From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@mcs.net)
Date: Sat Jun 02 2001 - 07:30:28 MDT
All this talk of plutonium is a distraction. This is the main reason why
fission power is GOOD - it makes more fuel than it uses, extending the
useful life of the natural resource immensely.
If the reprocessing facility is properly designed, and on site to the power
plant, the Pu never leaves the containment, and is never in a form suitable
for weapons anyway.
Separating Pu from spent fuel is extremely non-trivial, or Saddam and
Khaddafi would already have devices, and large chunks of the Middle East
would most likely be missing now.
The intelligent approach is the one discarded by the US and most
"developed" nations - make it into MOX fuel and use it to generate power.
Then it is gone, and no one's going to make bombs out of it. Converting it
into glass pearls and throwing it away is just plain a waste of money and
energy, and requires the spent fuel to be hauled all over the place, thus
increasing the chances for a disaster.
Chuck Kuecker
At 01:12 AM 6/2/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Not small potatoes. But Chernobyl used graphite as a neutron moderator and
>graphite burns, USA reactors use water, water doesn't burn. Also Chernobyl
>had no containment building, western reactors do. Does that make them 100%
>safe? No. But I'd rather live next to a nuclear power plant than a coal
>power plant.
>Fast breeder reactors give me the creeps but there are few plans to build
>another one.
>The thing that really worries me is the plutonium that all reactors make,
>there are now
>thousands of tons of it on this small planet. You only need about 20
>pounds to make a
>bomb but hay, nothing's perfect.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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