I am still convinced that N Korea did not make any type of nuclear tests, nor there is any proof or solid evidence that they have enough weapon grade plutonium to make a bomb.
Most of the evidences are pointing to a standard explosive test that was "sold" to the rest of the world as a nuclear test.
We covered all of this in a thread a few months ago if I remember correctly.
Is the nuclear renaissance dead yet?
If that's the one I recall, the title was something like "North Korea Fusion".
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... viewtopic.php?t=2205
Seems like a sensible attitude to me. Neither plutonium nor anything else is infinitely dangerous.icarus wrote:Kiteman:
Okay, so summing up the gist of your tacking and jibing around the question;
You are happy to have SOME level of Plutonium in your children's teeth.
but you are unsure/ignorant of what that level should be.
I accept some level cholera bacteria in drinking water, some level of organic mercury in fish, some level of "insect parts" in soft cheeses, some level of particulate pollution from diesel cars, some level of methanol in fruit juice, some risk of rocks or pebbles in veggies, some risk of ecoli on veggies, some level of benzene in lingonberries, some amount of acrylamide in fried potato, some amount of cholesterol in eggs, some amount of radon in my living room, some level of potassium-40 in anything that contains potassium, some level of carbon-14 in any formerly living thing I might contemplate eating, some level of cosmic radiation during an airplane flight, some level of x-ray exposure at the dentist, some level of exposure to cold virii in collective traffic and a million other things.
The alternative is zero tolerance, which means I have no access to drinking water, vegetables, fish, cheese, fruit juices, lingonberries, banans, fries/crisps/potato cakes, eggs, airplanes, collective traffic, food in general, cars or housing among a million other things. What's special about radiation is that its just so easy to detect in minute amounts.
What level of acryl amide should I accept in potato crisps? I pay experts to find that out for me so I don't have to; that's the few percent sliver of my taxes I'm most happy/least annoyed to pay.
A decision was made by both sides at the start of the cold war to test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. Most of the plutonium in those thousands of exploded devices was cast at random into the atmosphere.
Nuclear weapons production centered on the production of plutonium. The land around the plutonium processing sites was without exception enriched with plutonium.
The chances are good that the area in Great Britain that you are referring to was a weapons production site at one time.
Plutonium just does not escape from a civilian power plant. Nuclear waste is encased in a zirconium shell that retains all fission solid waste products. Great care is taken so that these fuel pellets are not compromised.
Nuclear weapons production centered on the production of plutonium. The land around the plutonium processing sites was without exception enriched with plutonium.
The chances are good that the area in Great Britain that you are referring to was a weapons production site at one time.
Plutonium just does not escape from a civilian power plant. Nuclear waste is encased in a zirconium shell that retains all fission solid waste products. Great care is taken so that these fuel pellets are not compromised.
"Tacking and jibing"? Why the appearent insult?icarus wrote: Kiteman:
Okay, so summing up the gist of your tacking and jibing around the question;
True. "Some" may include "zero" but I find that unlikely.icarus wrote: You are happy to have SOME level of Plutonium in your children's teeth.
True.icarus wrote: but you are unsure/ignorant of what that level should be.
From the article you quote there appears to be some typical, background level of Plutonium in childrens teeth and I am perfectly content (happy?) to have that remain. Further, if I were to have information to prove that 3X the background had no ill effects, I'd be perfectly content/happy for that state to remain also.
Clear enough? Or do you consider that statement "tacking and jibing" too?
Lack of knowledge of a benefit DOES NOT EQUAL knowledge of lack of a benefit. And CERTAINLY doesn't equal a knowledge of a harm.icarus wrote:Fair point but what is the risk/reward from having plutonium in your teeth? Where's the benefit?
I could speculate ad-nauseum about potential benefits to plutonium in teeth. The first and most obvious would be that it might prevent cavities by killing the germs that cause them. Or maybe the size of the atom as it takes the place of some other atom in the enamel matrix causes a particular stress pattern that INCREASES the strength of the teeth.
Yada yada yada; mere speculation.
The fact is that I have yet to find ANYTHING wrt the human body, where data actually exists, that didn't turn out to have a hormesis effect. Not anything! I see no reason why Plutonium in teeth should be any different. But I don't have the data there so I do allow as how it is POSSIBLE that there is no hormesis. Unlikely, but possible.
