Date: Wed, 26 Oct 94 16:02:48 CST From: "jim blair" To: alt-politics-economics@cs.utexas.edu,president@whitehouse.gov Cc: BCc: Subject: HOW YOU can save the world from NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION! With the possible rise of nationalism or worse in Russia, it should be clear that the U.S. during the past 5 years has been sleeping through a golden opportunity to reduce the threat of nuclear accident or of a Doctor Strangelove-like event. It may not be too late even now, but the window of opportunity is closing rapidly. In 1989, while all the Soviet nuclear weapons were under the control of Gorbachev, and the USSR was desperate for cash and food, President Bush should have offered to buy their nuclear warheads for the purpose of destroying them. The details could be negotiated, but they would be a bargain at any price. We still have vast amounts of surplus food we could send, and our National Guard Armories have lots of trucks that we could send to help deliver the food. To counter the "we won't give up ours if you keep yours" argument, we could agree to scrap one of ours for each one of theirs. Today the dealing would be harder, with four countries instead of one. But all four are having economic problems. Ukraine claims they would like to be rid of their nuclear weapons but can't afford to destroy them and don't trust Russia with them. In the meantime the missiles of the former Soviet Union are still in place and targeted on U.S. cities. And our missiles are still targeted on them. Nuclear missile submarines are still at sea waiting an accident or an "Under Siege". And why would we want their warheads? Just to insure that no one else gets them and to reduce the risk of accident would be reasons enough. But the weapon grade uranium and plutonium could be diluted to make enough reactor grade fuel rods to provide a lot of electricity - for us and for them. President Clinton should make an offer and see what the response is, while he can still deal with Boris Yeltsin rather than with Zhirinovsky. And while there is little public support to give aid to Russia (while our own citizens are starving and homeless, etc.) there would be wide public support from all parts of the political spectrum to buy their warheads. I have sent variations of this idea to my congressman (Scott Klug), Ross Perot & Paul Tsongas (when they were candidates) and various others. Letters to the editor to two local newspapers were rejected for publication.Only the Libertarian presidential candidate Andre Morrou responded favorably and promised to appoint me to be the US negotiator on this if he won the 1992 election. He didn't, so I am posting this on the internet in the hope that you all will help save the world by promoting this idea. ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___( O O )___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin LATER Parade Magazine, Sunday November 23 '97 had an item on the nuclear warheads of the former USSR. They claim 50,000 of them with a total content of 1000 metric tons of enriched uranium (U-235) and 100 mt of plutionium. That is 1100 metric tons total. This would be .022 metric tons = 22 kg per warhead, about what I have been told is approximately the "critical mass" for a bomb. How much power plant fuel can be made from this? The weapons grade warheads are over 90% enriched, while fuel rods are less than 4%, so over 22 times as much, or almost 25,000 metric tons of reactor fuel. The US stock is about as big. Even if we hold back enough of ours to blow up the whole world, (hey, I am no disarm us-nut) we could get over 40,000 to 45,000 metric tons of fuel for nuclear power plants from my plan. This Reply to a post: >: If you know how many plants can generate how much electricity from this >: much fuel, please e-mail me and I will add it to my web page file.--jeb >I worked for GE on nuclear power plants in 1967-78. As I recall, 4% was >the maximum allowable enrichment for a fuel rod. The bundle average was >just a little over 2%. ---after some discussion, 2.8% was accepteed as a reasonable estimate. So my estimate of the fuel from 1000 metric tons of warheads is revised to 90/2.8 = 32 times = 32,000 metric tons --jeb > > >A GE 1100 MWe plant had 724 fuel bundles. Each one had 49 fuel rods, >144" fuel column length, 0.489" pellet diameter. I don't remember the >density of UO2. The sintered density of the pellets was over 90% of >the UO2 density (about 95-97%, I think). .... >MWe is megawatts of electric power. I am not familiar with refueling >cycles today, but 20 years ago GE BWR reactors were refueled once per >year. About 1/4 of the fuel bundles were replaced at each refueling, >so the average life of a bundle was four years. Now I suppose even when a fuel rod is "exhausted" and replaced, there is still plenty of U-235 in it, just that the concentration is too low to use.---jeb >That's essentially correct. Is it practical to reconcentrate used material, or should I consider only the first pass?