Re: Renewable energy alternative

From: Richard Bell (rlbell_at_csclub.uwaterloo.ca)
Date: 06/24/04 

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 19:36:10 +0000 (UTC)

In article <39e45634.0406231706.1cac2130@posting.google.com>,
Ken <wishdump@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>Are the proponents of massive expansion of nuclear energy production
>proposing it occur world wide or only within 'approved' nations? The
>limk between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is very strong.

Yes, the link between nuclear energy production and nuclear weapons is
so strong, that the Manhattan Project failed to produce any successes,
until the US built its first power reactor, sometime in the early fifties.
8-)

While the only way to generate weapons grade plutonium is to expose it
to high neutron fluxes, no high energy neutrons are necessary to produce
a uranium bomb. It may take alot of electrical power to seperate the
U235 from the U238, but burning coal is more than adequite to supply that
electricity. Plutonium does accumulate in the fuel assemblies of a power
reactor, but to get weapons grade plutonium, you have to extract the Pu239
from the fuel assemblies before it absorbs another neutron to become Pu240.
Too much Pu240 will cause the bomb to fizzle. Seperating U235 from U238
is hard enough, seperating Pu239 from Pu240 is much worse.

For reactors in less trusted nations, the fuel is not prepared there, and
it is not reprocessed there. Finally, the assemblies are left in the reactor
until the Pu is either burned up by fissioning, or converted to Pu240. As
an added incentive to good behavior, the trusted nation that supplies the fuel
elements to the distrusted nation deals with the radioactive waste.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has helped determine who might
be developing illegal nuclear weapons programs, even if it does little
to stop or prevent them.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Renewable energy alternative
    ... >>limk between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is very strong. ... the link between nuclear energy production and nuclear weapons is ... > until the US built its first power reactor, ...
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