assume that it must stand as unchallenged.
Curt Lindner
>In article <7...@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> lin...@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Curt Lindner) writes:
>
>
>Oh, and now I see even more. We have to limit our discussion to
>the US, not the whole international nuclear industry.
>
>The statement I was rebutting was that the RECORD for the
>power sector had no blemishes. I guess it's not fair to use
>historical record to rebut a statment about the record ...
>
Mike, and other readers, if you will remember correctly, this discussioin
more or less began with John DeArmond stating that the US COMMERCIAL
Nuclear Power industry has a perfect safety record. The Commercial
industry is defined as those utilities operating the power
reactors, as well as those plants involved in the mining, enrichment,
and fabrication of fuel elements for use in the aforementioned reactors.
Again, the topic was the US. After Chernoble, no one can boast about
the safety of the International industry. The only other accidents
I can think of, two of them, are one in the Soviet Union, and one
at Windscale in the UK. All of these accidents occured with the
graphite moderated design, none of which are used in this country.
But, it was Mike that first tried to say that the Commercial industry
was not well defined, and now, I guess he's saying that the US industry
is not well defined either.
Ok, Mike, you must be right, the whole nuclear industry is just one big
time bomb just ready to go off. The margin of safety doesn't even exist,
no safeguards are in place, because it says so right there is The
Curve of Binding Energy. Nothing has changed, no facilities are
any better protected that they were in 1974. There were only a
handful of operating commercial reactors in 1974, today there
are over a hundred. But that just means that we are more at risk,
right??
By the way, Mike. You ask me to quote from sources, but the
'source' you quote from is a Biography of someone written in
1974. There is about as much factual info in there as is in
the National Enquirer. If you don't mind, I'll just quote from
my experience as a Nuclear Engineer. If you want to argue computers,
I'll accept your experience as well.
Paul Hager
A short response. I seem to recall that any enrichment of
U above 19% is theoretically bomb grade (but very impractical).
I also think the term "fully enriched" refers to anything 19%
or above, but I can check, if requested to do so. An aside,
the TRIGA reactors built by General Atomic and used by the
nuclear engineering departments of a number of universities in
the U.S. (Cornell used to have one) used metallic fuel at 19%
enrichment, so it's not that uncommon. I also seem to recall that
the the German Pebble-Bed HTGR used high-enriched fuel >90% in the
baseball-sized fuel spheres but don't quote me on it -- I can
get the definitive answer if requested.
Pu toxicity -- were the assumptions based upon the now discredited
Goffman-Tamplin "Hot particle" theory? The book may have been
written contemporaneously with their work. Also, was it assumed that
no action would be taken to either detect contamination or to
decontaminate the affected person?
--
paul hager hag...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
*** Combat global warming -- build nuclear power plants ***
John G. De Armond
>I also seem to recall that
>the the German Pebble-Bed HTGR used high-enriched fuel >90% in the
>baseball-sized fuel spheres but don't quote me on it -- I can
>get the definitive answer if requested.
I'm not familiar with the German effort but the General Atomic
Pebble-Bed HTGR uses fuel spheres that are about the size of a large
grain of sand. The sphere is built up of layers of fuel and pyrolytic
graphite. This scheme is designed to contain the fission products of
the tiny fuel pellets under all conditions. This has works so well
at Ft St Vrain that the cooling system is only slightly radioactive
even though the coolant flows throughout the core bed.
In my opinion, this is one of the most promising reactor designs around.
It lost in the 70s mainly because GA was not very politically astute.
John
--
John De Armond, WD4OQC | We can no more blame our loss of freedom on congress
Radiation Systems, Inc. | than we can prostitution on pimps. Both simply
Atlanta, Ga | provide broker services for their customers.
{emory,uunet}!rsiatl!jgd| - Dr. W Williams | **I am the NRA**
Mike Smith
>In article <82...@goofy.Apple.COM> e...@Apple.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>>In article <7...@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> lin...@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Curt Lindner) writes:
>>Oh, and now I see even more. We have to limit our discussion to
>>the US, not the whole international nuclear industry.
>>Oh, yes. Now that we are restricted to today and this country...
>>The statement I was rebutting was that the RECORD for the
>>power sector had no blemishes. I guess it's not fair to use
>>historical record to rebut a statment about the record ...