---jeb >I'm a mechanical engineer who spent ten years in GE's nuclear fuel >department (mostly as a stress analyst). My understanding of nuclear >physics is very limited. >Natural uranium is 0.71% U235. The concentration of U235 in a "spent" >fuel bundle is something greater than that, but I have no idea what it is. >However, if we reprocess spent fuel to produce new fuel, the plutonium >created in that spent fuel is of greater value (engergy content) than the >remaining U235. And the plutonium can readily be separated chemically, >whereas re-enriching highly-radioactive uranium might require an >unimaginable capital investment. .... > >During the Carter administration, the US government decided there would >be no plutonium recycle because Pu can easily be separated chemically >from the uranium. A terrorist could steal fresh Pu fuel bundles and >create a nuclear weapon. Recycling U235 would not have that problem. > >-- >mailto: xxxxxx@yyyyyyy.com > Note: xxxxxx did not want his name used, but did offer the information--jeb Hi, The density of UO2 is 10.9 gm/ml, so the weight of fuel in that 1100 Mwe plant is: 724x49x144x(2.5 cm/in)x((0.489/2)x2.5)^2x(3.14x10.9) grams =about 160 metric tons. Consider that UO2 is 88% uranium? So this is only about 140 metric tons of uranium. Does that sound right? So the number of such power plants is 32,000/140 = 228. From the USSR warheads, or about 457 plants using USSR + USA warheads. The fuel rods last only 4 years, so the total electricity generated is 457x4x365x1100 = 7.3x10^8 Mw*days. The reason for this unit (Mw*days) will become clear when you read the next letter. AND ANOTHER REPLY (with another way to look at it) A rough rule of thumb is that you get about 1000 Mw*day thermal energy per kilogram of U-235. A power plant is able to convert about 30% of the thermal energy into electricity, so the net generation is about 300 Mw*day per kg of U-235. For the 90% material discussed above, you would get about 0.90 * 300 = 270 Mw*day per kgU, not counting the U-235 in the Uranium used to dilute the 90% material to 4%. If you assume natural uranium (0.711 wt% U-235) is used as the diluent, you need 26.15 kgU of natural combined with 1 kgU of 90% to produce 27.15 kgU of 4% reactor fuel. This material will yield a net generation of roughly 0.04 * 27.15 * 300 = 325.8 Mw*days of electrical energy from the initial 1 kg of 90% material, after blending. Russ Schmidt Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Oak Ridge, TN 37831-8207 Hi, Me again. How does the Schmidt number compare to the xxxxxx number? This is easy: 326 Mw*days x 2000 metric tons x 1000 kg/metric ton = 6.52 x10^8 Mw*days, from all of the warheads. Pretty close. Of course this could be from 457 power plants operating for 4 years, but if I were in charge (see the Economics of CO2 file), I would go for 183 plants operating for 10 years. Maybe by then solar, hydrogen fusion, solar sea power, or something else, will become practical. To put this into a context, A recent news article by Charles J. Handley points out that in November 97 there were 442 nulear power plants in the world, located in 30 countries. They supply 17% of the world's electricity. In 1996, construction was started on 9 new ones. France leads with about 75% of its electric power from nuclear, so between 1980 and 1990, they cut CO2 emissions per person by 26%. ,,,,,,, _______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________ (_) jim blair (jeblair@facstaff.wisc.edu) Madison Wisconsin USA. This message was brought to you using biodegradable binary bits, and 100% recycled bandwidth. Subject: Re: Nuclear Threat: Eliminated Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 09:47:30 -0800 From: Gregory Greenman Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Newsgroups: sci.econ, alt.politics.economics, sci.environment jim blair wrote: >.....there has been only one serious accident with them > (Three Mile Island), and there was no one killed even then. I have > read estimates that the radiation released by the TMI accident was > such that the chances of someone dying sometime from it is 0.3. The 0.3 death estimate comes from the Presidential Commission to Investigate the Accident at Three Mile Island, appointed by then President Jimmy Carter and chaired by Professor Kemeny. > And the problem of long term storage of nuclear waste is commonly > overstated. Sure it is radioactive for thousands of years. But so > was the ore that it came from. Afer "just" a few hundred years, the > reactor waste will be less radioactive than the original uranium ore. > -- Quite CORRECT. We could improve this by recycling the plutonium generated by the reactor, and return it to the reactor to be used as fuel. We should not be burying long-lived plutonium as waste. The only materials that should be buried as waste should be the fission products (the atoms that result when the uranium is split). The longest lived fission product, of any consequence, is Cesium-137. The half-life of Cesium-137 is only 30 years!! That compares to to the 24,110 year half-life of Plutonium-239. However, the U.S. outlawed reprocessing and recycling of Plutonium in the late '70s. The U.S. has a nuclear waste disposal problem which is a THOUSAND times worse than that faced by other countries because of a self-imposed (self-inflicted) limit. Dr. Gregory Greenman Physicist Subject: Re: Power from Nuclear Warheads: How Much? From: Steven Peterson Just to add one more piece of information to the calculation: End of life for nuclear fuel is mainly determined by the buildup of fission products, which have high neutron capture coefficients. When enough neutrons are captured by products, the chain reaction can no longer be sustained. There is still a lot of fissionable material left that could be recycled. Steven H. Peterson, Ph.D. Naval Research Laboratory Surface Chemistry Branch Geo-Centers, Inc. PO Box 441340 Ft. Washington, MD 20744 202-404-1807 202-767-3321 (FAX) http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/3931 Subject: Re: Nuclear Threat: Eliminated Date: 17 Dec 1997 18:44:19 GMT From: "George Avery" > But the US has not opened a new nuclear power reactor in decades. > And there are no plans to build any of ANY design. How can there > be a commitment on the part of any one to ANYTHING nuclear? Actually, the Navy has put a number of reactors into service the the last two decades...on submarines, cruisers, and aircraft carriers. The