UK has 100 tonnes of Plutonium

[chowder]

According to reports we have stockpiled enough Plutonium to manufacture 17,000 nuclear bombs, that's right Seventeen fucking thousand!!

So why and for what, are we planning on taking over the world or are we just doolally :dubious:

[Odesio]

I think it would behoove the United States to make friends with our British cousins.

Marc

[Tibidabo]

According to reports we have stockpiled enough Plutonium to manufacture 17,000 nuclear bombs, that's right Seventeen fucking thousand!!

So why and for what, are we planning on taking over the world or are we just doolally :dubious:

Doolally?! :eek:

Why don't ya store it on your East coast for a little while, eh?

[chowder]

The worrying thing about this is:

Where is it stored and is it safely and constantly under armed guard cuz we don't want any dipshits getting ideas do we?

Doolally=Stoopid :D

[MarcusF]

Mostly it's a by-product of the civil nuclear power programme and in any sane world it would be being used to produce greenhouse-gas-free power in a new generation of power stations. Instead it sits there as a tempting target to any enthusiastic terrorist. We can't even get rid of it as nobody will make the decision to build an underground repository.

[MarcusF]

Generally "doolally" means mad or eccentric rather than stupid. From the transit camp in Indian where British soldiers waited for a boat home and, in some case, went of their heads from boredom :D

[chowder]

Generally "doolally" means mad or eccentric rather than stupid. From the transit camp in Indian where British soldiers waited for a boat home and, in some case, went of their heads from boredom :D
More or less as I said, not a full shilling

[Szlater]

The worrying thing about this is:

Where is it stored and is it safely and constantly under armed guard cuz we don't want any dipshits getting ideas do we?

Doolally=Stoopid :D

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (http://www.cnc.police.uk/)... they're routinely armed and they're hiring.

[Revenant Threshold]

Because if we have it, it means someone else doesn't?

[Lust4Life]

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (http://www.cnc.police.uk/)... they're routinely armed and they're hiring.

Look its just a hobby for chrissakes !some people collect stamps , some people collect autographs ,we collect Plutonium .
You dont get people giving Philal,Philatele,Phili,fucking stamp collectors a hard time do you?

[Omegaman]

Because if we have it, it means someone else doesn't?

Excellent point.

[chowder]

Because if we have it, it means someone else doesn't?
Not until they nick it that is.

Oh and those philil, phital, fuckin' stamp collectors really get on my tit, fannying about withose poncy frigging albums

[Szlater]

Not until they nick it that is.

Psst... wanna buy a spent fuel rod? Cheap, like...it errr fell off the back of a lorry. It'll keep your house cosy this winter, I know how you OAPs worry 'bout that. I tell you what, seeing as it's you, it's yours for a pony. Do we have a deal, squire?

[chowder]

Sorry old chap but I do not deal with London crooks.

Manchester crooks, yes

[Szlater]

Sorry old chap but I do not deal with London crooks.

Manchester crooks, yes

Your loss, gov. Besides, I've already got another buyer interested. Nice guy, Armadine-something-or-other.

[jjimm]

I recently worked on a site where a lot of the stuff was still stored. Armed police, dogs, the lot.

I worked in the most radioactive building there, too. (Because it was made of granite.)

[chowder]

'ere, 'ang on a sec, couldn't you flog it to Ferguson?

One half of Manchester would gladly pay whatever it costs to mail it to the red nosed twat

jjimm your nom de plume isn't Homer Simpson is it?

[Szlater]

'ere, 'ang on a sec, couldn't you flog it to Ferguson?

Last weekend I kicked the shit out of him at Euston station on your orders, now you want me to post him radiological material?

Gah, I lose one bet and I'm on the hook for life... bloody Mancunian gangsters.

[XT]

So, leaving all this wonderful Brit slang aside, whats the debate here? Is it that the UK shouldn't be reprocessing (recycling) its nuclear material? What exactly should they do with it? If thats not the debate, what exactly should they do with the weapons grade material that is the result of that? Should they wave a magic wand and make the nasty stuff go away? Give up on nuclear power generation? Give it away so that they don't rile up the locals about all that nookular nasty-ness?

-XT

[chowder]

To answer your question xtism all I can say is.....I have no sodding idea what we should do with it, I doubt anyone else has either.
I was just making the point that there is so much of the stuff (Plutonium) that in my opinion it invites some nutjob shitheads who fancy their chances at stealing it, the results of which, should they suceed, would be catastrophic.

