Nuclear reactors

This is the kind of hysterical thinking that condems us to forever be the servants of the middle east oil barons. "Clusters" of cancer cases happen, they can be caused by any of thousands of environmental reasons, or by nothing at all. Thousands of men have lived in hundreds of American nuclear submarines (including myself) for the last half-century with no ill effects. We are in far more intimate proximity with the nuclear reactor than any citizen who simply lives in the vicinity of a larger though similar commercial plant. No problems! That said, I would hesitate to live in the vicinity of any BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) and I would take a job a McDonald's before I would work at one; but I doubt if any commercial BWR units remain today.

I doubt that very much, it is a licensing requirement.

Vaughn

Actually Jim we removed one of THEIR enemies and if there is anything funny about it I missed out.

thanks for the clarification

Otto

I qualified in submarines back in 75, Millstone one was a BWR and might explain the increased cancer rates. I'd like to see them evacuate Long Island if one of the units at m Millstone has an oops. Licensing requirement with no reality perhaps. If any of the reactors were handled in the Navy like the Millstone complex the boat would have gotten a new chain of command and the engineer would be managing a fleet of garbage trucks in his home town.

Actually it's easier to make weapons from the Pu than from the U, all the Pu is fissionable and it's chemically different from it's contaminants. Maybe with the new supermagnets and superconductors calutrons might be practical for seperating isotopes.

The reactors on nuclear submarines use highly enriched Uranium fuel in order to minimize the reactor size. That also minimizes how much Pu is produced, but does not entirely eliminate it.

It does not eliminate other radioactive waste materials either, though the particular mix one gets is different from reactors that use less-enriched fuel.

The reactors used on submarines use highly enriched Uranium fuel. This does minimize how much Plutonium is produced. However, highly enriched Uranium is itself usable as bomb material, and the fuel rods prior to use are relatively safe to handle compared with used fuel rods. So those reators are a greater proliferation risk than commercial nuclear power plants, or would be if they were not used exclusively by the military.

produce

1) Iraq no longer has any operating reactors. Israel bombed one. We bombed it again and one other in 1991. 2) During the periods from 1991 through 1993 the IAEA working with UNSCOM dismantled and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program and mothballed the Iraqui nuclear power program. Iraq successfully hid some equipement (Calutrons) and some kilogram quantitites of enriched Uranium and Plutonium for a couple more years. Iraq was allowed to retain, under IAEA seal, about 500 tons of yellowcake it had purchased from Portugal and Niger in the 1980s and about 2 tons of 1.5% enriched Uranium (power plant fuel-grade) it had bought from Italy. Iraq also has a Uranium mine. 3) Not having any operational reactors, Iraq is not breeding anything with them. The power plant fuel was removed from Iraq by the US in 2004. 4) Iran is building a reactor courtesy of the the Russians, not sure the French provided any assistance, and the US also provided some technology back when the Shah was in power. 5) To my knowledge, Israel has not (yet) bombed anything in Iran. 6) During the 1980's Iraq bombed the Iranian reactor site. 7) Iran does not have an operating nuclear reactor and thus is not producing Plutonium. They ahve been working their way through several steps toward enriching Uranium. 8) There is no evidence that Iran is currently in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation treaty. Uranium enrichment is not a violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. 9) Civilian nuclear power industry officials in the US have insisted for decades that it is very difficult to separate weapons grade Plutonium from civlian power plant fuel rods. 10) North Korea does have operating reactors, I'm not clear on where they got the technology, possibly from the Russians, the Soviets, and/or Chinese. Probably not the French and Isreal, to my knowledge has not blown anything up in North Korea. 11) In the mid 1990s North Korea agreed to halt Plutonium production and Uranium enrichment in exchange for fuel oil and food shipments from the US. North Korea then allowed the IAEA to inspect and seal it's facilities and to install closed-circuit cameras so that the IAEA could remotely monitor thier compliance. 12) Shortly after taking office the Bush administration accused North Korea of resuming Uranium enrichment though at the time, the Bush administration did not present any evidence to suppor tthe accusation nor did the IAEA report any violations of their seals or their monitoring program. The Bush administration stopped suppyling fuel oil and food to North Korea. 13) SHortly after the Bush administration reneged on the agreement North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The IAEA reported that it's monitoring system had been disabled by the North Koreans. Since that time noble gasses have been detected offshore confirming that North Korea has resumed Plutonium production. 14) Atomic bombns are very simple devices using technology that was developed over 60 years ago. The only technologically daughnting task in the process is the production of the required fissile material. North Korea clearly ahs done that. Iran is apparantly now abloe to do so. Iraq had not been able to do so since the early 1990s.

Yes, though those that use highly enriched Uranium fuel produce a minimal concentration.

But once you have bomb-grade Uranium, it is simpler to make a crude atomic bomb than with Pu. The simplest bomb design (gun type) will not work with Pu.

Vaughn

On 14 May 2005 15:05:45 -0700, the inscrutable snipped-for-privacy@spamcop.net spake:

Cites, please? It makes no sense to knowingly bomb a nuclear pile.

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Yes, but the RBMK-1000 reactors at Chernobyl were essentially identical to the graphite pile reactors the Russians used to make thier Plutonium for weapons. It isn't clear whether the Chernobyl reactors actually WERE making weapons Plutonium - they weren't supposed to, by international treaty. But, they certainly would have made plenty of it, given the fuel they were running on and the graphite moderator.

