Greenpeace and nuclear power
Bernard Everett Hoefer
countries of the world drop their nuclear power programs. Why is
this? What reasons to they have to want to ban nuclear power?
--
Bernard Everett Hoefer
Purdue University
School of Nuclear Engineering
Tino
> It seems to me that Greenpeace would like to see the
>countries of the world drop their nuclear power programs. Why is
>this? What reasons to they have to want to ban nuclear power?
The great horror writer H.P. Lovecraft once said,
"The greatest emotion of mankind is fear, and the greatest fear is
fear of the unknown."
I suppose that if you saw something glow (from cerenkov radiation), or
produce HUGE amounts of power from very little matter, you might be
frightened if you didn't know why. Also, many people still believe that
nuclear power = nuclear medicine = food irradiation = big, nasty bombs.
That is how Greenpeace brainwa... works with the public sector.
Followups should be directed into a more "non-scientific, opinion-based"
newsgroup (yeah, right).
Tino (another environmentalist for nuclear power, and not associated with
Richard Dyrda)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pay off the national debt -- Tax the Church
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mor...@ramblr.enet.dec.com
> It seems to me that Greenpeace would like to see the
>countries of the world drop their nuclear power programs. Why is
>this? What reasons to they have to want to ban nuclear power?
A related question is, given there is now lots of that evil plutonium in
the world, in the form of bombs and "spent" fuel rods, if Greenpeace got
their way, what would they do with it all? I know they'd shut down every
nuke in the world so no more gets created but what of the stuff that already
exists? Can't fission it, else that would mean running the nukes (or setting
off the bombs...)
-Mike
Allen Brown
> Bernard Everett Hoefer writes...
>> It seems to me that Greenpeace would like to see the
>> countries of the world drop their nuclear power programs. Why is
>> this? What reasons to they have to want to ban nuclear power?
radioactive waste.
> A related question is, given there is now lots of that evil plutonium in
> the world, in the form of bombs and "spent" fuel rods, if Greenpeace got
> their way, what would they do with it all?
I think their first priority is to stop the production of it: ``First we
have to stop producing this crap. Then we will have to figure out
what to do with what we already have.''
> I know they'd shut down every
> nuke in the world so no more gets created but what of the stuff that
> already exists? Can't fission it, else that would mean running the
> nukes (or setting off the bombs...)
> -Mike
That is the point.
--
Allen C. Brown abr...@cv.hp.com or hplabs!hpcvca!abrown or "Hey you!"
Not representing my employer.
Q: What has 10 heads and no brains? A: a committee.
Tino
>>> It seems to me that Greenpeace would like to see the
>>> countries of the world drop their nuclear power programs. Why is
>>> this? What reasons to they have to want to ban nuclear power?
>A big part of it is the unsolved problem of how to dispose of
>radioactive waste.
No, for the hundreth time. The SCIENTIFIC aspects of disposal/reprocessing
have been solved. What is still unsolved is the public`s (and Greenhype`s)
irrational fear of ANYTHING radioactive, no matter where it is or safe as
it may be.
>> A related question is, given there is now lots of that evil plutonium in
>> the world, in the form of bombs and "spent" fuel rods, if Greenpeace got
>> their way, what would they do with it all?
>I think their first priority is to stop the production of it: ``First we
>have to stop producing this crap. Then we will have to figure out
>what to do with what we already have.''
You won't stop producing it. The technology is there, and there`s no
going back. However, as countries like France and Japan learn to use this
plutonium to keep their reactors running, then the problem of "stockpiling"
will be solved.
>> I know they'd shut down every
>> nuke in the world so no more gets created but what of the stuff that
>> already exists? Can't fission it, else that would mean running the
>> nukes (or setting off the bombs...)
>That is the point.
You`re really out there. Shutting down a majority of the electrical
capacity in Europe? And then what?
I suggest doing some reading on MOX fuel for reusing plutonium and
Yucca Mountain (if we end up doing something stupid like throwing it
away). Contrary to the Greenhype, plutonium is not always a bad thing.
Tino
Kenneth Ng
:> Bernard Everett Hoefer writes...