Now thenSzlater if that was really you who kicked the shit out of red hooter then you have the thanks and admiration of the blue half of Manchester.
Any time you visit ooop norf you are guaranteed free beer by a grateful throng

[Fear Itself]

Correct me if I am wrong, but plutonium is not used as fuel for large scale power generation, so it is pretty useless unless you are building bombs.

[XT]

Correct me if I am wrong, but plutonium is not used as fuel for large scale power generation, so it is pretty useless unless you are building bombs.


Its a byproduct if you are using breeder reactors (which I presume is why the Brits have so much of it).

-XT

[elucidator]

As a registered mathtard, I am challenged. But, still, in excess of 200,000 lbs of plutonium? Seems unlikely.

[XT]

Well, I'd like to see a cite for that as well...I just read it as 'lots' and moved on.

-XT

[Duke of Rat]

As a registered mathtard, I am challenged. But, still, in excess of 200,000 lbs of plutonium? Seems unlikely.

Unless they are using British Tonnes, they're like 2240 lbs, so 224,000 lbs of plutonium.

[chowder]

Well, I'd like to see a cite for that as well...I just read it as 'lots' and moved on.

-XT
Its reported by BBC Ceefax

[jjimm]

Unless they are using British Tonnes, they're like 2240 lbs, so 224,000 lbs of plutonium.There is no such thing as a "British Tonne". It's either "ton" - the old imperial measure, totalling 2240 lbs, or the metric "tonne", which is 1,000 kg, or roughly 2,024 lbs.

[XT]

Could you provide a link? I did a search on the BBC for plutonium but didn't see the article you were talking about. Not that I doubt you, but it would be nice to read it.

-XT

[jjimm]

Its reported by BBC CeefaxI can confirm this - it's on page 154 on BBC1.

ETA: search for 'plutonium' here: http://www.ceefax.tv/ (can't do a direct link).

[Stranger On A Train]

"I wish we had one of them Doomsday Machines."

Is there a cite for this claim, or is it just a number randomly thrown out. That's a hell of a lot of plutonium, even for British Nuclear Fuels. If nothing else, they could sell it to the Americans, who have only a very limited and likely to be shutdown plutonium-generating capability.

We can't even get rid of it as nobody will make the decision to build an underground repository.Stuffing it underground does not "get rid of it." Out of sight, out of mind is not a credible technical way of dealing with persistant radioactive waste.

Stranger

[XT]

Never mind...found it. Here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7006056.stm) is the link.

Pretty much what I was saying:

The plutonium mainly comes from reprocessed spent uranium fuel from the country's nuclear power plants.

-XT

[jjimm]

Is there a cite for this claim, or is it just a number randomly thrown out. That's a hell of a lot of plutonium, even for British Nuclear Fuels.
According to Plutonium Watch (http://www.isis-online.org/global_stocks/plutonium_watch2004.html)At the end of 2003, there were about 1,855 tonnes (metric tons) of plutonium in the world in 35 countries.It's not unsurprising that the number 4(?) nuclear power has about 5%, is it? It wouldn't all be BNF either. The plutonium where I used to work was owned by other parties.

[Fear Itself]

Stuffing it underground does not "get rid of it." Out of sight, out of mind is not a credible technical way of dealing with persistant radioactive waste. If the storage facility is properly designed and located, it is far preferable to leaving it in less secure ponds at nuclear power plants scattered around the country.

[beowulff]

At least they know where it is.
Depending on who you ask, there's between 1.5 and 4 tons of plutonium "unaccounted for" (missing) from Hanford.

[Stranger On A Train]

If the storage facility is properly designed and located, it is far preferable to leaving it in less secure ponds at nuclear power plants scattered around the country.This being the big "if"; the technical rationales and criticisms I've seen regarding the Yucca Flats Repository in the United States leave me suspecting that a lot of handwaving is going on. You're talking about building a hermitically sealed environment that is essentially uninspectable but has to remain secure for tens of thousands of years despite seismic damage, tectonic stresses, hydraulic pressure and natural change of the underlying water table, et cetera. There's really little benefit to sticking it underground, especially if it requires OTR or rail transportation across thousands of miles, versus a secure and observable on-site storage facility which can be regularly inspected for integrity. Plus, we might need to reprocess this stuff into fuel, and yes, 239Pu can be used as a fissile fuel, although there are stability issues and of course concerns of theft and proliferation which make it somewhat less desireable than low-enriched or natural uranium.

Stranger

[bonzer]

jjimm your nom de plume isn't Homer Simpson is it?

