Just What The World Needs…

Page September 22nd, 2007

A few years ago, I came across ep.tc, where you can find a most amazing variety of propaganda comic books, starting back in the 1950s. One of them is “The Atomic Revolution“, published in 1957. In it, you can learn all about nuclear physics, starting with early twentieth century discoveries, and moving quickly on to… you guessed it, World War II:

Being propaganda, of course the WWII nuclear weapon cheerleading ends with: “… the Japanese city of Nagasaki was almost completely wiped out by the first atomic bomb…”.

The book concludes with a rosy view of the future…

Where, presumably, there is a way to magically make all of that waste disappear…

… and not end up with a situation so dire that it isn’t just us eco-nerds sounding the alarm.

The members of the UK’s national science academy, the Royal Society, sent out a press release yesterday:

UK’s separated plutonium stockpile poses severe risks warns Royal Society

The potential consequences of a major security breach or accident involving the UK’s stockpile of separated plutonium are so severe that the Government should urgently develop and implement a strategy for its long term use or disposal warns a report published by the Royal Society the UK national academy of science today (21 September 2007).

According to Strategy options for the UK’s separated plutonium the UK’s civil stockpile of separated plutonium is now over 100 tonnes and has almost doubled in the last 10 years. The UK’s stockpile is largely the by-product of commercial reprocessing of spent fuel from UK power plants.

Plutonium is highly toxic. It is the primary component in most nuclear weapons and could be made into a crude nuclear bomb by a well-informed and equipped terrorist group.

Professor Geoffrey Boulton, chair of the report’s working group, said: “The status quo of continuing to stockpile separated plutonium without any long term strategy for its use or disposal is not an acceptable option. The Royal Society initially raised concerns about the security risks nine years ago and we have not seen any progress towards a management strategy. Furthermore, the stockpile has grown whilst international nuclear proliferation and terrorist threats have increased.

“Just over 6kg of plutonium was used in the bomb which devastated Nagasaki and the UK has many thousands of times that amount. We must take measures to ensure that this very dangerous material does not fall into the wrong hands.”

[Bold emphasis mine.]

It must be emphasized that it’s very difficult to make a nuclear device from plutonium separated from spent fuel; it’s “reactor grade” (mostly ²⁴⁰Pu, and hardly any ²³⁹Pu, which is weapons-grade).¹

However, the report emphasizes a more likely deadly “use” of the plutonium:

[The] separated plutonium is stored in a powdered oxide form, which lends itself to widespread dispersal, if released due to accidental leak or deliberate explosive attack on the facility.

…

[A terrorist attack] probably offers the greatest risk to the current storage arrangements, provided precise knowledge of the location of the materials is available. Plutonium poses a toxic threat if dispersed in a fire or explosion, particularly whilst it remains in a powder form.

…

The risks of terrorist attack or theft are difficult to estimate but they must be taken with the utmost seriousness. The potential consequences of a major security breach are severe, and justify a strong and sustained policy to minimise risks.

The risk of terrorist attacks is all too real, as many in the UK know. In fact, thanks to the Iraq war, the global threat of terrorist attacks has increased, so it’s not just the UK that should be concerned about the use of its nuclear facilities as giant dirty bombs. (See also 13 January 2006 Greenpeace UK media briefing, pdf).

The report offers some solutions, summarized in the following diagrams (click to enlarge):

Basically, convert it to MOX for use as fuel or for storage, making the plutonium less accessible and less dispersible.

If you didn’t figure it out from my bio, I’m an unapologetic anti-nuclear power environmentalist; I feel that there are very viable alternatives to nuclear power (in the UK, and in my native country, for example). I feel that building new nuclear plants is a proliferation issue, a security issue, and a waste issue, so you already know what I think: don’t build new nuclear plants in the UK, or anywhere.

My activist friends in the UK have done a great job bringing about awareness of the risks, and the solutions. Let’s hope someone listens, and makes the right decision.

¹Note: a nuclear device was made from reactor-grade plutonium in 1962 and tested successfully, although the yield was less than 20 kilotons.

• Nuclear Proliferation and Security , Nuclear Waste , Global Security