Guardian: New generation of nuclear reactors could consume radioactive waste as fuel

[PamW]

10. Once again...

Once again, kristopher is decrying reprocessing because he claims it adds to nuclear weapon production or presents a proliferation problem.

Kris didn't read the entire interview with Dr. Till:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: Now, what about the issue of proliferation, the issue of making plutonium available to terrorists?

A: The object in the IFR demonstration was to invent, if you like, a process that did not allow separations of pure plutonium that would be necessary for weapons. In order to recycle, you need some kind of a chemical process. And the chemical process that was invented here at Argonne used quite different principles than present processes do. It allows the separation of that group of things that are useful, but not one from the other, so that you cannot separate plutonium purely from uranium and the other things. You can separate uranium, plutonium, and the other useful things from the fission products. So it does exactly what you want it to do. It gives you the new fuel, and it separates off the waste product, but it doesn't allow careful distinguishing between the materials that are useful, such that you could use one or another of those materials for weapons.

Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.

It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

The fact that IFR plutonium can NOT be used to make nuclear weapons was certified in a report by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( one of the two US nuclear weapons design labs, Los Alamos being the other ) to Congress. Senators Simon and Kempthorne cited this report in their rebuttal to a New York Times editorial:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/05/opinion/l-new-reactor-solves-plutonium-problem-586307.html

A recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant than spent commercial fuel, which also contains plutonium.

PamW