I'm guessing jjimm wasn't working at the Springfields nuclear site (http://www.nda.gov.uk/sites/springfields/) in Lancashire. Nor will our plutonium stockpile be being stored there.

[Duke of Rat]

According to reports we have stockpiled enough Plutonium to manufacture 17,000 nuclear bombs, that's right Seventeen fucking thousand!!



FWIW, there is the plutonium from 12 to 16 thousand* nuclear bombs just a few miles from where I'm sitting, and that's just the ones we've dismantled. Still plenty more bombs floating around out there.


*Last I heard there were 12,000 plutonium pits stored there, they were planning an expansion to up the number to 20,000. It seems like I heard 16K at one time, but it might be a few thousand more or less than that. Still plenty of the stuff to have around.

[MarcusF]

Originally posted by xtisme:
Its a byproduct if you are using breeder reactors (which I presume is why the Brits have so much of it). Breeder reactors do produce plutonium - that's what they breed :smack: - and some of the 100 tonnes will come from the DFR and PFR at Dounreay but the bulk of it will be from reprocessed, spent Magnox and AGR fuel.
I]Originally posted by[/I] fear itself:
Correct me if I am wrong, but plutonium is not used as fuel for large scale power generation, so it is pretty useless unless you are building bombs. It's not used in most commercial power plants - but it can be. It can be processed into MOX (Mixed OXide fuel) which can be used. The THORP plant at Sellafield was built to produce this. It started out taking spent fuel from Japan and returning MOX for their reactors but between the fuss Greenpeace made, the quality control scandals at BNFL, and the depressed price of uranium it has not been economic.
Originally posted by elucidator:
As a registered mathtard, I am challenged. But, still, in excess of 200,000 lbs of plutonium? Seems unlikely. The figures are reliable - the report they quote is from the Royal Society and I've not heard them challenged. The report is available here (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=27169). (pdf warning!)

[Otara]

The worrying thing about this is:

Where is it stored and is it safely and constantly under armed guard cuz we don't want any dipshits getting ideas do we?

Doolally=Stoopid :D

Not seeing the problem there, whether its 200 lbs or 200000, it needs the same levels of protection from a terrorist perspective.

Its not like you're going to go 'good news prime minister, they only got enough to make 6 nuclear bombs!' after all.

Otara

[Szlater]

How difficult is to handle plutonium?

Bear in mind that the last time I handled radioactive material, I spilled it on my crotch (it was radiolabelled herbicide for a research project on bioavailbility in soil).

[Stranger On A Train]

How difficult is to handle plutonium?

Bear in mind that the last time I handled radioactive material, I spilled it on my crotch (it was radiolabelled herbicide for a research project on bioavailbility in soil).In pure solid form, not that difficult. Even 238Pu, with a half-life of about 88 years, only gives off gammas; you could handle it with a pair of gloves, or even with bare hands with little more risk than handling lead. There's no special hazard in injesting it in incidental quantities, as absorption from particulates would be minimal. If it were reduced to dust and inhaled, however, the results would likely be fatal. Plutonium also has various allotropes (states where the density or other material properties suddenly change) and so machining or manipulating it can be dangerous. In a suspended liquid (done during purification) it can become supercritical if the form factor of the containing vessel changes, causing a criticality excursion.

For the purpose of long-term storage, the material should mixed with 240Pu, rendering it non-useful for weaponization, but still usable with processing for a mixed oxide fuel. (This won't prevent its use in a "dirty bomb", but the effects of such bombs are questionable; like chemical warfare bombs, the utility is really the terror threat, not the actual damage it would cause, which would very likely be underwhelming.) You can also vitrify excess plutonium or used fuel, making it very difficult and time-consuming to recover for any malevolent purpose (essentially beyond the means of a terrorist organization); however, this also makes it difficult to recover for reprocessing should we decide that we need this for future power generation.

Sticking nuclear materials in a hole in the ground is an obtuse, short-sighted would-be solution that really fails to solve anything except putting it out of sight. Handling and processing carries its own attendant hazards, of course, and the list of near-accidents and excursions is worrisome to say the least (although more modern designs are far closer to being operationally fail-safe).

Stranger

[Miller]

You dont get people giving Philal,Philatele,Phili...

Philipinos?

[Bryan Ekers]

Hey, better to have 17000 nuclear bombs and not need them....

[Stranger On A Train]

Hey, better to have 17000 nuclear bombs and not need them....Next you'll be espousing the virtues of Reaganomics... :p

Stranger