We used very similar heavy water-cooled graphite piles for Pu production in the US, too, after the hazards of the air-cooled graphite pile were demonstrated at Windscale, Scotland in the late 50's. We had the X-10 at Oak Ridge and a couple of others that were shut down and replaced with water cooled models. If you don't perform barroom bet experiments on them, they are only moderately dangerous. If a bunch of idiots decide to settle a barroom bet by performing unauthorized experiments on an RBMK-1000 with an end-of-life fuel load, then you get Chernobyl!

Jon

I agree with you 100%. N-reactor was the only dual- role US reactor that both produced electrical power and bred Pu. The RBML-1000 could have easily been used as a Pu production reactor.

My issue is with the *fast* in fast breeder. A fast breeder by definition can't use a graphite moderator.

Cerrnobyl(sp) was a carbon pile reactor - similar to the one we ran in Washington State.

France runs Fast Breeders as we speak. We in the U.S. have from time to time fought for making one as you can use junk material on the input - and get fuel on the output.

Readers could provide fuel for the existing reactors until the Sun expanded here.

But naturally the anti-nukes nuked the idea. They wanted to burn more oil and coal.

Martin

----- Original Message ----- From: "ottomatic" Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2005 12:17 AM Subject: Re: Nuclear reactors

No Chernobyl was not a fast breeder. It was a graphite block design with cooling channels. The oldest design origonally used under Stagg Field.

Same type of reactor that caught on fire at Winscale England and burned for several days. The Chernobyl accident was caused by the release of Wienger(sp) energy.

Graphite will store energy that will only be released at elevated core tempatures. The reactor has to be cycled to the Wienger energy release tempature usually starting from a low power level.

Our Russian friends started their Wienger release at IIRC 80 percent power. That error and a couple of others grossly over temped the core. IIRC the Russians had not Wienger cycled the reactor for some time and it was long overdue and had escessive stored energy.

The devil is in the details.

Hugh

Actually, the Greens don't want nuclear power, they don't want petroleum power, and they don't want coal power.

Greens don't want hydroelectric, because it interferes with salmon spawning and alters the landscape.

Greens used to want wind power... until they discovered that birds were getting killed by the wind turbines. Now they don't want that either.

I think Greens still favor solar power. But that's only because no large, commercial solar generating facilities exist. As soon as they do, they'll find a reason to oppose those also (perhaps the solar collectors will disrupt the mating rituals of some spotted beetle).

Greens claim to like electric cars, but they never explain where the electricity is to come from. At the same time, they want to tear down all electric transmission lines because of "EMF pollution."

Greens claim to like hydrogen power, but they never explain how the hydrogen will be produced (not to mention, how it will be safely transported, stored, and used by consumers).

Greens are even opposed to wood-burning stoves and fireplaces.

Without any access to energy for growing and raising our food, cooking, heating, traveling, or protecting ourselves from nature and the elements, human civilization will cease to exist.

In short, Greens oppose the human species.

- Michael

In fact, they do indeed. There have been a number of Green spokespeople who have publicly stated that humans are a "pollution" on the planet and should die out.

I was having a discussion with a Green once, who kept spewing this line, and I had her close her eyes and hold out her hand. I placed my (unloaded..not that she knew) belly gun in the palm of her hand, and told her to put her money where her mouth was. Every good agenda has to have a first step and if she would simply put the barrel in her mouth and pull the trigger, the dying off could begin with her.

She stood there in abject panic, staring at the pistol in the palm of her hand, afraid to breath, afraid to drop it, ...like she just discovered a viper wrapped around her arm.

I asked her repeatedly if she really thought the dying off was a good idea...the upshot was that she thought others dying off was a good thing, but her dying off was a bad thing.

When I mentioned the hypocrasy of such..she started to cry in confusion. Greens tend to not be particularly bright.

She may have pee'd her pants before I took back my handgun.

Gunner

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

- John Stewart Mill

Actually not true. The nuclear power industry is restricted from using the present existing type of (non-breeder) reactor by the government. Seems they get itchy about the by-products.

Breeders would also take care of the spent fuel issue, which IMO is the single biggest problem with what we've got now.

Jim

It is far easier to make an atomic bomb wit U-235 than with Plutonium. If you start with natural Uranium, that's a different story. The point being made was that the fuel used in nuclear submarine reactors is ALREADY enriched to weapons grade and so is a greater proliferation risk than commercial power plant fuel.

While Plutonium can be separated from spent fuel using only chemical means, a sophisticated infrastructure is needed to do so if the people performing the operation are to survive. Also a bomb made with the mix of Plutonium obtained from spent fuel by chemical means only would be highly unreliable dues to spontaneous fission.

They were used successfully early in the Manhattan project.

snipped-for-privacy@spamcop.net

I requested a citation from you quite some time ago, did I not? Made any progress on that yet?

Google for 'Osirak', 'Tuweitha, and 'al Qaim'. See also the Duelfer Report. The IAEA reports on Iraq are available at the United Nations web site.

They were bombed befor fuel was loaded. Oh, I should have written "Iraq NEVER had any operating reactors" rather than "Iraq no longer has any operating reactors" the latter is rather misleading. Now Iraq has no reacotrs that are anywhere near operational.

We no longer have that option in North Korea and Iran may be able to load fuel by July of this year so we may be bombing another in a month or so.