NYT: New Doubts About Turning Plutonium Into a Fuel

[JohnyCanuck]

On a tract of government land along the Savannah River in South Carolina, an army of workers is building one of the nation’s most ambitious nuclear enterprises in decades: a plant that aims to safeguard at least 43 tons of weapons-grade plutonium by mixing it into fuel for commercial power reactors.

snip

But 11 years after the government awarded a construction contract, the cost of the project has soared to nearly $5 billion. (Not surprising, considering it was the nuclear industry which, in a fit of giddiness, promised us electricity to cheap to meter. /JC). The vast concrete and steel structure is a half-finished hulk, and the government has yet to find a single customer, despite offers of lucrative subsidies.

snip

One of the stricken Japanese reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant uses the mox fuel. And while there has been no evidence of dangerous radiation from plutonium in Japan, the situation there is volatile, and nuclear experts worry that a widespread release of radioactive material could increase cancer deaths.

Against that backdrop, the South Carolina project has been thrown on the defensive, with would-be buyers distancing themselves and critics questioning its health risks and its ability to keep the plutonium out of terrorists’ hands.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/us/11mox.html?_r=1&src=recg

[AndyTiedye]

1. They Call it "MOX" to Try to Hide the Fact that it Contains Plutonium

In Fukushima, they're using this fuel in unit #3, which is thought to have ruptured its containment.

These reactors were never built for hopped-up fuel with plutonium left over from nuclear bombs.
:nuke:

[Paradoxical]

2. None of what you just said is even remotely true.

[aquart]

3. Duh.

[suffragette]

4. Imagine that 5 billion invested in upgrading the grid infrastructure

to better handle renewables such as wind and solar and all the positive side benefits of that.

[Paradoxical]

5. Either way you slice it. It's going to cost a lot of money to dispose of PU.

Probably several billion dollars easily.

So it's not so much that we shouldn't be spending it on getting rid of plutonium. It's that we shouldn't be spending it on converting plutonium into spent fuel.

[suffragette]

8. I'd rather see the money spent on a better future technology

than on another nuclear plant that continues the same cycle of problematic and costly assembly and even more problematic storage, contamination and cleanup of hazardous waste.

As for costs associated with war materials. They are significant and should be a separate and accountable part of the price we pay for making the decisions that keep on leading to the production and need for disposal of such hazardous material, not something rolled in to "energy cost."

[upi402]

6. We'll need to build every type of renewable like mad

and increase energy use efficiency
and increase conservation behaviors
and R&D storage; from batteries to hydronic-gravity
and grid upgrade; penetration, headroom
and smart grid
and algal bio fuel

we can reduce oil, coal and nuclear very significantly while creating jobs and tax inflows

but that would require a rational state with rational actors

[suffragette]

9. Yep, we need something like the Renewable Energy Act

that Hermann Scheer initiated in Germany.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x653404#653948

We need to find someone here to push something like that and work with them.

And I agree with all you wrote, including the last part.

But I'm still willing, even with that, to keep pushing for it.

[AndyTiedye]

7. This Song is Due for a Come-Back

Hello, honey, I'm Mr. Plutonium. Can I spend the night?
I kinda need a place to crash and this place looks all right.
It's quite a sight, so I just might settle down and stay.
Two hundred fifty thousand years, then I'll go away.

and then I'll go away, go away go away

I'm Mr. Plutonium, Mr. Plutonium, I'm looking for a home.…

Mr. Plutonium by Eskit

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Plutonium/dp/B001955U28

[hermetic]

10. Thorium, people

Thorium. Never heard of it? There's a reason for that:

"Long story very short and simple: In the 1950s, in the Cold War-obsessed U.S., there was essentially a competition between uranium- and thorium-based systems. It was determined that the former, used in a light water reactor, was the quickest and easiest way to power a nuclear submarine. The bonus was that the waste from the LWR process could be used to make bombs. And so Washington went with uranium while an MSR experiment — a thorium-based plant — at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee was mothballed."

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/960564--thorium-touted-as-the-answer-to-our-energy-needs