[ExI] Plutonium

Tom Nowell nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk
Thu Mar 27 21:36:41 UTC 2008


To quote John and Amara

>John K Clark jonkc at att.net :
>>Right know there are hundreds, probably thousands of
>>tons of Plutonium
>>on the planet,

>Please tell NASA where they are located, because
>presently they have
>enough only for the RTGS of about one more outer
>solar system mission.

>http://www.space.com/news/080306-nasa-plutonium->shortage-fin.html

>NASA is planning to go around to the DOE centers
>collecting what they
>can find. Russia is selling NASA some, selling the
>Indians some, then
>the Russians say they have no more (uh huh ;-) ).

>Presently, a highly possible result of the end of the
>Cold War is that
>the robotic exploration of the outer solar system
>exploration might be
>ended (or at least slowed down) as well.

>Amara

Well, the following recent document mentions where
Britain thinks the world's plutonium is (see appendix
seven)
http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=4603

this document from Sep 07 is a thoroughly readable
overview of how Britain came to possess 100 tons of
"unirradiated separated plutonium in product stores at
reprocessing plants" (the world's biggest), and what
the hell we can do with it. I thoroughly recommend it
to all the fission supporters out there. 
 Apparently the USA has 420 tons inside fuel rods at
nuclear plants, France has a mix of stuff inside
reactors, inside spent fuel awaiting reprocessing, and
already reprocessed.
 The trouble for NASA is that getting the Pu-238 out
of the mix is expensive. When people were refining the
stuff to make weapons grade >92% Pu-239 (the report
gives handy definitions of different plutonium
grades), they separated out the Pu-238. All the stuff
lieing around is a mix. Knowing NASA budgets, they
want Pu-238 at a reasonable price ready separated,
rather than needing work. Pressurised water reactor
fuel is only 2.2% Pu-238.
 Either NASA needs to get someone separating the stuff
(call it an "Improving next generation civil reactor
fuel programme" and get the DOE to separate the Pu-238
out of fuel rods) or to bite the bullet and use
Americium-241 instead (1/4 the energy density and
requires more shielding - will make deep space probes
a lot more expensive, but still just about doable).

Tom


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