I admit defeat at the bolloxing and jibing and squirming in illogicality. You have those features in amounts I could never approach. You are the master!rcain wrote:@KIteman - what utter bollox - i am surprised at you - that is not just 'tacking and jibing', that is 'squirming' in illogicality - you know you are beat.
But what does that have to do with my response to icarus?
For those of you interested in some numbers, and not just name calling, The second link mentions that the measured plutonium levels in the teeth was ~ 5 milli Bq/ kg, and that the plutonium made up ~ 1-10% of all of the alpha radioactive isotopes in the teeth.
The EPA (third link) limit is ~ 15 pico Curies / liter of drinking water. That is ~ 15*10^-12 Curies or ~ 52 *10^-2 disintegrations per second = 0.52 Bq (1 Curie = 3.7 * 10^10 disintegrations per second, and 1 Bq= 1 disintegrations per second).
If my math is right this means the teeth containing ~ 0.005 Bq of plutonium /kg teeth devided by the EPA safe limits standard of ~ 52 Bq / liter (Kq) . So, if you were eating these children's teeth you would be ~ 1/ 10,000th the EPA limits for plutonium contamination.
There are several questions concerning how much the plutonium is accumulated in the teeth, but it is safe to say that the levels are extremely tiny. The EPA standards are for excess cancer deaths of ~ 1/100,000 or 1/1,000,000. A level 1/10,000th of that would result in much fewer cancer deaths (1/in a billion, 1 in 10 billion?). The risk from the other radioisotopes found in the teeth are 10-100 times worse. They do not comment on these other alpha emitting isotopes or where they come from.
So, I would say the levels are safe. This does not mean that the information suggesting a local increase near the reprocessing plant should be ignored. It is a red flag that means deeper investigation may be warranted.
ttp://www.icucec.org/files/plutoniumteeth.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_o ... archtype=a
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclid ... onium.html
http://www.mcgill.ca/ehs/radiation/basics/units/
Dan Tibbets
The EPA (third link) limit is ~ 15 pico Curies / liter of drinking water. That is ~ 15*10^-12 Curies or ~ 52 *10^-2 disintegrations per second = 0.52 Bq (1 Curie = 3.7 * 10^10 disintegrations per second, and 1 Bq= 1 disintegrations per second).
If my math is right this means the teeth containing ~ 0.005 Bq of plutonium /kg teeth devided by the EPA safe limits standard of ~ 52 Bq / liter (Kq) . So, if you were eating these children's teeth you would be ~ 1/ 10,000th the EPA limits for plutonium contamination.
There are several questions concerning how much the plutonium is accumulated in the teeth, but it is safe to say that the levels are extremely tiny. The EPA standards are for excess cancer deaths of ~ 1/100,000 or 1/1,000,000. A level 1/10,000th of that would result in much fewer cancer deaths (1/in a billion, 1 in 10 billion?). The risk from the other radioisotopes found in the teeth are 10-100 times worse. They do not comment on these other alpha emitting isotopes or where they come from.
So, I would say the levels are safe. This does not mean that the information suggesting a local increase near the reprocessing plant should be ignored. It is a red flag that means deeper investigation may be warranted.
ttp://www.icucec.org/files/plutoniumteeth.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_o ... archtype=a
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclid ... onium.html
http://www.mcgill.ca/ehs/radiation/basics/units/
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.
Thank you for the data. And the point I was making was that even these rates are probably way high since AFAIK the EPA still uses the ridiculous "linear thru zero" toxicity curve rather than a more realistic J-type curve. Those Plutonium levels MAY actually prove beneficial. Less likely with children since growing bodies tend to be more susceptible to radiation injury than adult bodies; but without REAL data...D Tibbets wrote: If my math is right this means the teeth containing ~ 0.005 Bq of plutonium /kg teeth devided by the EPA safe limits standard of ~ 52 Bq / liter (Kq) . So, if you were eating these children's teeth you would be ~ 1/ 10,000th the EPA limits for plutonium contamination.
There are several questions concerning how much the plutonium is accumulated in the teeth, but it is safe to say that the levels are extremely tiny. The EPA standards are for excess cancer deaths of ~ 1/100,000 or 1/1,000,000.
I guess adding this question to this thread is about as good a place to put it as any:
I've seen a lot written about how fuel 'waste' can be reprocessed and burned, or, in the case of some reactor designs like the Travelling Wave Reactor that Bill Gates is backing, basically just burned without reprocessing (or perhaps limited reprocessing just to get it into the specific form needed for that reactor).
