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Britain has plutonium for 17,000 Nagasaki bombs

Reuters

LONDON - Britain has amassed a stockpile of more than 100 metric tons of plutonium -- enough for 17,000 bombs of the size that flattened Japan's Nagasaki in 1945, a report from the country's top science institution said on Friday.

The toxic stockpile, which has doubled in the last decade, comes mainly from reprocessing of spent uranium fuel from the country's nuclear power plants, so to stop it growing the practice must end, the Royal Society said.

"There should be no more separation of plutonium once current contracts have been fulfilled," said the report "Strategy options for the UK's separated plutonium."

Plutonium, one of the most radiotoxic materials known, is produced when spent uranium fuel from power stations is reprocessed to retrieve reusable uranium.

It can be processed into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel but it can also be used in nuclear weapons and so poses a security threat.

"Just over six kilograms of plutonium was used in the bomb that devastated Nagasaki," said Geoffrey Boulton, the report's lead author. "We must take measures to ensure that this very dangerous material does not fall into the wrong hands."

Paradoxically, the Royal Society said the safest option was to leave spent fuel as it was when it came out of the reactor because it was so radioactive that it was far harder to handle.

The second best was to produce and burn MOX pellets and then leave them unreprocessed.

"Spent fuel is more radioactive and therefore harder to handle than plutonium -- and more difficult to use in nuclear weapons because it would need to be reprocessed first," the report said.

Public consultation

The report comes as the government is in the middle of a public consultation process on whether new nuclear power stations should be built to replace the ageing existing stations which provide 20 percent of the country's electricity.

All but one of the stations will be closed within 15 years due to old age.

The government has provisionally said new stations are needed on the grounds of energy security and in the fight against climate change because nuclear power emits little of the carbon dioxide that is blamed for global warming.

Environmental campaigners have complained that the consultation is a sham with questions and information presentations heavily loaded in favor of new nuclear stations, and threatened new court action against the process.

Some academics too have expressed disquiet over the "form and function" of the process.

The government was forced to embark on a new consultation process by a court ruling in February that described the original public consultation as seriously flawed.

Many questions remain over the role and safety of nuclear power, although public opinion has moved grudgingly in favor particularly when cast in the light of climate change.

Not least of these is disposal of nuclear waste.

Last year CoRWM, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, recommended burying the waste unrecoverably.

But the government now has to find a site that meets the combined criteria of being accessible for disposal, very difficult for illicit retrieval, geologically stable and acceptable to the local community.

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Ironduke

Does anybody know if plutonium can be used to generate electricity? Dale?

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Desdemona

Oh my! It is a quandary what to do with all that waste. Britain is not alone. Here in the USA we've been busy spending our dollars researching Yucca Mountain in Las Vegas, NV as an underground waste storage facility. We even have a cute little cartoon illustration. Image:Yucca Mountain Johnny.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Currently $9 billion invested so far on research. Incidentally, I see no Yucca trees growing on the mountain in any photos. $9 billion would have been a lot of money for oil, gas and coal research and exploration, eh?

I wonder what North Korea and Iran do with their spent plutonium?

This is an old link but still most likely truthful in that "It would take more than twice all the water in all the lakes and rivers of the world to dissolve the spent nuclear fuel on hand by the year 2000 to the maximum permissible levels of radioactive pollution. Therefore, the material must be safely stored in a near-perfect containment system. There is as yet no proved safe method for permanently disposing of high level radioactive waste."
-Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

Nuclear power can't replace cheap oil.

I am Glad the US and Britain are allies with so much plutonium in our midst. Hey, maybe in 10 or 20 years we could rent you some space in Vegas for your storage. Have a martini, gamble and see the shows while you are there to drop it off.

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Dreadnought

I wonder what North Korea and Iran do with their spent plutonium?

I dont think you really want to know the answer to that question.

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dalem

The article mentions MOX fuel, which I assume is suitable for fission plants. I don't know if it's suitable for the curent type of nuke plants though.

I think one of the problems is that plutonium, aside from being nuke-a-licious, is also one of the most poisonous physical materials on the planet. Can't fool with it very much and expect to live.

-dale

Dreadnought

It also ranks as the heaviest metal (natural occuring) on the perioic table I believe. Given its weight and what it is used for it is not hard to imagine why it is so powerful in size to explosion or implosion comparrison ratio.

FullTank

The human body or any other living creature on planet earth has a body composition somewhat similiar to the constituents of elements found on planet earth.

Thus you find iron, sodium, potassium etc in various percentages in the human body. These elements are abundandtly present on planet earth and the human body has a level of tolerence to it. In fact a certain intake of these elements are mandatory for survival.

Plutonium on the other hand is extremely rare in nature. Correpondingly the human body has zero tolerance for it. Even 1 gm of plutonium is deadly to a human being.

dalem

I believe it's something like the equivalent of half a grain of table salt getting into your body is enough to kill you quickly.

-dale

ArmchairGeneral

Do you mean atomic weight or density? Osmium is the densest metal. Uranium has the largest atomic weight of a naturally occurring element. Plutonium is heavier, but it is not found in nature, nor is it the heaviest of the man-made elements.

edit: I lied. Plutonium is found in extraordinarily small amounts in nature.

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ArmchairGeneral

The elemental composition of the human body is quite different from that of the earth. Carbon is relatively rare on earth, but dominant in living organisms. Phosphorus is even rarer, but is one of the 5 main organic elements. Two of the most common elements, iron and silicon, are comparatively uncommon in living organisms. As for plutonium, it's more than rare in nature: it's virtually non-existent. But its toxicity has to do with its radioactivity, not its rarity. Xenon, for example, is extremely rare, but non-toxic.

FullTank

true..Didnt say they were the same percentage but composed of elements found in nature(planet earth) in decent amounts...if it was exactly the same it wouldn't be higher life organisms as we know it.


if probably earth contained a large amount of plutonium present abundantly and life could exist in such condition whatever species evolved would have developed some kind of immunity towards it(atleast to higher dosage of radiation levels).

There was a documentary which showed that there were lot of animals and plant life living in the chernobyl area. The scientists measured the radiation levels in the cabbage plants there and decided that it was very high and would be fatal to many or atleast cause serious illness..but they came across an old lady who was staying within the vicinity for many years since and was munching the cabbage leaves without any problems!! Those cabbages with high radiation levels were their main food. If those cabbages were sold in the supermarket in US you would have a lot of sick americans(even many young ones)..but that old lady had developed immunity to certain levels of radiation over the years without any adverse effect.

FullTank

Canmoore

CANDU heavy water reactors use natural Uranium that is not enriched. They can also use MOX (mixed oxide fuel) which is a mixture of natural uranium and plutonium from spent uranium, and from dismantled Nuclear weapons. Also depleted uranium from light water reactors can be recycled in CANDU reactors.