>Mike, and other readers, if you will remember correctly, this discussioin
>more or less began with John DeArmond stating that the US COMMERCIAL
>Nuclear Power industry has a perfect safety record.
Curt, and other readers, if you will read the below quote of the
original statement by John DeArmond you will see that Curt is not
remembering correctly:
>>As to safety, since the safety record of nuclear power in the free world
>>is unblemished, one can do little to improve it. (TMI, after all,
>>was an economic desaster and not a nuclear one.) Which is not to say
>>we don't keep trying; it is simply hard to show dramatic improvements
>>when one is already approaching perfection.
The topic was not restricted to US COMMERCIAL, but was restricted to
'nuclear power in the free world'. One presumes that Japan, France,
and England are part of the free world ...
I have no quibble with the direction of change of safety in the nuclear
industy, it is much better than it was. But please, get the context
right. All the free world. All power generation (not just commercial).
With no restriction on how long or far back in the record one can look.
I'm sure that if John had meant US Commercial he would have said so.
>Again, the topic was the US. After Chernoble, no one can boast about
>the safety of the International industry. The only other accidents
No, the topic was 'free world' (which still leaves out Chernoble).
>I can think of, two of them, are one in the Soviet Union, and one
>at Windscale in the UK. All of these accidents occured with the
>graphite moderated design, none of which are used in this country.
The UK accident counts, unless the UK has dumped Maggy :-)
>Ok, Mike, you must be right, the whole nuclear industry is just one big
>time bomb just ready to go off. The margin of safety doesn't even exist,
>no safeguards are in place, because it says so right there is The
>Curve of Binding Energy. Nothing has changed, no facilities are
>any better protected that they were in 1974.
The context was: no historic blemish. I have no quibble with statements
that things have gotten much better. I would like to see a posting
stating what things are like today; it would be refreshing to have
a good look at what has changed. Heck, I would even accept a statement
that the general public hasn't been at significant risk. It doesn't
take much to be a 'blemish' though.
The emoting Curt does above is rather off base, since I do not think
things are very bad today. I do think there are some minor improvments
that could be made; but I'm not terribly worried about the state of
the art. Just don't try to erase the history...
>By the way, Mike. You ask me to quote from sources, but the
>'source' you quote from is a Biography of someone written in
>1974. There is about as much factual info in there as is in
>the National Enquirer. If you don't mind, I'll just quote from
>my experience as a Nuclear Engineer. If you want to argue computers,
>I'll accept your experience as well.
More emoting. Get a grip, guy. If you want to slander a source, at
least have some ammunition... emotions don't buy much. McPhee is a
reasonably well respected author. Taylor is a very well know physicist.
The quotes were from many individuals IN THE INDUSTRY and were attributed.
If you can find where even one of them constested the accuracy of the
quote, fine. Till then, your emoting and mud slinging are pointless.
If you have a higher and better source, I'll yield. If you have evidence
(not even proof...just good evidence) that the source is tainted, I'll
cast some doubt on the source and back off. If you just want to say that
you don't like it; too bad.
I'll gladely accept your EXPERIENCE as a Nuclear Engineer, but unless
you were there, I'll take a biography and history books' account of
history over your emoting. Per my experience with computing: thanks
for the compliment. I passed the CDP exam from the ICCP (Institute
for Certification of Computing Professionals) on the firt try; have
over a decade of post University professional experience; and hold
a State of California Lifetime Teaching Credential in Data Processing
at the Junior College level. I'll yield to anyone with a masters or
better in CS, though, on computer issues (unless I can find a higher
source ...).
Mike Smith
>I'm not familiar with the German effort but the General Atomic
>Pebble-Bed HTGR uses fuel spheres that are about the size of a large
>grain of sand. The sphere is built up of layers of fuel and pyrolytic
>graphite. This scheme is designed to contain the fission products of
>the tiny fuel pellets under all conditions. This has works so well
>at Ft St Vrain that the cooling system is only slightly radioactive
>even though the coolant flows throughout the core bed.
>In my opinion, this is one of the most promising reactor designs around.
>It lost in the 70s mainly because GA was not very politically astute.
So what can we do to get it back on track? From what I've heard of
it (and recently read about it) it answers most of the remaining
concerns about reactors.
Russ Cage
[regarding the reactor at Fort St. Vrain, CO]
>Property of the Public Service Company of Colorado, the H.T.G.R.
