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Author Topic: No We NEVER Needed LWR Nuclear Power Plants to Make Nuclear Weapons  (Read 1378 times)

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AGelbert

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The MIC inspired propaganda myth about needing all those nuclear power plants built after WWII in order to make bombs Part 2 of 2 parts.

Quote
Plutonium-grade      % of Plutonium- 240      
Super-grade      < 3%       
Weapon-grade      < 7%       
Fuel-grade      between 7% and 18% incl.      
Reactor-grade      > 18%   

Reactor-grade plutonium is produced in the core of a reactor when uranium-238 is irradiated with neutrons. Unlike weapon grade plutonium (which is relatively pure plutonium-239), reactor grade plutonium is a mixture of plutonium-238, 239, 240, 241 and 242. It is this mixture of isotopes which renders reactor grade plutonium unsuitable as a weapon-grade material.

Why?

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The even numbered isotopes (plutonium-238, 240 and 242) fission spontaneously producing high energy neutrons and a lot of heat. In fact, the neutron and gamma dose from this material is significant and the heat generated in this way would melt the high-explosive material needed to compress the critical mass prior to initiation. The neutrons can also initiate a premature chain reaction thus reducing the explosive yield, typically to a few percent of the nominal yield, sometimes called the "fizzle yield".  ;D Such physical characteristics make reactor-grade plutonium extremely difficult to manipulate and control and therefore explain its unsuitability as a bomb-making ingredient.

Hmmm... self initiating chain reaction - not a lot of fun for a bomb storage facility.    All those wild and wooly neutrons zapping everything around does not sound like a normal day at the office.  :o

And this was a problem too:

Quote
The odd numbered isotope, plutonium-241, is also a highly undesirable isotope as it decays to americium-241 which is an intense emitter of alpha particles, X and gamma rays. Plutonium-241 has a half-life of 13.2 years which means americium-241 accumulates quickly causing serious handling problems.

Alpha particles, X rays and GAMMA RAYS! Yikes. I know, some wise guy is going to say that "Americium" radionuclide is aptly named.   ;D
Water cooled nuclear power plants do NOT like to be powered down or up. They like to operate at a certain level baseload. Shutting one down is expensive and very time consuming.  That is another reason that harversting U-235 from the core of one these reactors to use as feed stock for making Plutonium-239 somewhere else is not practical.

Why?  ???

By the way, LWR stands for Light Water Reactor.

Quote
Weapon-grade plutonium contains mainly Pu-239 which has a half-life of 24,000 years and only very small quantities of Pu-241 (unlike reactor-grade plutonium which can contain around 15% Pu-241.) It is thus relatively stable and can be safely handled with a pair of thick gloves.
To achieve the high percentages of Pu-239 required for weapon grade plutonium, it must be produced specifically for this purpose. The uranium must spend only several weeks in the reactor core and then be removed. For this to be carried out in a LWR - the prevalent reactor design for electricity generation - the reactor would have to be shut down completely for such an operation.
Agelbert NOTE: Sure, it's more stable than nitroglycerin maybe, but you will never get ME to handle that stuff! Where was I?  Right. Making Plutonium pies  :P  for the MIC.

Quote
Reactors are generally purpose-built, and reactors built and operated for plutonium production are less efficient for electricity production than standard nuclear electric power plants because of the low burnup restriction for production of weapons grade plutonium.

The types nuclear fission reactors which have been found most suitable for producing plutonium are graphite-moderated nuclear reactors using gas or water cooling at atmospheric pressure and with the capability of having fuel elements exchanged while on line.

To learn all you don't want to know  ::) about the several distinct classes of reactors (Research reactors, Propulsion reactors, Space reactors and mobile power systems, Power reactors, Breeder reactors and Production reactors). go here:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/plutonium.htm

The big deal after the war was to make weapons grade Plutonium-239 because it packs more explosive punch than a Uranium bomb. You can see that there is a conflict between making more electricity or making more Plutonium. There is also a conflict in the type of reactor vessel for this or that.

So, they made up a nice story for us about how we need all those bombs to preserve our freedoms and all those power plants were helping out!    They were not going to make Plutonium directly from water cooled nuclear reactors but they let us BELIEVE they were.  :o  ;) The special purpose reactors came from the hard lessons learned on the Plutonium air cooled graphite X-10 at Oak Ridge, the water cooled special purpose one at Hanford and the work at Los Alamos. Remember that Plutonium is very bad news to work with. It's much, much more difficult to handle than Uranium (which is quite toxic in its own right).

