Friday, July 6, 2018

Something about Plutonium...


...the one ring that would bind them all.


To the best of my knowledge, Plutonium remains at the pinnacle of fissile materials. It is highly combustible and highly toxic.

It is actively synthesized in breeder reactors and isolated in reprocessing in many countries:
International Panel on Fissile Materials. Fissile Materials Stocks http://fissilematerials.org/home/fissile_material_stocks.html
Production of military fissile materials continues in India, which is producing plutonium and HEU for naval propulsion, Pakistan, which produces plutonium and HEU for weapons, Israel, which is believed to produce plutonium. North Korea has the capability to produce weapon-grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. 
France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, and India operate civilian reprocessing facilitiesthat separate plutonium from spent fuel of power reactors. China is operating a pilot civilian reprocessing facility. 
Twelve countries - Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands (all three are in the URENCO consortium), Japan, Argentina, Brazil, India, Pakistan, and Iran - operate uranium enrichment facilities. North Korea is also believed to have an operational uranium enrichment plant.
Stockpiling of plutonium is an entrenched, albeit insane, "defense" strategy:
International Panel on Fissile Materials: US International Panel on Fissile MaterialsThe current stock of fissile materials in the United States is estimated to include 87.8 tonnes of plutonium and 574.5 tonnes of highly-enriched uranium (some of which is in irradiated naval fuel). The United States has no separated plutonium produced by a civilian program.
Everyone knows its hazardous, yet cannot escape the imperatives for its production and utilization:
Yusuke Ogawa (2018, July 6). Japan’s stockpile of plutonium will be cut through fuel recycling. The Asahi Shimbun July 6, 2018 http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201807060037.html
The fiscal 2017 edition of the white paper clearly says that the plutonium-thermal (pluthermal) power generation method, in which plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel is burned at normal reactors, is the only realistic method to reduce the stockpile....
...The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, which coordinates the operations of Japan’s 10 electric power companies, reportedly told JAEC that it will aim to introduce the pluthermal power generation method in 16 to 18 reactors. This method will ensure that plutonium that is stored overseas and plutonium that is to be extracted at the Rokkasho nuclear fuel reprocessing plant will be recycled.
If you read this article carefully you will see that even while stockpiles are seen as demanding utilization, more extraction remains planned.

It is a dark addiction.

Will we ever be free of it?



6 comments:

  1. They are disconnected from reality. Have to be.

    ReplyDelete
  2.  Ken on July 6, 2018 at 11:24 pm
    Your comment is awaiting moderation. 
    Our health in the USA IS BADLY DEGRADED. i have seen towns with nuclear insults in the west like Monticello Utah. Like Los Alamos New Mexico. Towns by Vegas. FALLON nevada. Uranium towns in colorado.

    Towns, Down wind from Nuke Blasts. Major nuclear dumps. Uranium mines and mills everywhere. Bombs detonated underground to free natural gas. In those small isolated towns, one can see the future of mankind. Huge cancer clusters. Multiple birth defects , easily visible in the larger than usual, special ed classes. It has occurred for 60 years in towns of 6000 people or less. In tricities and wala wala washington . In east idaho. In west wyoming. On the navajo res in northern Arizina
    Towns with much higher than normal incidence of down sydrome, fragile x sydrome, Autism, cf, cerebral palsey, genetic illness passed down into future generation. Ungodly high incidences of childhoud cancer.

    3/4 of population of small towns, with thyroid disease. Huge swaths of men, with prostate cancer. Many people dying in middle age or earlier, from lung cancers, ovarian cancers, breast cancers. Half a graduating high school class wiped out before age 55!

    The united states is already the most radionuclide polluted country in the world. Nuclear catastrophes, like the nuclear waste on fire at the Saint Louis Dump. Massive amounts of plutonium, cesium 237, now contaminating the Columbia River, from Ruined tanks at Hanford. Lake mead and the Colorado full of poison from bomb detonations, mines, mills, fracking.

    Multiple nuke reactors east of the Mississippi and in the Midwest, are leaking like a sieve. They are dumping large amounts of tritium hydroxide, and other radionuclides into the envronment.

    Trump wants more plutonium, so he has kicked in a third wave, of extraction, contamination, and massive pollution into the USA. TRUMP has deregulated and prolonged old dangerous nuclear reactors. That will be another big wave of nuclear pollution in the good ol USA.

    Then there are the catastrophes going on and, those likely to occur. There are dangerous waste shipments coursing, through the US interstate system, to be parked in massive shallow excavations, over aquifers in the USA.

    There were two huge casks of nuke waste that exploded in Idaho resently.
    Idaho will start a large fast breeder again soon. One like the smaller ones, that melted down in idaho before, and at santa susana in california.

    Waves of contamination all over the usa  are more likely now, than ever before.

    There is a potential 3 or 4 meltdowns like three mile island or worse

    Potential of Fuel pools catching fire.

    The potential nuclear waste accidents on hiway systems. More cask explosions

    More Wipp like accidents are likely now. There are 100, old beat-up reactors, across the USA. They have fuel pools chocked full of hi level-nuclear waste.

    Soon 3/4 of the towns in america, could be like the cancer clusters, in the usa, in the small towns, I started this piece talking about those small, sparsely populated, isolated towns in the west, where you can see the results of years of nuclear pollution.  There are higher incendents of things like leukemia mortality around nuclear reactors in more populated areas. but, the gross effects of massive nuclear pollution are not as apparent or easy to qualify and,  quantify, in larger, more densely populated areas. That will change as  gross nuclear and radionuclide saturation and pollution increases. Things like chernobyl heart in belaruss will be more apparent.

    Most of the US will be like mayak, like pripyat, like much of belarus soon. It will be Like much of northern Japan and probably Tokyo soon. The massive gulper money mongers and politicians do not care

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cesium 137 sorry

      Delete
    2. Stolen


      https://www.opednews.com/articles/2/57-Unpatriotic-Ways-the-Co-by-Harvey-Wasserman-Pelosi-Nancy_Schumer-Charles_Trump-Putin-180704-349.html

      Delete
    3. There is no we and, it is not an addiction. It is criminal. Trump appointed uranium criminal to replace pruitt. Japan will not last much longer from fukushima. Life on earth is dying from nuclear pollution

      Delete
  3. Busby on internal radionuclide toxicology

    https://youtu.be/hOgl7XdB8OQ

    ReplyDelete

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