>contains a little over a thousand kilograms of fully enriched
>weapons-grade uranium.
I keep seeing this term "weapons-grade" thrown about with regard
to the Fort St. Vrain reactor in TCoBE. EMS quotes it twice.
Frankly, this strains my credulity. The Fort St. Vrain reactor
is graphite-moderated, just like the very first reactor built
by Enrico Fermi et al. That reactor used native uranium at .7%
U-235 concentration.
The reason US LWR's use concentrated uranium is that protium is
neutron-hungry. Canada's CANDU reactors use heavy water, because
deuterium does not absorb nearly as many neutrons, and they work on
unenriched native uranium. I gather that carbon is a moderator of
similar efficiency to deuterium. It does not make sense for a
graphite pile to be stocked with weapons-grade material. It is
simply not necessary.
This makes me believe that the author of TCoBE is either misinformed
or hysteria-mongering (implying that every HTGR will be like a bomb).
I would check my reference on the Fort St. Vrain reactor but it is
not available to me at this time. I do know that it was shut down
a while ago, permanently. It was a pilot plant, and some of the
design decisions turned out to be bad ones. For instance, the choice
of water to lubricate the helium-circulation fan bearings was bad.
The water which escaped into the cooling gas reacted with the hot
graphite moderator and corroded it. Since finding design flaws
is the purpose of a pilot plant, Fort St. Vrain has done well.
--
Oversimplification doesn't solve problems, it just
(313) 662-4147 changes them into less tractable problems.
Russ Cage, Robust Software Inc. ru...@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us
Doug Crawford
regarding HTGRs:
> So what can we do to get it back on track?
The MHTGR (modular high temperature gas reactor -i think) is being
considered as one the reactor designs for DOE's new tritium production
reactor. So General Atomics and some assortment of national labs and
contractors (EG&G Idaho for one) are working on a design that will meet
defense needs and provide GA with a working example of gas reactor
technology. Someone else will know more about the technology and the
current status than I, but the HTGR is on some sort of track.
Doug Crawford, Nuclear Engineering, Cooley Building,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
craw...@ruddles.sprl.umich.edu
Tom Mayer
>
>I would check my reference on the Fort St. Vrain reactor but it is
>not available to me at this time. I do know that it was shut down
>a while ago, permanently. It was a pilot plant, and some of the
>design decisions turned out to be bad ones. For instance, the choice
>of water to lubricate the helium-circulation fan bearings was bad.
>The water which escaped into the cooling gas reacted with the hot
>graphite moderator and corroded it. Since finding design flaws
>is the purpose of a pilot plant, Fort St. Vrain has done well.
>--
> Oversimplification doesn't solve problems, it just
>(313) 662-4147 changes them into less tractable problems.
>Russ Cage, Robust Software Inc. ru...@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us
I have to take exception to this. The main purpose of the
plant was to produce electric power, which it spent very
little time doing. In fact I don't believe the plant ever
produced full power on an operational basis. Public Service
tried to stick us with the bill for this turkey although
I'm not sure if the PUC out here ever let them get away
with it. The purpose of a public utility is to produce
reliable power at a fair price, not to design and build
full size "pilot plants" for test purposes. It's projects
like Ft. St. Vrain that gave the nuclear industry a bad
name in the 70's.
Tom Mayer
NCAR, Boulder, Co.
Mike Smith
>[regarding the reactor at Fort St. Vrain, CO]
>>Property of the Public Service Company of Colorado, the H.T.G.R.
>>contains a little over a thousand kilograms of fully enriched
>>weapons-grade uranium.
>I keep seeing this term "weapons-grade" thrown about with regard
>to the Fort St. Vrain reactor in TCoBE. EMS quotes it twice.
>Frankly, this strains my credulity. The Fort St. Vrain reactor
>is graphite-moderated, just like the very first reactor built
>by Enrico Fermi et al. That reactor used native uranium at .7%
>U-235 concentration.
I removed a large block of text in TCoBE from the description of
the fabrication of the HTGR. (and in the process probably did a
dis-service to the book... but as it was I had 400 lines of posting
and something had to be left out...) The book describes STARTING
with highly enriched U235. It is coated with some other materials
and mixed with Thorium. By the time it gets into the reactor, it
isn't 'weapons-grade' anymore ... but it did come from the
enrichment plant that way (per the description in TCoBE).
