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The surprising afterlife of unwanted atom bombs
- neonate 4y agohttps://archive.ph/dLR60 https://archive.ph/dLR60
- johnea 4y agoWhy is this surprising to anyone? Did someone think the plutonium was going to disappear? This is why ALL nuclear power is a disaster. Even after this material is used to boil water for a few years, it's still highly radioactive for millennia.
- pinewurst 4y agoThat’s why we should be using reprocessed MOX fuel not once through and bury.
- PaulHoule 4y agoExactly. The plutonium in nuclear waste is not waste, it's a fuel at least as valuable as ²³⁵U. Reprocessing not only reuses the Pu, with fast reactors it can be used to convert almost all ²³⁸U to ²³⁹Pu which is a valuable fuel. This allows us to get 60x more energy out of natural uranium -- we can stop enriching uranium and fuel our civilization for hundreds of years based on the "waste" that is already above. The waste that remains after reprocessing in a fast cycle are fission products that will decay so much in 1000 years that the waste is less radioactive than the original uranium ore.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoWhat's the concentration of Pu in the output of a modern high burnup reactor? What is the ratio of that to the concentration of fissile products needed for fuel? Cs137 and Sr90 lasting 'mere' centuries isn't helping your case any. Especially when existing MOX programs spill more than Fukushima and TMI combined as standard operating procedure.
- FredPret 4y agoWhen working on a timescale of 10E2 or 10E3 years, it seems practical to me to bury it in a sealed drum in a concrete cube inside a stable mountain. With larger timescales, my understanding is that the mountain itself might disrupt the cube + drums, opening Pandora’s box. Perhaps an actual geologist can weigh in and correct me.
- PaulHoule 4y agoPeople have built structures on Earth that have lasted 1000 years so that is in our experience. It seems likely that people will still be able to read English in the next 1000 years. It is in our realm of experience. 100,000 not so much. All kinds of things can go wrong. It is expected for instance that as Yucca Mountain cools down water will infiltrate. Uranium is water soluble so some will migrate in the direction of Death Valley. Uranium is toxic the same way lead and mercury are and that is more dangerous than the radiotoxicity of uranium. A "once through" repository will contain valuable plutonium and uranium. People might want to drill into it 10,000 years from now because they want to use it as a power source or to make nuclear explosives. For that matter we could change our minds and decide we want to recycle the waste in Yucca Mountain after all so we have to be able to retrieve the waste in the first 100 years. A waste repository used for fission products can use highly secure but difficult to reverse approaches such as encapsulation in a salt dome or burial in areas at sea where sedimentation is taking place where waste would get deeper and deeper year after year and be blocked from migration by the tendency of ions to get trapped in clay.
- FredPret 4y agoI like the sedimentation plan. After sedimentation it’ll get pushed down below the crust right?
- philipkglass 4y agoThat was originally the plan for surplus weapons plutonium. In 2007 the United States started building a MOX facility at Savannah River for turning the old weapons plutonium into power reactor fuel. Its cost and time to completion ballooned far beyond original estimates and it was ultimately canceled. "Cost estimate for MOX facility at Savannah River Site swells to $47.5 billion" https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/22/cost-estimate-mox-facility-savannah-river-site-swells-475-billion/14371088007/ https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2015/04/22/cost-... "US MOX facility contract terminated" https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-MOX-facility-contract-terminated https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-MOX-facility-cont... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_Fabrication_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_F...
- shamskazi 4y agoDo we have a better alternative than nuclear power right now?
- _8j50 4y agoWhat is better? Hydrogen and Hydroelectric might be cheaper in the short term, nuke plants are very expensive. Most countries can't get nuke plants either even if they can afford them, you can't sell it to them like you can with hydrogen.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoYes. Renewables with no storage can cover 30-50% of world energy (not just electricity). Nuclear tops out at around 5% if we go all in now at around the same total cost. Storage technologies exist for the rest at about the cost of nuclear (but with actual ability to scale), but are not necessary en masse yet and are likely to drop in price by the time they are.
- rgmerk 4y agoGoing to rehash debates that we've been having for many years, but the short answer is yes. Existing renewable tech + storage will do the job just fine in most of the world, and at lower cost than nuclear.
- kyleyeats 4y agoCan we ban smug feigned incredulity posts already?
- i386 4y ago
- fuoqi 4y agoFootprint of spent nuclear fuel is laughably small when compared to other industrial processes and it can be reduced even further by using fast-neutron "burner" reactors. Why do you complain about nuclear and not about "immortal" heavy metals, which have several orders of magnitude bigger impact on ecology and human health?
- moffkalast 4y agoMeanwhile microplastics have gotten into just about every drop of water on the planet and will take hundreds of years to disintegrate.
- canadianfella 4y ago
- simondotau 4y ago> highly radioactive for millennia Something can be highly radioactive for a short time, moderately radioactive for a long time, or slightly radioactive for a very long time. If something is “radioactive for millenia” then it’s probably so mild that you could store in your underpants without I’ll effects.
