All,
Woke up in the morning, and first thing to enter my
head was a realization that I had misstated the amount
of global plutonium, probably mixing pounds and tons.
The correct figure is 240 metric tons. Not has bad,
but not reason to feel too good- enough for 40,000 nuclear
weapons ;-)
I swear, it is like I can hear the hubbub of people
thinking and saying things, while I am sleeping.
Tom Keske
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NUCLEAR PLANT SAFETY, Part 2
I had tried to be open-minded about nuclear power, to give
it a fair chance, and not to be dogmatic in pro-environmental
assumptions. Really, I had.
I had read how newer designs, such as those being
built in China, were safer, more efficient,
almost impossible for terrorists to cause any problems.
When I looked into it a bit more, listening to both sides,
I realized that the future of the energy industry was going
to find itself with choices of evils, between the
proverbial rock and hard place. You do not quite get the
full picture by listening either to the nuclear industry's side
of the story, or the environmentalist's. You need to put
both halves of the story together, in order to realize some
things that you might have preferred not to know.
Many people might imagine that nuclear power is virtually
unlimited, simply dangerous. Dangerous, it is, but one of
the unpleasant surprises is to find that it is not really
limitless- at least, not in its current form. There is a limited
amount of uranium in the world, just as there is a limited
amount of oil or coal. Also, the way that nuclear plants
have operated, until now, has been extremely inefficient.
It would use up the available uranium resources of the world
in much too short of a time.
That is why DOE officials want to "reprocess" spent
reactor fuel- taking the waste and trying to make more
reactor fuel out of it.
As the environmentalist side tells the story, the
term "reprocessing" tends to be a kind of propaganda.
It sounds like "recycling", like a good thing for the
environment. It also seems to be in the same vein as
fuel efficiency for cars- making much better use of
of resources.
Reprocessing has environmental problems of its own-
producing radioactive gases and using processes that
involve volatile materials, which could make handling
of waste more dangerous. The worst problem though,
has to do with plutonium.
U.S. nuclear power plants produce plutonium as a byproduct,
but the plutonium currently would be difficult for
terrorists to use, because it is bound up with
highly radioactive materials that make its handling
very difficult.
It would only take about 10 - 15 pounds of plutonium
to a make a Nagaski-style bomb. Design of crude
nuclear weapons is not as difficult as obtaining the
weapons-grade material.
Pure plutonium is *not* highly radioactive and is
much easier for terrorists to handle. Because it is
the premium bomb-making material, there might be
a tendency for the public to imagine that it is highly
radioactive, but unfortunately, it is not. Usually,
we think of radioactivity as "bad", but when the
issue is ease of handling for terrorists, then
radioactivity can be "good".
There are currently about a 240 metric tons
plutonium around the world, of which
about 10 tons are being bought and sold, and
changing hands, every year. That is a huge amount
to monitor globally, if you must make sure that not even
10 pounds ever escapes, for even a few hours. There have
been cases in the past where plutonium was unaccounted for,
for *months*, much less hours.
The DOE plan would use chemical processes to
extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel, in order
to make new reactor fuel. This would be creating
new plutonium, to compound the problem of keeping
it out of the hands of terrorists.
The public might have a notion that what is needed
is simply to guard plutonium, with utmost of care,
as you would guard, say, the Hope Diamond.
Thinking about this analogy can illustrate why that
philosophy is logistically impossible.
How would you guard the Hope Diamond? You could
have maybe a camera, a locked room, and armed guards
to keep an eye on it. If you wanted to check, personally,
on the state of security, you could call the armed guards
and ask them, or check the cameras. There it is, safely
in plain sight - the Hope Diamond. Still there.
Fortunately, you do not have to contend with a quarter
of a millions tons of Hope Diamonds. Tracking plutonium
is a bit more like tracking a large driveway full of
gravel, making sure no one picked up a pebble, put
it in their pocket, and walked off.
You have your driveway cordoned off, and have
cameras and guards. But who monitors the cameras?
What if your guards want to make a quick $10 million
by selling a pebble from the driveway? In any security
system, no matter how many computers, or cameras,
or devices, there are still ultimately human beings at some
point, who need to be trusted, to check the security,
to monitor and maintain the devices.
If you cannot trust every human being in your Security
department, how do you personally verify? You can
instruct the crew: Count every pebble, weigh every pebble
of gravel in the driveway and report if there are any changes
in total weight, or in pebble count.
Then, you can try to repeat that process, once per hour.
Probably, recounting and reweighing all the gravel in
driveway would take longer than the time window for
the terrorists to deliver their bomb to an urban center.
That is the practical, common-sense reality behind the
logistics, why guarding plutonium is not like guarding
the Hope Diamond.
Environmentalists will tell you about the plutonium/terrorist
problem with reprocessing of reactor fuel. What they do
not make as clear is that if you do *not* do this, you have
another problem- a nuclear industry that is too inefficient
to be a replacement of fossil fuels.
One has to marvel at this ingenious cruelty, from Above,
to the human race. We *can* have adequate energy.
Just one catch.
We cannot have any human beings who have such hate, or
such grievances that they want to use the ultimate
violence against other human beings.
One can hear Homer Simpson; Doh! DOE!
(Department of Energy)!
The hoarse laughter from Heaven at our hopeless and hateful species
really does seem make its supposed Holiness seem suspect to
a degree that we should perhaps begin to rethink the fables of
God's kindness.
In consideration of the hopelessness of the "Hope Diamond"
analogy, our best, feeble attempt at survival would be to
try to be as kind, as sincerely fair, to all of our fellow human
beings, as we possibly can.
To look at it, as it stands now- My, aren't we in trouble?
If you cannot watch everyone, all the time, then it is best not
to adopt attitudes and policies that anger nearly half of
everyone, all the time, or even to anger a sizeable minority.
Minimizing everyone's anger should be the goal. At present,
you would think that the entire idea is to maximize
everyone's anger. We need to remind those at the top-
Please - really- You, me, all of us are to survive against
very long odds, if you do not mind.
Tom Keske
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