Navy also has an outstanding reactor safety record due to scrupulous procedures and attention to detail. > One reason for the relatively high cost of the first generation of > US nukes was that each was designed as a "one of a kind" item. With > several hundred plants of a single design, the cost of power from > the "new" plants would be a lot less than it was from the "old" ones. Good point...and a standardized design would allow refinement of later installations with lessons learned from operations. George Avery Subject: Re: Reactor Design [was Breeders: "too costly and of doubtful value"] Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 20:35:35 +0200 From: "David Nicholls" Newsgroups: sci.econ, sci.environment, sci.energy, sci.space.policy Standardisation of nuclear plants is well established (outside USA). The French programme is the best and consists of 26 standardised 900 MW PWRs, 20 x 1300MW PWRs and 4 x 1450MW PWRs. They have exported a further 8 x 900MW PWRs (2 to South Africa, 4 to China and 2 to S Korea). (I have not included the original 6 x 900 MW PWRs at Fessenheim and Bugey which are to a slightly different design.) The result of this programme is an average cost per kW of about $1000, which is about half the figure for US units at the same period. AND: >Sailor wrote: > >> You can't use warheads in a power plant. > Both the US and Russia are currently converting surplus HEU (highly enriched uranium, with U-235 assays above 20% ) from their weapons programs to civilian nuclear power use. So, not only can you do it, it is being done. The Russian program involves the sale of LEU (low-enriched uranium, with U-235 assays below 5%) derived from 500 MTU of HEU. The US has declared 174 MTU of HEU to be surplus to defense needs. Most of the US material will be blended down to either LEU or research reactor fuel (at assays between 10% and 20% U-235). A small amount of the US surplus is not suitable for reactor fuel, and will be blended down and disposed of as waste. >Well obviously you'd have to remove the materials and >melt it down and cast them as fuel rods. The tapped >of Tritium and He-3 could also be useful in different >areas. In fact, the LiDT material could be used by >itself for power generation (in a pulsed fusion setup). > >> You might be able to reprocess those small amounts of highly >> enrished stuff in such a manner as to distribute it into >> a batch of lower enrichment stuff, but it would be fairly >> expensive to do so - save 'em for blasting errant asteroids, etc. :) > The HEU in weapons is uranium metal. Some other inventories are in the forms of various uraniium oxides, uranyl nitrate, or uranium hexafluoride (UF6). The Russians are converting their surplus HEU to UF6, blending the HEU UF6 with LEU UF6 from their enrichment plants, and delivering the derived LEU UF6 to the US for sale to commercial reactor operators. About 13 MTU of the US surplus was already UF6, which was blended with LEU at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant and sold. The remaining surplus is being dissolved to form uranyl nitrate solution, then blended with natural uranium to produce LEU. We found that metal blending is a less attractive option. In all of these cases the cost of processing the HEU and blending it to LEU is more than covered by the value of the derived LEU fuel. When you factor in the avoided cost of not having to dispose of the unneeded HEU as waste, the benefit to the government is huge. >Well, my preference would be an Orion style propulsion unit. >However, all of the highly refined materials would go pretty >well as seedstock in a breeder reactor. > -- Russ Schmidt (idt@ornl.gov) Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Inc. Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-2009 AND THIS POSTED IN DECEMBER 2002 > "tonyp" wrote: > > > > >Almost immediately after the USSR fell, the two main worries one heard > >about were Russia's nukes and Russia's economic plight. It seemed to > >me at the time that it would have been good business to BUY RUSSIA's > >NUKES. Exporting warheads for cash, rather than on ICBMs, would have > >been good for Russia. Buying the warheads, instead of spending the > >same money and more on technology to someday try to shoot them down, > >would have been good for us. At the very least, _our_ bid for them > >would have raised the price for people like, say, bin Laden. > > Hi, > > Note that I was proposing this at the time: > > See: > > http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834/28.txt > > QUOTE: > > Andre Morrou responded favorably and promised to appoint me to be the > US negotiator on this if he won the 1992 election. He didn't, so I am > posting this on the internet in the hope that you all will help > save the world by promoting this idea. .... > > UNQUOTE: > > If only Andre had won..... Andre didnīt win, but something similar did go ahead. Al Gore and the then Russian premier, Chernyomyrdin , did a deal whereby Russian warhead Uranium is moved to the USA and then blended down into fuel for reactors. There was a fuss about this in 97/98 when it was proposed to do the same with plutonium. This would require reactors to use MOX ( mixed oxide fuels ) which many people argued would contribute to proliferation. Georges Monbiot, for example. Nice to see Georges getting the wrong end of the stick again. Unlike almost everything else that the first android VP has done, Iīm in favour of this programme. Yes, itīs slow, grossly expensive and leaks bribes all over the place. But I was once, while buying from a scrap merchant in Moscow, offered 30 kg of reactor grade uranium for $ 700. Even Iīll support a Govt programme that tries to stop that sort of thing. Tim Worstall