- Schroedingersat 4y agohttps://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/cdcb8173-3843-4e4a-9d62-955e1d068bb7/activity-of-high-level-waste-from-one-tonne-of-used-fuel.png.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/getmedia/cdcb8173-3843-4e4a-9d... Have a little snack consisting of 1 gram of americium and 7 grams of neptunium 237, or store an equivalently active gamma emitter in your underpants.
- a1369209993 4y agoTo be fair, something can be highly radioactive for a short time, moderately radioactive for a long time, AND slightly radioactive for a very long time, assuming there are at least three different radioisotopes involved. Also, it's a exponential decay curve, so something that's slightly radioactive a very long time from now is probably still fairly dangerous right now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ProAm 4y ago> it's still highly radioactive for millennia So it space and were actively trying to send people up there to live and colonize.
- pencilguin 4y agoLiterally no one is actively trying to colonize anywhere off Earth. Some people lie about it when not too busy lying about other things.
- chasil 4y agoThe Banqiao Dam hydropower failure killed 145,000 people. No nuclear accident has caused this level of damage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam Coal is far, far worse than this.
- FredPret 4y agoNot to mention the disruption on the river ecosystem. The size of our generation capacity is as important as its emissions.
- selfmodruntime 4y agoContrary to a lot of people I know, I think nuclear weapons are largely a good thing and the reason we‘ve had peace in Europe for 80 years. I will stand by my claim that Ukraine wouldn‘t be in their situation if they had not willingly disarmed themselves. Of course I wish that we wouldn‘t need nuclear warheads capable of total annihilation to keep peace, but I‘m afraid that‘s just unrealistic.
- gregwebs 4y agoThe idea that Ukraine could have defended themselves with nukes comes from not understanding what was going on when the USSR fell apart. The nukes were placed in Ukraine by Russia since Ukraine was a border region of the USSR. Ukraine did not have control of the nukes. Russia probably would have attacked them early on and destroyed the nukes or taken over the country before they could ever weaponize them and find the billions of dollars needed to maintain a nuclear fleet while they were suffering hyperinflation. https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/could-ukraine-have-retained-soviet-nuclear-weapons/ https://nucleardiner.wordpress.com/2022/02/06/could-ukraine-... https://www.icanw.org/did_ukraine_give_up_nuclear_weapons https://www.icanw.org/did_ukraine_give_up_nuclear_weapons https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2015.1026091 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2015.1...
- throwaway821909 4y agoThis is important to say - but I guess the question still stands, if they had somehow secretly developed nukes in say 2008, would they have been left alone? (and should we let everyone have them for world peace? I don't think I like those chances)
- chasil 4y agoThey have several nuclear reactors. How difficult would it be to divert fuel and processed daughter nuclei to create a few weapons?
- 4y ago
- aidenn0 4y agoThe US has been moving away from high-yield bombs for a while; here's the highest yield bombs in the US arsenal and the dates of their retirement: B41: 25MT, retired in 1976 B53: 9MT retired in 2011 B83: 1.2MT retired 2022
- chasd00 4y agoin the world of nuclear weapons i didn't think 1.2MT was that particularly high of a yield. Wikipedia leads me to believe that the majority of nuclear weapons deployed in the US are in the 100-500KT range. Given that yields are shrinking (i assume globally as well) I wonder how that impacts fallout prediction maps that probably haven't been updated in a long time. Also, assuming the number of warheads is staying constant or going down then the total energy on tap is going down too. I guess increases in stealth, detection, and accuracy make up for the decrease in power when it comes to a nuclear deterrent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield
- aidenn0 4y agoA bomb's blast radius increases with the cube-root of its energy, so 10 500KT bombs cover a larger ground area than one 5MT bomb; my understanding is that this was a big reason for having more smaller bombs compared to fewer larger bombs. Despite its dearth of tactical (or strategic) uses, the B41 is a marvel of engineering assuming it does what it claims; 25MT from 5T of mass is crazy efficient.
- jeffdn 4y agoIt's mostly increases in targeting and accuracy -- in the era of air-dropped bombs, and early ICBMs and cruise missiles, having a reasonable probability of kill on a hardened target required an absolutely enormous warhead. With the minuscule circular error probables of modern weapons, the "city killers" of the 1950s and '60s simply aren't necessary in modern nuclear doctrine. As you mentioned, fallout is greatly decreased by the reduction in warhead size. Additionally, as airbursts are more effective at causing damage, they have taken precedence over ground bursts, and have a substantial impact on the reduction in fallout. The concept of a nuclear winter is primarily related to the expected firestorms in cities and forests, which would throw colossal amounts of soot into the air. With infrastructure devastated by the strategic weapons exchange, the resources to effectively fight the fires weren't expected to be in place, so it was thought they'd burn out of control. While there has been debate over how realistic it is that a nuclear winter would occur from a strategic nuclear exchange, nobody doubts that it would be catastrophic.
- harimau777 4y agoWhen I studied nuclear weapons history in college, the professor mentioned that an important purpose of decommissioning nuclear devices was to provide jobs for the engineers that built them so that they aren't financially tempted to build them for an enemy.
