Burn The Bombs
Robert G. Munck
of the Washington Post, the Japanese are proposing to use
the surplus weapons-grade plutonium from the former SU
nuclear arsenal to generate power. They plan to build
"burner" reactors (as contrasted to "breeder") that change
the plutonium into "another form" unsuitable for weapons.
The article estimated the amount of material available at
130 tons and that this would be enough for "thirty years."
Does anyone know anything more about this idea? Do the
burner reactors share the problems of size, cost, and risk
of conventional reactors, or is it possible to build smaller
ones? What's the "other form" of plutonium that they
produce? How much energy would the 130 tons produce? (It
seems unlikely that the "thirty years" is the total energy
needs of the former SU republics for thirty years.)
After all, we have a great deal of this stuff also, and it's
awfully hard for even the most extreme of hawks to make a
case for our needing to retain more than a hundred of our
tens of thousands of warheads. So how about if we turn our
underground test area into an energy park of burner reactors
and run superconducting cables to the nearest population
centers?
--
Bob Munck
Gary Coffman
>According to a fact-sparse article in the business section
>of the Washington Post, the Japanese are proposing to use
>the surplus weapons-grade plutonium from the former SU
>nuclear arsenal to generate power. They plan to build
>"burner" reactors (as contrasted to "breeder") that change
>the plutonium into "another form" unsuitable for weapons.
>The article estimated the amount of material available at
>130 tons and that this would be enough for "thirty years."
>
>Does anyone know anything more about this idea? Do the
>burner reactors share the problems of size, cost, and risk
>of conventional reactors, or is it possible to build smaller
>ones? What's the "other form" of plutonium that they
>produce? How much energy would the 130 tons produce? (It
>seems unlikely that the "thirty years" is the total energy
>needs of the former SU republics for thirty years.)
Burner reactors are just conventional reactors like the ones
we already use. The only difference is that their primary
fuel would be plutonium instead of uranium. The "other form"
spoken of is Pu240 which is unsuitable for weapons because
it generates unpredictable bursts of neutrons that would
make a weapon fizzle unexpectedly. It's very difficult to
separate out Pu240 from weapons grade Pu, so a little
effectively poisons the whole batch for weapons use.
>After all, we have a great deal of this stuff also, and it's
>awfully hard for even the most extreme of hawks to make a
>case for our needing to retain more than a hundred of our
>tens of thousands of warheads. So how about if we turn our
>underground test area into an energy park of burner reactors
>and run superconducting cables to the nearest population
>centers?
A hundred nuclear weapons is hardly a credible military deterrent.
They *would* form a terror threat to a concentrated population,
but couldn't effectively guarrantee disabling the opposition's
military power. A nation's leadership that considered it's urban
civilian population expendible wouldn't be deterred by 100 weapons.
Note that the former Soviet Union suffered over 20 million civilian
casualties in WWII, but emerged from the war as a super power.
If the 100 weapons were "doomsday" bombs of 100 Mt surrounded by
Cobalt blankets, they could make life on Earth for *everyone*
very miserable for centuries. But no rational nation would ever
*use* such weapons, so they aren't a credible deterrent. Our
weapons are fractional megaton devices intended to destroy
hardened military targets. To do so they have to hit with less
than 100 meter targeting error. There are a very large number
of 100 meter radius circles containing militarily significant
hardware in the world.
Gary