“The Bush administration is planning the government’s first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war, stirring debate over the risks and benefits of the deadly material,” reports The New York Times. “The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.”
[M]ost if not all of the new plutonium is intended for secret missions and declined to divulge any details. But in the past, it has powered espionage devices.
In a side piece, reporter William Broad describes witnessing, “up close,” a specialist handling, and dropping, a plutonium pellet at Los Alamos. The new program would require transferring all operations, and expertise, to the Idaho laboratory, reports Mr. Broad.
“Radioactive dust in a Tri-Cities [Wash.] attic and plutonium-tainted clams in the Columbia River are red flags signaling that contamination from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is in the environment and moving into the food chain, a watchdog group [GAP] says,” reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on June 15, 2005. Here’s a link to G.A.P.’s Hanford section.
What I know about plutonium, you could put in a thimble, but if it’s leaking out of Hanford, what about Los Alamos, and how can we believe the Idaho lab’s assurances to the NYT that there’s been no sign of environmental contamination?
how can we believe the Idaho lab’s assurances to the NYT that there’s been no sign of environmental contamination?
Simply put, we cannot. As long as this administration remains in power, all federal science is suspect.
(Yeah, I know, it was a rhetorcal question. But answering those is my specialty.)
These stories always hit home because I spent the first 18 years of my life about 40 miles from Hanford.
OT: A highly memorable incident was when we all got on school buses to see President John Kennedy speak at Hanford… thousands of us stood in the desert and sagebrush, listening to him speak. (I can’t remember a thing he said. I remember vividly how stiff his back was .. probably from the brace he wore.) This was about two months before his assassination.
I thought Plutonium was 239 not 238.
Plutonium has a few isotopes. 234 is the most stable. 239 is used in fission weapons. 238 in thermoelectric power generation for certain specialized uses – like spacecraft.
More info here.
it’s time to ask Plutonium Page what she thinks? 🙂
Isn’t plutonium just plain chemically toxic whether radioactive or not? I’d think that a spec* of any weapons grade fuel would cause cancer if lodged in the lung for example.
Metric equivalent=decimote
…is a high-flow fractured basalt aquifer that dumps out into the Snake River around Twin Falls. The Test Area North site there has an old injection well waste dump that has managed to stay reasonably contained (the groundwater plume has only traveled a few miles).
Nobody really has a good handle on modeling the behavior of flow paths in fractured basalt. I hope you take some comfort in knowing that there are some pretty sharp minds out here in the inland Northwest working on simulations of this type of situation. The bad news, as I said, is that it is unpredictable.
Hope there are no spills.
The US has absolutely no reason to do this.. NO reason. It’s not even a moneymaker like oil is.. so why the push to do it now?
Pax
My (limited) understanding of this is that they primarily need it for taps on undersea communications cables. Apparently back in the days of copper wire cables, tapping using an induction method was a piece of cake.
However, in the era of fiber optic cabling it has become much tougher. There have been mentions of a method to tap a fiber bundle by bending it, but the most likely non-science fiction method would be tapping it at the repeaters that are stationed every 100-200 km. Tapping on this level requires a large amount of energy. Energy that is easiest to get via a Pu 238 reactor.
Not that I agree with undersea deployments of un-attended nuclear reactors, but I would imagine this would be the justification.
If you want an idea of what its like when things really go south with radioactive materials, or what man-made radiological pollution portends, or perhaps you want a glimpse of a potential not-so-bright future…
Follow the link below and take a motorcyle tour through the Chernobyl area (aka the dead zone) with Elena, the kid of speed, who will be your Russian tour guide to the dead zone. Elena travels alone so as not to have the radioactive dust stirred up in front of her and blown in her face, and she also stays on the roadway for her own personal safely…
Ghost Town – Introduction
If you are wondering what’s being done about the public health aspects, this is a good place to begin your reading.
Radiation and Public Health Project
If you are wondering what’s being done about the public health aspects, this is a good place to begin your reading.
Radiation and Public Health Project
sorry about link, I obviously use the DKos FAQ for my tags. 🙂 Renee
Here is the contact information to voice your opinion.
Timothy A. Frazier, Document Manager
NE-50/Germantown Building
Office of Space and Defense Power Systems
Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20585-1290
Telephone: 301-903-9420
or
via e-mail to ConsolidationEIS@nuclear.energy.gov
some person advocates nuclear energy as an energy alternative
to oil.
Hanford proves that the waste problem has never been
solved.
Cheney’s energy plan calls for deregulation to allow building of nuclear plants.
My 1/4 thimbleful of information on plutonium:
Plutonium is not used in warfare (from what I read yesterday) its main use is in producing heat.