IAEA Forms Nuclear Fuel Bank 224
Kemeno writes "The International Atomic Energy Agency voted on Friday to form a nuclear fuel bank to help developing countries acquire nuclear fuel without having to enrich uranium themselves. Warren Buffet contributed 50 million dollars to a pool of 150 million with contributions from many different countries. The goal of the program is to provide countries with a source of low-grade enriched uranium suitable for fueling reactors but not for creating nuclear weapons."
Re:Mitigate Proliferation risk? (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't have enrichment capabilities, whether you start at 3% or at 0.1% is pretty much irrelevant. And assuming you could have those enrichment capabilities, using enough 3% enriched material to reach the 70-90% you state for a usable amount of weapon-grate material will required a huge quantity of low-grade fuel. This fuel quantity, most likely way above the consumption of your power plants, will raise red flags before you can do anything with it. Also, I bet someone will notice that not spent fuel rods come out of your reactors...
The risk of someone in a 3rd world county of using this fuel in an enrichment process is ridiculously low. I would be more worried about the possibility to see this fuel disappear due to corruption or lack of proper security and see it end up in dirty bombs.
Enrichment for weapon grade fuel production is way overrated and is more a modern political lever than a real threat.
Re:Uh wait... (Score:5, Informative)
Nice to see the fine slashdot tradition of making bold, unsupported statements, declared as absolute truth, is still alive and well.
"to what is essentially a very expensive environment-ruining nuclear-timebomb"
Oh, really? Please, do, provide some actual *science and engineering* based source for this assertion. Before you trot out the old "Chernobyl", do note that *nobody*, except *nobody* is building any plants that are similar to the Chernobyl design, and that modern designs have multiple layers of safety in their designs that Chernobyl lacked. If Nuclear Reactors are so dangerous, so environment ruining, such ticking timebombs, how come in 60 years of nuclear plant operation, Chernobyl is the *one and only* accident which released any significant radioactive material into the environment? Modern plant designs are very safe, and even in the very unlikely event of a meltdown accident, are extremely unlikely to release any significant radioactivity into the environment.
Unlike you, I'll provide a source for my assertions: Ted Rockwell's Nuclear Facts Report [learningaboutenergy.com]. Now, that report is very long, but it's also well supported with bibliography references to many sources, including peer-reviewed studies by professional engineers and scientists.
You might bring up Three Mile Island, or Davis-Besse. Three Mile Island was unfortunate, but was only a disaster for the investors who payed for it. It got worse than it should have, but even in that situation, only a very small amount of slightly radioactive (very slightly) steam was released from the plant, but no other radioactive materials or radiation was released. TMI had an actual meltdown, and it wasn't an environmental or public safety disaster.
In the meantime, the nuclear plants being built now have been built with better safety designs than older generation II plants - a TMI type incident, although we can't call it completely impossible, is much more unlikely than it was with the TMI design. The Nuclear Industry has spent many Billions of dollars on R&D to design new, safer plants, and shepherd those new designs through strict regulatory oversight bodies like the NRC to get them approved.
I truly don't believe those new power plants are at all "environment-ruining nuclear-timebombs".
About the waste - the truth is, we should be recycling the spent fuel. The only proper, responsible final 'disposal' for spent nuclear fuel is to seperate out the short lived 'true waste' products from the rest of the fuel, and keep re-using the fuel until it's all converted to short lived waste. We *have* the technology to turn our current nuclear waste, which is radioactive for 100,000+ years into short-lived waste which essentially becomes non-radioactive after about 200 years - I think we *can* safely store the waste for 200 years, but I've never heard anyone who thought we could really store it for 100k+ years.
Sometime, try googling for "Integral Fast Reactor" - it's a fascinating read.
Finally, on your comment, "They should just give them free photovoltaics - you can just set a mini-plant in any of the villages". Really, do you really think a few PV panels in a village is going to provide enough power? For what? Each household can run one or two LED or CFL lights? What if that village needs power for running a water treatment plant, or a desalination plant? What if they want to have businesses and small industry which need enough power to run machinery, commercial refrigeration units, etc? What if the villagers want heat, hot water, and electric stoves in their homes, instead of burning wood or coal for those needs? You think a few PV panels in town and on the roof will provide enough power for all that? What about the big cities? Even the most undeveloped countries usually have at least a Capital city, if not a few others? What about future growth? That small village, as it gets access to clean water and power, might start to
Re:Well sure (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with insuring a nuclear reactor is that, if it does fail, the cost is going to be so huge that it would immediately bankrupt pretty much any insurance company. This means that the policy ends up needing to be underwritten, typically by several different underwriters. Setting up this kind of policy is hard for any but the largest insurers, but because the risk is so low it's then very profitable.
Compare this with insuring a house, for example. It's significantly more likely that there will be a claim, but the claim is likely to be relatively small - small enough that you can cover it from the policy payments from other customers.
Re:the risk is high (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Pu is that only the 239 isotope is suitable for weapons, and if you have too much 240 or 241 (more than about 3%) then it isn't stable enough to fission when you want it to. Pu-240 and -241 spontaneously fission, leaving daughter products that absorb your neutrons.
Isotopic separation isn't done with Plutonium because the atomic weights of the isotopes are too similar. Cascading centrifuges won't get the job done, and chemical separation won't get the job done.
In order to create Pu-239 for weapons purposes, you have to use a ridiculously short fuel cycle in a specially configured reactor - it's quite obvious to the inspectors that will undoubtedly be required to be present should you sign contracts with the IAEA to get this fuel.
Re:give a man a fish (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps we started WWI? Nope. Germany invaded others
Or WWII? Nope. Germany invaded others
Or Korean war? Nope. Communist Korea invaded south.
Or Vietnam? Nope. Communist nam invaded french held nam
Or Desert Storm I? Nope. Iraq invaded Kuwait
Or We started the nightmare in eastern Europe? Nope.
Or Afghanistan? Nope. Afghanistan launched it against the USA when they backed terrorists.
Or Desert Storm II? Well, since technically, there was a on-going war, no. However, I think that is a false. I would have to say that we DID in fact start that.
Of course, on nearly all of the other cases, it was larger nations invading smaller nations and our standing up for them. But, you do not like that. Perhaps you think that Iran should have the right to nuke say the middle east? Perhaps NK has the right to invade or nuke South Korea? Perhaps you feel that Venezuela has the right to tell Columbia and other nations what to do via terrorists so they should be allowed to build nukes?