- teachrdan 4y agoAnother incentive is that, since it's invariably older devices that are decommissioned, you are getting rid of the most primitive and unstable weapons in your stock.
- devoutsalsa 4y agoI met an drunk ex navy guy at a bar about 15 years ago. He talked about how certain USA allies wouldn’t allow ships carrying nuclear weapons to dock in their ports. He said however their was no restriction on carrying the parts necessary to assemble nuclear weapons. So maybe they take out a screw on all of the warheads before sailing into port.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago>to provide jobs for the engineers that built them so that they aren't financially tempted to build them for an enemy Isn't the threat of treason/jail enough of a deterrent for engineers not to build nuclear weapons for other countries? Kind of like a beefed up NDA.
- hdifbhffuf 4y agothreat of state violence only work against the poor. after you join the elite you need market forces to be controled.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoSince when are nuclear engineers "the elite"? Last time I checked the salaries never approached Bezos lifestyle level nor do they have any social or political influence. Should you get caught developing nuclear weapons for another state, what's stopping the US government from going after you Snowden style, cancelling your passport, seizing your assets, extradition orders to every country?
- beloch 4y ago"One weapon that nuclear planners want to make from recycled parts and designs is the W93 — billed as the first new warhead for the nation’s nuclear arsenal since the Cold War." ... “It’s important to keep these parts around,” said Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear expert who held federal posts for three decades before leaving government service in 2005. “If we had the manufacturing complex we once did, we wouldn’t have to rely on the old parts.” He added that other nuclear powers can and do make new atomic parts. --------------- If you read "The Bomb", by Fred Kaplan, there is a telling scene in which Trump was briefed by the Pentagon on the state of the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal. Trump was shown a chart that showed the dramatic drop in the total number of nuclear warheads in the arsenals of both the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. has peaked at over 32,000 in 1969, but was down to about 2,500 in the active arsenal. This was presented as a good thing. The U.S.'s warhead count had dropped dramatically because they had phased out tactical warheads intended for battlefield use. Such warheads were hazardous to maintain and the military had eagerly retired them once they were obviated by more modern conventional weapons that could do the same job with less collateral damage. The nuclear warheads that the U.S. still had were tailored to meet modern requirements and were far better suited to that task than 1969's arsenal would have been. Trump didn't understand that being able to do the same job with fewer nuclear warheads was good, and told the group that he wanted more warheads. He wanted the 32,000 the U.S. had once had and was not satisfied by arguments to the contrary. This prompted secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, to comment that Trump was a "fucking moron" shortly after he left the meeting. Trump would become obsessed with this number and repeatedly ask for more nuclear warheads to be made on several later occasions. The B83 had the largest yield of any nuclear weapon in the U.S.'s arsenal, but it's an obsolete weapon. If the U.S. gets into a hot nuclear war, they're unlikely to rely on bomber planes with gravity bombs such as the B83, like they would have in the 60's. Such a war would likely be over before they even got to their targets. If the U.S. is retiring the B83 now, it's because they can destroy the same targets in far less time with other weapon systems. Dismantling weapons such as the B83 does reduce the risk of accidents, theft, and loss, even if the components go onto shelves for potential reuse in new weapons. However, one should not make the mistake of thinking that the U.S. is, in any way, losing capabilities here. Let's just hope those capabilities are never actually tested.
- vagrantJin 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qwerty456127 4y agoWhy not just donate the redundant bombs to Ukraine?
- leoh 4y agoRelated: this incredible essay from the LRB years ago about working in a nuclear arms factory https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n15/mike-kirby/diary https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n15/mike-kirby/diary
- YakBizzarro 4y agoHere a nice thing of nuclear warhead maintenance/decommisioning of nuclear warhead. The article discuss mostly about the plutonium cores, but modern weapons uses triutium to boost the yield, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosted_fission_weapon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosted_fission_weapon. Tritium is faintly radioactive, and it decays over time in the stable helium-3. This is a quite rare isotope of helium, in comparison to the much abundant He4. He3 is much needed in dilition refrigerators, the big machines often seen in advestisment of quantum computer. So such activities on nuclear weapons are the source of a critical and scarce ingredient for quantum computing!
- pencilguin 4y agoLikewise, for fusion experiments. I see assertions in planning documents that the supply of tritium on hand is wholly inadequate for planned research operations on ITER, never mind its successor imagined to be built in such a way as to be able to drive a steam turbine, or likewise SPARC or its imagined successor. I.e. there is not enough for either program, never mind both. And Helion's D-3He reactor would need lots of 3He, and be utterly dependent on making more, itself. It takes 12 years for half of your stock of tritium to spontaneously become the needed 3He, and no possibility of hurrying it along.
- pencilguin 4y agoThis seems to make claims of a shortage of plutonium for deep-space RTG power systems into lies. It seems like there is plenty of Pu for all the deep space missions we could otherwise afford.
- philipkglass 4y agoThe plutonium for deep space missions powered by RTG systems is plutonium 238. The plutonium from surplus weapons is plutonium 239. They are made in different ways and they are not interchangeable.
- pencilguin 4y agoI am corrected.