:>> It seems to me that Greenpeace would like to see the
:>> countries of the world drop their nuclear power programs. Why is
:>> this? What reasons to they have to want to ban nuclear power?
:A big part of it is the unsolved problem of how to dispose of
:radioactive waste.
The "problem" already has many technical solutions, just no political
solutions. Its called "recycling". Yes that revolutionary concept that
the "environmentalists" want to prevent the nuclear power industry from
using. Why? Because it reduces the volume of high level waste by an order
of magnitude, and it removes most of the longer lived radioactives like
uranium.
--
Kenneth Ng
Please reply to k...@eies2.njit.edu for now.
Apple and AT&T lawsuits: Just say NO!
Richard Stead
> In article <1992Nov26....@sugra.uucp> k...@sugra.uucp
> >The "problem" already has many technical solutions, just no political
> >solutions. Its called "recycling". Yes that revolutionary concept that
> >the "environmentalists" want to prevent the nuclear power industry from
> >using. Why? Because it reduces the volume of high level waste by an order
> >of magnitude, and it removes most of the longer lived radioactives like
> >uranium.
>
> know is a very efficient fuel for NUCLEAR WEAPONS. At least if the
No, it does not. As pointed out by many others in this group, the Pu from
commercial plants has a lot of Pu240. While it is possible that a
sophisticated weapons design could make use of such contaminated Pu,
That is probably beyond the capability of such nations.
> technology. Do you seriously advocate the "Plutonium Economy" with many
> tonnes of this stuff floating around, virtually uncountable because of
Yes.
--
Richard Stead
Center for Seismic Studies
Arlington, VA
st...@seismo.css.gov
Carl J Lydick
>Spent fuel reprocessing produces....enriched Pu239....which as we all
>know is a very efficient fuel for NUCLEAR WEAPONS. At least if the
>unusable radioactive trash, it won't be available for nukes unless one
>invests in very expensive and highly visible plutonium extraction
>technology. Do you seriously advocate the "Plutonium Economy" with many
>tonnes of this stuff floating around, virtually uncountable because of
>types like Saddam Hussein from getting his grubby little hands on nukes
>seems to me a valid concern for "environmentalists" and "politicians"
>alike.
Spent fuel reprocessing from a civilian power plant (as opposed the military
plants whose purpose is to produce Pu-239, not electricity; You *DO*
understand that there's a difference between Hanford and San Onofre, don't
you?) produces Pu with a significant percentage of Pu-240. *NOT* "a very
efficient fuel for NUCLEAR WEAPONS." If you want an efficient fuel for nuclear
weapons, you use a short cycle, because it's not easy to separate Pu-239 from
Pu-240. It's easier to not produce the Pu-240 in the first place.
Have you considered doing a bit more research than parroting Greenhype on this
issue?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CA...@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
Disclaimer: Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS. That's what I get paid for. My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below). So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it. If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
Kenneth Ng
:In article <1992Nov26....@sugra.uucp> k...@sugra.uucp
:(Kenneth Ng) writes:
:>In article <1992Nov22.0...@hpcvca.cv.hp.com: abr...@hpcvcec.cv.hp.com (Allen Brown) writes:
:>:A big part of it is the unsolved problem of how to dispose of
:>:radioactive waste.
:Spent fuel reprocessing produces....enriched Pu239....which as we all
:know is a very efficient fuel for NUCLEAR WEAPONS. At least if the
:highly radioactive Pu239 remains in the waste mixed with all that other
:unusable radioactive trash, it won't be available for nukes unless one
:invests in very expensive and highly visible plutonium extraction
:technology.
Ah, once again we have the fallacy that plutonium == nuclear bombs. And
once again I will say that it is like using asphalt in place of gasoline
in your car engine, after all they are just a slightly different form of
hydrocarbon coming from crude oil. Yes it may be possible for someone
like Teller to make a bomb from heavily spiked plutonium, as is present in
spent fuel elements, but it makes the job a hell of a lot more difficult.
Furthermore, plutonium extraction is not that difficult, its been done for
years in the US and USSR weapons programs.