[...]
>It does not make sense for a
>graphite pile to be stocked with weapons-grade material. It is
>simply not necessary.
Right. But to fabricate small (~pinhead) sized particles of fuel
coated with pyrocarbon and silicon carbide it can be an advantage
to start with full enrichment fuel for a pilot plant.
>This makes me believe that the author of TCoBE is either misinformed
>or hysteria-mongering (implying that every HTGR will be like a bomb).
Or that I may have edited out a bit too much ... the actual text
is supportive of the HTGR. Some of the omitted text:
TCoBE pg. 25:
[per HTGR] This new variant has been called "the reactor of the
nineteen-eighties."
[description of LWR]
The graphite blocks of the H.T.G.R. are something new in cost,
efficiency, fissions per dollar. The High-Temperature Gas-Cooled
Reactor is thrifty with neutrons. It uses less uranium per mega-
watt.
[it runs at 1400 F while LWR runs at about 600 F]
[prior posted text about who owns it]
It would take an impressively sophisticated individual or group
to achieve a nuclear explosive starting with the beads in the
graphite of the H.T.G.R. The task would be at best laborious
and difficult, for the pyrocarbon and silicon-carbide coatings
were designed to withstand [list of rough conditions in core].
So the H.T.G.R. itself is not particularly vulnerable to theft
by potential bombmakers.
end TCoBE quote
He then goes on to describe that the bigest risk with the HTGR is
the shipping of fully enriched U235 to the bead fabrication plant.
It is quite likely that in a production version of the HTGR there
would be a movement to use less fully enriched material as the
starting point for bead fabrication. This is getting beyond
my knowledge level, so I would defer to the nuclear engineers
here for a better description of the state of the art today.
My point in the original posting was to make a connection
from the military side to the power generation side; in that both
were using material from the same enrichment plant. That point
isn't germain to your concerns.
Russ Cage
[about the Fort St. Vrain HTGR]
> I have to take exception to this. The main purpose of the
> plant was to produce electric power, which it spent very
> little time doing.
No, it was to see how well it could be done before building
more of them, and see what was wrong with the concept before
committing lots of money to it. They found a few bugs. They
also found that it was well-nigh indestructible; loss of
coolant circulation was tested and did nada. Nice safe nuke.
> with it. The purpose of a public utility is to produce
> reliable power at a fair price, not to design and build
> full size "pilot plants" for test purposes.
Fort St. Vrain wasn't anywhere near full-size by nuke standards.
It was what, 80 MWe compared to 1 GWe typical for LWR's?
If utilities don't test new electrical generating technologies, who will?
Steve Emmerson
>If utilities don't test new electrical generating technologies, who will?
Presumably, the for-profit companies who market such reactors to the
utility industry (such as General Atomic).
Steve Emmerson st...@unidata.ucar.edu ...!ncar!unidata!steve
Mike Smith
>In <1990May22....@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us> ru...@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Russ Cage) writes:
>>If utilities don't test new electrical generating technologies, who will?
>Presumably, the for-profit companies who market such reactors to the
>utility industry (such as General Atomic).
I suspect that this is about to decay into a war of opinions ... Maybe
this will help slow the slide ... There comes a point when the designer
has done as much as they can to shakedown the product. It has to go
to an alpha release. A risk taking customer agrees to run the product
for favorable considerations {cost, position in que, new features} knowing
that they are taking risk. The vendor sells them a questionable quality
product {as they are both aware} with the special considerations being
the compensation for the extra risk; so that the vendor can get the
knowledge needed to make the product 'production quality'. They both
gain from this mutual relationship, as do we, the customer, since new
technologies get to market quicker with a better quality content.
Somebody has to take the first plunge with a new technology. No amount
of testing and theory is quite the same as running a real plant.
Russ Cage
>>If utilities don't test new electrical generating technologies, who will?
>Presumably, the for-profit companies who market such reactors to the
>utility industry (such as General Atomic).
And the customers are going to buy something with which they have
absolutely no experience, or input into the design? That's not
the way to make a product that meets their needs.
Besides which, the test plants produce quite a bit of valuable
electricity, which should be sold rather than wasted. Either
the utilities have to go into the testing biz, or the producers
have to go into the utility biz. Since utilities have to gain
the operational expertise anyway, doing the testing seems like
a natural for them.