Arms Treaty Debate - What's a Good Target Number

[nismaratwork]

How many nuclear power plants could be powered with the U-235 from 60,000 bombs?

I imagine that depends a lot on the plant design, and the type of bomb, and the age of the warhead. Certainly it's valuable fuel, but it's not just a matter of cracking open a warhead and tossing it into a furnace.

 

[mheslep]

How many nuclear power plants could be powered with the U-235 from 60,000 bombs?

I come up with on the order of one hundred 1 GW(electric) reactors for a year (the US has 104 reactors):

Russian and US nuclear weapon primaries are overwhelmingly plutonium based.* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of_a_bare_sphere"**, so the 1200 MT (1.2e9 gm) of Pu would produce 9.6e18 joules, or 300 GW(thermal)-years, distributed in any combination of reactor - time equivalents you like. If all of the 1200 MT of the weapons Pu was eventually burned in some manner it would produce 3000 GW(t) - years, or 1000 1GW(e) reactor-years.
____________________________________________________________________
* See, e.g., the US W-80 warhead, likely the most common in the US
arsenal. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W80.html

** This source states that the burn-up of special uranium and plutonium mixed fuel called MOX can be from 30% to 60%.

With one-third MOX cores, and 2.5 percent plutonium in the MOX, it would take 8 reactors (of 1,000 megawatts electrical each) about 30 years to complete disposition of 50 metric tons of plutonium. The number of years would be reduced proportionally to the increase in MOX core loading, the number of reactors used, and their power output. Thus, three reactors operating on a full MOX core with 6.8 percent plutonium could complete the disposition in about 10 years.

http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_5/5-4/moxmain4.html

 

[theunbubba]

Do we even need 100? Imagine the destruction you could wreak with just 50. You could take out pretty much every major nation's capital, or center of commerce. Or is there something I'm missing?

The purpose of a nuclear deterrent is to insure the genocide of your opponent should they attempt to attack you.
It's called MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction.

 

[theunbubba]

I imagine that depends a lot on the plant design, and the type of bomb, and the age of the warhead. Certainly it's valuable fuel, but it's not just a matter of cracking open a warhead and tossing it into a furnace.

You're right. Downblending nuclear material for use in reactors is dangerous as hell. And you would HAVE TO downblend the highly enriched uranium. As for the plutonium? I wouldn't even consider using it anywhere except a breeder reactor to make fuel out of the fusion byproducts neutron output.
That would have to be done under the strictest of security, because Plutonium is the most toxic substance in the world.

 

[Argentum Vulpes]

You're right. Downblending nuclear material for use in reactors is dangerous as hell. And you would HAVE TO downblend the highly enriched uranium. As for the plutonium? I wouldn't even consider using it anywhere except a breeder reactor to make fuel out of the fusion byproducts neutron output.
That would have to be done under the strictest of security, because Plutonium is the most toxic substance in the world.

First off please for the love of everything sane and rational please give us some links to support your rant.

The "highly dangerous" process you are claiming, the USA has been doing it for the last Fifteen years with HEU Russian bombs. Fuel made from old Russian bombs has been providing 20% of electrical energy in the USA during that time. As for my source it is the Megatons to Megawatts program signed between the Russian federation and the USA in 1993.

As for plutonium being the "most toxic" substance in the world, how about this I'll swallow half of a gram of plutonium and you can have a tenth of gram of cyanide (one fifth of what I just knocked back). I may have several years knocked off of my life expectancy due to a cancer in my GI tract, but I'm going to be alive long enough to goto your funeral, and see my children grow up, and my grandchildren, and who knows if medical science advances enough in the next 50 years my great grandchildren.

Nuclear power/materials are not some bogey man lurking in your closet or under the bed that is going to kill you. If you want to be freaked out by a energy source worry about natural gas, that has a better chance of getting you. As for the bomb, again I'll say I'd love to see every one of the damm things down-blended and turned into fuel, but in the real world that isn't going to happen. And to quote a sick institutional joke from one of my friends in the 490th Missile squad, "The safest place in the world for weapons grade plutonium is on top of a Minuteman III."

Some good reading on plutonium http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf15.html" and an older study by the "[URL Livermore National Laboratory

[/URL]

 

[JaredJames]

And to quote a sick institutional joke from one of my friends in the 490th Missile squad, "The safest place in the world for weapons grade plutonium is on top of a Minuteman III."

I wouldn't say sick, I think it's quite accurate and I like it (might steal it from you).

 

[nismaratwork]

You're right. Downblending nuclear material for use in reactors is dangerous as hell. And you would HAVE TO downblend the highly enriched uranium. As for the plutonium? I wouldn't even consider using it anywhere except a breeder reactor to make fuel out of the fusion byproducts neutron output.
That would have to be done under the strictest of security, because Plutonium is the most toxic substance in the world.

That's not what I said at all! I didn't say that this was dangerous, although you need to take reasonable precautions. I said that it isn't SIMPLE; that you don't just take a spoonful of alloyed plutonium from a bomb and toss it in a blender with Uranium, then bake in a reactor until 'done'.

The rest has been ably handled by Argentum Vulpes, but I'd point out that terms such as, "most toxic", are relative. That said, Pu is NOT it, to humans or anything else. If forced I'll eat Pu before I eat Saxitoxin, Batrachotoxin, Tetrodotoxin, (or Red Tide badness, Frog badness, and Fish badness)... or a number of other substances! Besides, when these bombs are decommissioned for one reason or another everything you describe is done, except using the core for fuel?... why?!

 

[nismaratwork]

I wouldn't say sick, I think it's quite accurate and I like it (might steal it from you).

I wouldn't say sick either... at least, if that's sick then every one of my colleagues are sick, every paramedic I've met are sick, cops are sick, teachers are sick, parents are sick...

... nah, Jared is right, that's just clever and stealable!

 

[Argentum Vulpes]

I guess I should of used a better descriptor for the humorously true quote from my friend. I guess dark humor is a better descriptor, well I guess that is what I get for surfing the net when I should be in bed.

 

[theunbubba]

First off please for the love of everything sane and rational please give us some links to support your rant.

The "highly dangerous" process you are claiming, the USA has been doing it for the last Fifteen years with HEU Russian bombs. Fuel made from old Russian bombs has been providing 20% of electrical energy in the USA during that time. As for my source it is the Megatons to Megawatts program signed between the Russian federation and the USA in 1993.

As for plutonium being the "most toxic" substance in the world, how about this I'll swallow half of a gram of plutonium and you can have a tenth of gram of cyanide (one fifth of what I just knocked back). I may have several years knocked off of my life expectancy due to a cancer in my GI tract, but I'm going to be alive long enough to goto your funeral, and see my children grow up, and my grandchildren, and who knows if medical science advances enough in the next 50 years my great grandchildren.

Nuclear power/materials are not some bogey man lurking in your closet or under the bed that is going to kill you. If you want to be freaked out by a energy source worry about natural gas, that has a better chance of getting you. As for the bomb, again I'll say I'd love to see every one of the damm things down-blended and turned into fuel, but in the real world that isn't going to happen. And to quote a sick institutional joke from one of my friends in the 490th Missile squad, "The safest place in the world for weapons grade plutonium is on top of a Minuteman III."

Some good reading on plutonium http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf15.html" and an older study by the "[URL Livermore National Laboratory

[/URL]

I stand corrected. My understanding needed updating from what I "learned" back in the seventies. Thanks for the links.

 

[nismaratwork]

I stand corrected. My understanding needed updating from what I "learned" back in the seventies. Thanks for the links.

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