By the way, please define 'enriched plutonium' for me. Gassous diffusion
systems enrich the concentrations of one isotope of uranium as opposed to
others. Nuclear reactors produce plutonium, they do not enrich it.
: Do you seriously advocate the "Plutonium Economy" with many
:tonnes of this stuff floating around, virtually uncountable because of
:the imprecision of present reprocessing methods? Preventing unstable
:types like Saddam Hussein from getting his grubby little hands on nukes
:seems to me a valid concern for "environmentalists" and "politicians"
:alike.
Once again Saddam Hussein, and once again I say that if you want to make
a nuclear bomb yourself, a plutonium implosion device is not the way to
go. It requires very precise timing mechanisms, knowledge in many areas
of the sciences, and is very difficult to test secretly. There is another
way, which I have hinted at before, for making an atomic bomb that avoids
all these problems.
But why would I go for all this when chemical and biological weapons are
easier to construct, easier to hide, and far more testable than nukes?
Michael Zika
>In article <1992Nov26.1...@Princeton.EDU>, rnog...@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ryan Alexander Noguchi) writes:
>> In article <1992Nov26....@sugra.uucp> k...@sugra.uucp
>> (Kenneth Ng) writes:
>> >The "problem" already has many technical solutions, just no political
>> >solutions. Its called "recycling". Yes that revolutionary concept that
>> >the "environmentalists" want to prevent the nuclear power industry from
>> >using. Why? Because it reduces the volume of high level waste by an order
>> >of magnitude, and it removes most of the longer lived radioactives like
>> >uranium.
>>
>> Spent fuel reprocessing produces....enriched Pu239....which as we all
>> know is a very efficient fuel for NUCLEAR WEAPONS. At least if the
>
>No, it does not. As pointed out by many others in this group, the Pu from
>commercial plants has a lot of Pu240. While it is possible that a
>sophisticated weapons design could make use of such contaminated Pu,
>That is probably beyond the capability of such nations.
Additionally, depending on what type of reprocessing you're looking at
there are quite a few higher actinides in the reprocessed output. This
results in the reprocessed fuel being very "hot" which further complicates
any scenarios of plutonium proliferation...
>> technology. Do you seriously advocate the "Plutonium Economy" with many
>> tonnes of this stuff floating around, virtually uncountable because of
>
>Yes.
Mega-dittoes
>--
>Richard Stead
>Center for Seismic Studies
>Arlington, VA
>st...@seismo.css.gov
--
|
Michael Zika (zi...@ecn.purdue.edu) | Hey don't ask me "why?",
Purdue University | I'm still working on "how?" !
School of Nuclear Engineering |
Paul Michael Keller
>(i.e. preferably neither newspapers nor pulp magazines like Time)
>which support the tacit assumptions made in this group which include:
>
>1) Current and *anticipated* spent fuel reprocessing methods
> will necessarily produce Pu239 with a substantial fraction of
> Pu240 or other diluents which would reduce its effectiveness
> in a nuclear weapon of a non-futuristic design;
Be careful here. Spent fuel reprocessing is a chemical process which
only performs a chemical separation of the uranium and plutonium from
the fission products. It does nothing to modify the isotopic composition
of any element, including the plutonium. The plutonium isotopics are
determined by the reactor in which the plutonium was produced. No flame
intended, but the low quality of the plutonium produced in water-cooled
power reactors is something which can be calculated by anyone with access
to an appropriate computer code and is generally known to anyone with
a nuclear engineering degree or a general knowledge of nuclear fuel manage-
ment. Some short mention of this is given by Hans Bethe in a 1976 article
in Scientific American [1]. Oldekop, et al [2] provide representative
'typical' isotopics for plutonium produced in light water reactors.
Cochran [3] may also make some note of the quality of power reactor plutonium.
Cochran also has some information on weapons-grade plutonium isotopics.
