Replies to post #10 on Nuclear Planet

[SeriousMoney]

How should we deal with nuclear proliferation?

Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons production technology and knowledge to nations which do not already have such capabilities. It has been opposed by many nations with and without nuclear weapons, who fear that more countries with nuclear weapons may increase the possibility of nuclear warfare, de-stabilize international or regional relations, or infringe upon the national sovereignty of individual nation-states. Other nations have pursued their own independent weapons development, calling into question the authority of some countries being able to specify who can or cannot have their own defensive nuclear weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation

[bernoulli]

Disadvantages are:

- Nuclear waste produced is dangerous for thousands of years
- Consequences of an accident might be disastrous

Currently most of our spent fuel rods are stored in salt mines in Nevada. To get a better look at what is going on in these salt mines, I am posting the actual chain reactions which occur during the decay cycle of Uranium. Keep in mind, each time a atom splits to form other elements heat energy is released in significant amounts. In a reactor this energy is used to heat water producing steam then the steam is pressure released to turn a generator which produces electricity, the steam cools becoming water again then goes back to the water storage facility and the process repeats itself over and over and over again. When these fuel rods from the reactors are spent, reactions no longer occur fast enough to cause effiecient steam creation, they are stored, the fission reactions are still occuring, just not fast enough to efficiently heat water. Once stored their is nothing to capture the released heat from the spent materials reactions, thus it gets hotter than hell in the storage areas. We store spent fuel in salt mines because the humidity levels are so low, this significantly delays corrosion, of the spent fuel's containers.

http://www.ccnr.org/decay_U238.html

For a quick education on the workings of breeder reactors, nuclear power, see below link.

http://education.jlab.org/qa/transuranic_01.html

If you have gone through both of the above it should become clear as to how simple it is to develop enough plutonium, about the size of a grapefruit, to build an atomic bomb, like the one dropped on Hiroshima Japan, ended WWII, all one needs is a breeder reactor and a little nitric acid. Walla !