Quote
Because of the high rate of emission of alpha particles and the element being specifically absorbed on bone the surface and collected in the liver, plutonium, as well as all of the other transuranium elements except neptunium, are radiological poisons and must be handled with very special equipment and precautions. Plutonium is a very dangerous radiological hazard. Precautions must also be taken to prevent the unintentional formulation of a critical mass. Plutonium in liquid solution is more likely to become critical than solid plutonium. The shape of the mass must also be considered where criticality is concerned.

So, as you can see, there is NO WAY that they could build 400 plus electricity generating nukes to produce Uranium-235 harvested at exactly the right time while shutting down the power plant to send it to a Uranium to Plutonium transmutating special purpose reactor. That means they've got them here and there in secure areas (I hope!) where a special purpose reactor makes weapons grade Plutonium. They already KNOW what Plutonium does to us so I hope they aren't still experimenting on us...

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During the Manhattan Project, which gave way to the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. scientists resorted to secret human testing via plutonium injection on 18 unsuspecting, non-consenting patients.  >:(

This included injecting soldiers with micrograms of plutonium for Project Oak Ridge along with later injecting three patients at a Chicago hospital. Imagine you’re an admitted patient, helpless in a hospital bed, assuming that nothing is wrong when the government suddenly appears and puts weapons-grade plutonium in your blood.  >:(

Out of the 18 patients, who were known only by their code-names and numbers at the time, only 5 lived longer than 20 years after injection.  >:(

Along with plutonium, researchers also had fun  :P with uranium. At a Massachusetts hospital, between 1946 and 1947, Dr. William Sweet injected 11 patients with uranium. He was funded by the Manhattan Project.   


And in exchange for the uranium he received from the government, he would keep dead tissue from the body of the people he killed for scientific analysis on the effects of uranium exposure.  >:(
 


http://wariscrime.com/new/the-13-most-evil-us-government-human-experiments/

After the war, with all the debt we racked up, politicians and the military knew the people wouldn't go for that. So the SCAM was on because, despite water cooled nuclear power plants being NOT USABLE for weapons Grade Plutonium, it was more profitable for the "free market" investors while we-the-people were told it was all for lots of cheap electricity so we must help build all these "wonders of technology" with our taxes, bond issues or whatever.     

The point was to NOT have these hugely expensive projects on a defense department budget BUT make people believe we NEEDED them for national security.     And of course, the government ensured we-the-people underwrote the insurance coverage (to this day!) for nuclear poison factory accidents because it seems the "free market" was a bit shy about doing tha-a-a-t.  ;)  ;D 

But the marketing and hype of all things nuclear was in full tilt in 1946 in preparation for the bullding "bonanza", for a few connected predators, of water cooled nuclear reactors. K-25 and K-27 were making lots of radionuclides for "our own good", of course! A market had to be found for these "products" until the new LWR parasites (uh, I mean electrical generation facilities  ;D ) could be built. It's the dawn of the ATOMIC SCAM (uh, I mean "AGE", of course)...

Quote
The ability of the new reactors to create radioactive isotopes in previously unheard-of quantities sparked a revolution in nuclear medicine in the immediate postwar years. Starting in mid-1946, Oak Ridge began distributing radioisotopes to hospitals and universities. Most of the orders were for iodine-131 and phosphorus-32, which were used in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. In addition to medicine, isotopes were also used in biological, industrial and agricultural research.

The above is a touchy subject because cyclotrons can make most of the radionuclides needed as tracers for medical tests (they have extremely short half-lives from about a minute to a few days). Again, you don't need a huge beast of a nuclear power plant for them.

Here's what Groves, the Nuclear Con-artist, said in his farewell nuclear propaganda puff piece:

Quote
On handing over control to the Atomic Energy Commission, Groves  bid farewell to the people who had worked on the Manhattan Project:

Five years ago, the idea of Atomic Power was only a dream. You have made that dream a reality. You have seized upon the most nebulous of ideas and translated them into actualities. You have built cities where none were known before. You have constructed industrial plants of a magnitude and to a precision heretofore deemed impossible. You built the weapon which ended the War and thereby saved countless American lives. 
With regard to peacetime applications, you have raised the curtain on vistas of a new world.

Source of most of the above quotes:

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

When the quote is NOT from the Wikipedia article, I have provided a different link.  8)

At that point, the Atomic Energy Commission began DOING what it STILL DOES; tilting the energy "playing field" to make the water cooled nuclear reactors look cost effective  while maintaining strict secrecy on accidents, cancer clusters, water pollution and excessive water use, aquifer contamination, air pollution, crop ground contamination, etc. It's been 24/7 LIES from the words "go nuclear".

Have a nice day.   




He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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