June 28, 2005
Nukes in the News: US Has Plans to Again Make Own Plutonium
~[Note: While reading this story about the need for plutonium (nuclear) batteries keep in mind this factoid: "Year by which every U.S. nuclear weapon will have reached the end of its original design life : 2014" (Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Energy) via Harper's Index]
"The Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war...The substance, valued as a power source, is so radioactive that a speck can cause cancer.
Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years... Officials say the program could cost $1.5 billion and generate more than 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste.
"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Timothy A. Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department...He vigorously denied that any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.
Plutonium 238 has no central role in nuclear arms. Instead, it is valued for its steady heat, which can be turned into electricity. Nuclear batteries made of it are best known for powering spacecraft that go where sunlight is too dim to energize solar cells. For instance, they now power the Cassini probe exploring Saturn and its moons.
Federal and private experts unconnected to the project said the new plutonium would probably power devices for conducting espionage on land and under the sea. Even if no formal plans now exist to use the plutonium in space for military purposes, these experts said that the material could be used by the military to power compact spy satellites that would be hard for adversaries to track, evade or destroy.
Early in the nuclear era, the government became fascinated by plutonium 238 and used it regularly to make nuclear batteries that worked for years or decades...
story (NYTimes) via TruthOut
~Ralph Nader has labeled plutonium as "the most poisonous substance on earth". Google search brings up a number of recent articles which don't exactly refute that claim but suggest for example how rare plutonium is and how earlier accidental exposures to less concentrated forms hardly killed anyone.
Maybe the plutonium contractors can hold a press conference and give President Bush and other high ranking federal officials watches, cell phones, pacemakers, PDA's, etc. 'perpetually' powered by nuclear batteries from the Idaho Falls plant? What better way to show concerned Americans how environmentally safe plutonium as an energy source can be?
Isn't the idea of producing the most poisonous substance known to humankind in the name of 'national security' too precious for words?
Six or seven Presidents and their Congresses from 1946?-1980 were convinced by the best scientific and military experts at the time that the need to produce and test plutonium devices far outweighed the risks to the American people weren't they?
Now watch in the next few years as it happens again?
...also from the above story: "Today, the United States makes no plutonium 238 and instead relies on aging stockpiles or imports from Russia. By agreement with the Russians, it cannot use the imported material - some 35 pounds since the end of the cold war - for military purposes. With its domestic stockpile running low. Washington now wants to resume production..."
~It doesn't say here that the Russians can't or won't produce the 330 extra pounds of plutonium needed in the next 30 years for classified missions which in no way involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.
related:
NuclearNo
Russian Nuclear Non-Proliferation Site