>2) The Pu239/240 enrichment procedure is substantially more
> difficult to perform than U238/235 enrichment, given that
> one needs perform the enrichment only far enough to get a
> ratio suitable for a nuclear weapon of a non-futuristic
> design (i.e. not necessarily ~0.7% -> ~90% for U235);
There has been a fair amount of discussion of this on the net during the
past few weeks. Most assertions have been that the increased difficulty
in plutonium enrichment is due to the smaller difference in atomic mass
between Pu239 and Pu240 as compared with U235 and U238. While this is true,
see Benedict, et al [4] for more details on this, the greater difficulty
is that the plutionium produced by power reactors contains significant
quantities of five isotopes ranging from Pu238 to Pu242. All of the isotopic
enrichment processes currently available on an industrial scale are non-
isotope specific. That is, they simply preferentially enrich the lighter
or heavier isotopes. For plutonium enrichment, an isotope-specific process
would be preferable. Laser isotope enrichment has been studied, and I
believe that in the mid to late-80s DOE had a program to develop this for
plutonium enrichment, but I also believe that this program was cancelled
before it got very far. Does anyone else on the net know anything more
about this (preferably with references)?
>3) Iraq was not working on an implosion device rather than a
> gun-type device, or that a plutonium implosion device is
> substantially more difficult to build than a uranium
> implosion device.
According to an article which appeared in Science about a year ago [5],
Iraq was working on an implosion device using highly enriched urainum.
I can not comment on the level of difficulty in designing a uranium
implosion device vs. a plutionium device. There may be some information
on this in Cochran [3], which is also very well referenced and may provide
some leads for those who wish to study the matter further.
I hope this helps and clears up some things which were not clear.
References:
1. H. A. Bethe, "The neccessity of Fission Power," Scientific American,
Vol. 234, #1, p.21 (1976).
2. W. Oldekop, H. Berger, and W. Zeggel, "General Features of Advanced
Pressurized Water Reactors and Improved Fuel Utilization," Nuclear
Technology, Vol. 59, p. 212 (1981).
3. Thomas B. Cochran, 'Nuclear Weapons Databook,' Cambridge Mass.,
Balllinger Pub. Co. (1984).
4. M. Benedict, T. Pigford and H. Levi, "Nuclear Chemical Engineering,"
McGraw-Hill, Inc. (1981).
5. Science, Vol. 254, p. 644 (1991).
Paul Keller
pke...@engin.umich.edu
John De Armond
>Does anyone have any references in scientific or policy journals
>(i.e. preferably neither newspapers nor pulp magazines like Time)
>which support the tacit assumptions made in this group which include:
>1) Current and *anticipated* spent fuel reprocessing methods
> will necessarily produce Pu239 with a substantial fraction of
> Pu240 or other diluents which would reduce its effectiveness
> in a nuclear weapon of a non-futuristic design;
>2) The Pu239/240 enrichment procedure is substantially more
> difficult to perform than U238/235 enrichment, given that
> one needs perform the enrichment only far enough to get a
> ratio suitable for a nuclear weapon of a non-futuristic
> design (i.e. not necessarily ~0.7% -> ~90% for U235);
Let's try it again. You are conversing with the some of the same experts in
this group who you would read in any of a number of journals. In my case,
I've spent most of my career working in the field. If our telling you
something is inadequate, tough. We're not going to do your homework for you.
If you insist on reading it off a piece of paper, either print out the
articles or visit your library. I presume Princeton still has an adequate
technical library.
As to separating Pu isotopes, we've already addressed this at length.
To summarize, it is considered by most experts (ME included)
to be impossible for the following reasons:
* There is no known gaseous form of Pu at reasonable temperatures, an analog
to uranium hexafloride. This is considered vital for any kind of
separation other than mass spec (micrograms at a time) or maybe one
day laser.
* The two isotopes are only one AMU apart. That makes the job MANY more
times more difficult than U-235/238 separation. Perhaps you think
that scaling the gasseous diffusion plant by a factor of 3 or so is
trivial. Perhaps you'll reconsider if you ever actually see the plant.
>I have/had references which I believe refuted all three of these, and
>they were the basis for my assertion. I'm still trying to dredge them
>up, though they may be out of date and in any case I would appreciate
>additional references for my personal research and edification.
Perhaps you should spend the time you now spend arguing in an area where you
have no expertise over at the library doing your own research.
John
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