Re: Can hydrogen deliver?

From: Tim O'Flaherty (pinwheels_Fudge__at_gwi.net)
Date: 10/18/04 

Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:12:58 -0400

"Eric Gisin" <ericgisin@graffiti.net> wrote in message
news:ckuudb01kl1@enews1.newsguy.com...
> "Tim O'Flaherty" <pinwheels_Fudge_@gwi.net> wrote in message
> news:lrKdncRFWsN-UO_cRVn-tw@gwi.net...
> >
> > > Clueless. You cannot make weapons from nuclear waste.
> >
> > Tell North Korea,
> >
> >
http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/bc/Qnkorea-nuclear-rods-use.RE
> > _T_DO2.html
> >
> > [SEOUL, Oct 2 (AFP) - North Korea indicated Thursday that it may have
> > already begun using weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods to
produce
> > more nuclear bombs.]
> >
> Then the reactor is not used for power production.
>
> They keep the rods in for weeks instead of years, producing Pu239 from
U238,
> with very little hi-level waste.
>

So are you saying it is impossible to make weapons from civilian nuke waste?
How about from Pu reprocessed from civilian nuke waste? "You can't get
there from here" However if you first go there......

http://www.wise-paris.org/index.html?/english/ournewsletter/19/page2.html&/e
nglish/frame/menu.html&/english/frame/band.html
 [ The reprocessing of irradiated fuels at La Hague makes France the world’
s largest producer of "civilian" plutonium ]

Even if it all made it into Mox which seems unlikely since we still have all
the military Pu to get rid of, it still isn't necessarily safe from
proliferation .....

http://www.wise-paris.org/index.html?/english/ournewsletter/19/page2.html&/e
nglish/frame/menu.html&/english/frame/band.html

[Having obtained a MOX fuel assembly by diversion or theft, a sophisticated
terrorist group would have little difficulty in making a crude nuclear
explosive. The necessary steps of separating the plutonium, converting it
into PuO2, converting the oxide into plutonium metal, and assembling the
metal or PuO2 together with conventional explosive are not technologically
demanding and do not require materials from specialist suppliers. The
information required to carry out these operations is freely available in
the open literature.]

[ The procedures required for the chemical separation of plutonium from
uranium in MOX fuel pellets would be simple and well within the
technological capabilities of a moderately sophisticated terrorist
organization (6). The preparation of Sarin for the attack on the Tokyo
underground (7) involved considerably more sophisticated chemistry and
greater acute danger to the operators than that required for the separation
of plutonium from MOX. The chemistry is less sophisticated than that
required for the illicit preparation of designer drugs.

None of the concepts involved in understanding how to separate the plutonium
are difficult; a second-year undergraduate would be able to devise a
suitable procedure by reading standard reference works, consulting the open
literature in scientific journals and by searching the World Wide Web.

Sufficient plutonium to check and refine procedures can easily be extracted
from mud collected from the Ravenglass estuary and contaminated by
discharges from the Sellafield reprocessing plant (6) while depleted uranium
can be purchased in several forms from most suppliers of laboratory
chemicals. With small quantities of these test materials and a simple
laboratory it would only take a chemistry graduate with some experience in
actinide chemistry a relatively short time to refine the procedures outlined
in this article. It would be easy to do this without arousing suspicion by
using environmental chemistry as a front. ]

You responded to my post with: "Clueless. You cannot make weapons from
nuclear waste." The discussion at that point was reprocessing which
clearly CAN yield materials suitable for weapons. So with reprocessing we
have reduced HLW volume but also increased capital costs and separated Pu
with the greater security risks. Without reprocessing we have an ever
growing number of Yucca Mt style repositories but the Pu will be protected
by the presence of other fission products that preclude casual handling.

Regards,
Tim O