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The author of the post is replying to an NYT article [0] complaining that the US doesn't actually destroy nukes, but rather aims to recycle materials and so sto
by loteck 4y ago
The author of the post is replying to an NYT article [0] complaining that the US doesn't actually destroy nukes, but rather aims to recycle materials and so stores those materials in the meantime while awaiting need for those materials. This makes it seem like maybe the US is just being opportunisitic and not actually disarming.
Exceprt from the blog:
Second, it's extremely difficult to destroy plutonium effectively (some weapons are built out of highly enriched uranium and that can just be diluted in U-238 and used for reactors). Obviously, you can melt it down, but that just leaves you with a chunk of subcritical plutonium which someone can re-form into a new weapon. The plutonium is highly toxic, so you can't just grind it up and scatter it around without causing huge environmental impacts (watch Chernobyl if you want to get a sense of what I'm talking about here). You can't burn it because then you're going to have oxidized plutonium in the air, which you don't want people inhaling, and while you can of course use chemicals to dissolve it, vitrify it, etc. you're still left with an equivalent amount of plutonium, just bonded to some other stuff, and so it's just a matter of (potentially highly unpleasant) chemistry to get it back out again. In other words, it's precisely the properties of plutonium that make it attractive to build nuclear weapons out of that make it so hard to dispose of.
It's also very difficult to store because while an individual weapon may not be a critical mass, if you have tens or hundreds of weapons you have to worry about them getting close enough to worry about accidentally assembling a critical mass just from proximity, which, would of course, be bad.
[0] https://archive.ph/QCaov https://archive.ph/QCaov
- xxpor 4y agoNow obviously this would cost a shitload of cash, but could you dispose of it by building a reactor? Said reactor would consume it as the fuel, and so you'd end up with fission products instead of plutonium. The costs, security, and the fact that reactors don't use up 100% of their fuel would of course be an issue...
- ekr____ 4y agoOP here. Yes, this seems to be the best available approach. You apparently can burn it in regular reactors if you mix it with uranium in what's called "mixed oxide fuel" (MOX). However, there are a bunch of logistical hiccups that make all of this a giant pain.
- philipkglass 4y agoIn 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_Fabrication_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site#MOX_Fuel_F... "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...
- PaulHoule 4y agoThe US was planning to burn nuclear weapons plutonium in the Palo Verde plant in Arizona which are a European design designed to use MOX fuel from the very beginning. The hang up is that they were unable to build a MOX fabrication facility in the US even with the help of the French, who have run a successful MOX plant. I haven't seen a detailed explanation of what exactly went wrong, but it seems challenging to build a MOX facility to operate under US worker safety regulation. The trouble is that quality MOX fuel is made with a high energy ball mill that alloys uranium and plutonium oxides by making plutonium particles that are potentially deadly if you inhale them.
- mrguyorama 4y agoAren't you suggesting that the french have more lax worker protections than the US? I would be very skeptical of that claim. Now, maybe it was """hard""" (expensive) to properly protect your workers and so it didn't make business sense, and that for some reason is enough to kill most good things in the US
- PaulHoule 4y agoThey have a different viewpoint. My understanding is that the factory where Karen Silkwood worked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimarron_Fuel_Fabrication_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimarron_Fuel_Fabrication_Site was unable to eliminate plutonium particles completely from the work spaces so that workers had to wear breathing protection 100% of the time at work. It may be the French are OK with this but the US is not. Britain built a MOX facility that was unable to make quality fuel https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/minister-admits-total-failure-of-sellafield-mox-plant-793489.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/minister-admi... The Russians were concerned enough about the primary route to MOX failing that they developed an alternate "vibropacking" route that they didn't need in the end. Russia is now recycling MOX in the BN-800 reactor.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoMSR MSR MSR aka LFTR LFTR LFTR see my comment below. Hint: MSRs use 99-100% of fuel.
- adql 4y agoIt's mostly political problem of "it's safer to store it in some bunker than to literally ship nuclear bomb material to power plants". At least according to wikipedia there are reactors in US that were built to also take MOX but it's just not done. And process of production/reprocessing also is harder. I'm sure it would be far cheaper to burn it than store otherwise.
- citizenpaul 4y ago>safer to store it in some bunker That doesn't even make sense. Nearly all the fuel reactors use is shipped in anyway, only 5% of the US fuel is from the US itself. How is holding tones of weapon making stuff in one convenient location safer than ultimately getting rid of it through burning it up?
- fluoridation 4y agoThe stuff that normally gets shipped is not as enriched as weapons-grade fuel. For security concerns, one would not want to ship highly enriched uranium, so repurposing would involve "diluting" it at the storage site prior to shipment.
- cogman10 4y agoTo add to this, a nuclear bomb is nothing more than collecting enough weapons grade fuel into one location. Once you have a critical mass, kaboom! Nuclear reactor fuel, on the other hand, even if it is stolen can't do much more than get really hot. It's not possible (without a lot of expensive post processing) to turn regular reactor fuel into a bomb.
- kennend3 4y agoYou did not read the article, or understand nuclear weapons at all, correct? " OK, so we just need to collect enough material and presto, we have a bomb. Unfortunately, it's not so simple: Getting enough of the right material is hard. As soon as you start to assemble the material into a critical mass, it starts reacting, and so if you do it wrong, the energy emission will cause it to explosively disassemble, which isn't fun if you're nearby, but produces a much smaller bang than you were looking for (a "fizzle"). " A nuclear bomb is a massively complex adventure in timed explosions to get the "lens" to work. This is after you figure out what size/shape to make the "pit". Depending on the reactor design, regular reactor fuel often contains plutonium which is rather easy to separate because it is chemically different vs other elements in the used fuel waste. Again this is covered in the article.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 4y agoGiven the difficulty and expense of building a reactor, I wonder if it would be cheaper to just start firing it into outer space. I'm guessing we could engineer a nigh indestructible container capable of surviving rocket malfunctions [without leaking]. How many Falcon 9 launches would it take...
- xxpor 4y agoIt's the same problem as doing nuclear power in space: if the rocket blows up during the launch, or even fails normally and just falls somewhere, it would be VERY VERY bad.
- rx_tx 4y agoKurzgesagt has a good cute video on the topic (tl;dr you need a lot of Falcon 9s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us2Z-WC9rao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us2Z-WC9rao
- nvader 4y agoTl;Dr you need a backup planet
- implements 4y ago> It's also very difficult to store because while an individual weapon may not be a critical mass, if you have tens or hundreds of weapons you have to worry about them getting close enough to worry about accidentally assembling a critical mass just from proximity, which, would of course, be bad. Plutonium is an alpha emitter, and I believe the pits are plutonium alloyed with gallium and plated with gold to manage that and reduce chemical interactions with their immediate environment - there’s no “critical mass” storage problem, I think. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon)#Material_considerations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_(nuclear_weapon)#Material_...]
- smaddox 4y agoPlutonium is definitely able to go critical: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core A plutonium sphere of roughly 10 kg is sufficient.
- SlickNixon 4y agoI believe the original question was whether storage of multiple weapons in the same vicinity could result in accidental assembly of a critical mass, which appears to be something the author of the original blog came up with on their own.
- ttyprintk 4y agoI think modern US designs are fusion boosted, making them immune to predetonation. Older experiments are increasingly dangerous, especially high-yield uranium guns.
- SlickNixon 4y agoFission, boosted, or fusion all start with a fission bomb with a possibility to fizzle.
- 4y ago