I've seen estimates that our 'waste' can provide 200-500 years power (at current consumption levels - of course, consumption is much more likely to increase than remain constant).
Anyhow, my question is: Is there any reason that all the stockpiles of depleted uranium (e.g. all the U-238 which is seperated out during the enrichment process) can't *also* be used in fast reactors or travelling wave reactors? My understanding is that, in a fast reactor, U-238 transmutes to some isotope of Pu.
I just found a statistic that, "There is about 1.5 million tonnes of depleted uranium available, from both military and civil enrichment activity since the 1940s" ( source ). Does anyone know what the 'reserve time' becomes if you include that 1.5 million tons of depleted Uranium? Is the DU included in those 200-500 year estimates, or if you include that, does the figure jump up to something more like 600 to 5000 years of reserve energy (I assume that there is far more depleted uranium in the world than enriched uraninum, since natural uranium only starts out with about 1 percent U-235, and they enrich it up to 3-5% [ source ], which tells me there should be something like 2-4 times more depleted uranium than enriched uranium out there - that is, I'm assuming that to get 1 ton of uranium enriched to 3% U-235, you must start out with about 3 tons of 1% U-235 natural uranium, and get rid of about 2 tons of U-238)?
The way I look at it, all that depleted uranium is like Amish Friendship Bread. That is, you need some other (active/fissile) waste from a reactor to start breeding it, but then it becomes 'active', and you can use the fissile 'waste' from that fuel to 'start' the next batch of depleted uranium in a fact reactor, right?
Has anyone done a calculation, then, of how much 'reserve' energy we have when you include the DU in the estimates of available energy from current nuclear 'waste'?
I've seen a lot written about how fuel 'waste' can be reprocessed and burned, or, in the case of some reactor designs like the Travelling Wave Reactor that Bill Gates is backing, basically just burned without reprocessing (or perhaps limited reprocessing just to get it into the specific form needed for that reactor).
I've seen estimates that our 'waste' can provide 200-500 years power (at current consumption levels - of course, consumption is much more likely to increase than remain constant).
Anyhow, my question is: Is there any reason that all the stockpiles of depleted uranium (e.g. all the U-238 which is seperated out during the enrichment process) can't *also* be used in fast reactors or travelling wave reactors? My understanding is that, in a fast reactor, U-238 transmutes to some isotope of Pu.
I just found a statistic that, "There is about 1.5 million tonnes of depleted uranium available, from both military and civil enrichment activity since the 1940s" ( source ). Does anyone know what the 'reserve time' becomes if you include that 1.5 million tons of depleted Uranium? Is the DU included in those 200-500 year estimates, or if you include that, does the figure jump up to something more like 600 to 5000 years of reserve energy (I assume that there is far more depleted uranium in the world than enriched uraninum, since natural uranium only starts out with about 1 percent U-235, and they enrich it up to 3-5% [ source ], which tells me there should be something like 2-4 times more depleted uranium than enriched uranium out there - that is, I'm assuming that to get 1 ton of uranium enriched to 3% U-235, you must start out with about 3 tons of 1% U-235 natural uranium, and get rid of about 2 tons of U-238)?
The way I look at it, all that depleted uranium is like Amish Friendship Bread. That is, you need some other (active/fissile) waste from a reactor to start breeding it, but then it becomes 'active', and you can use the fissile 'waste' from that fuel to 'start' the next batch of depleted uranium in a fact reactor, right?
Has anyone done a calculation, then, of how much 'reserve' energy we have when you include the DU in the estimates of available energy from current nuclear 'waste'?
Since very little energy has been extracted from nuclear waste (slightly used uranium (1%)) by the light water reactor, the energy content of depleted uranium and waste are almost the same.jsbiff wrote:I guess adding this question to this thread is about as good a place to put it as any:
I've seen a lot written about how fuel 'waste' can be reprocessed and burned, or, in the case of some reactor designs like the Travelling Wave Reactor that Bill Gates is backing, basically just burned without reprocessing (or perhaps limited reprocessing just to get it into the specific form needed for that reactor).
I've seen estimates that our 'waste' can provide 200-500 years power (at current consumption levels - of course, consumption is much more likely to increase than remain constant).
Anyhow, my question is: Is there any reason that all the stockpiles of depleted uranium (e.g. all the U-238 which is seperated out during the enrichment process) can't *also* be used in fast reactors or travelling wave reactors? My understanding is that, in a fast reactor, U-238 transmutes to some isotope of Pu.
I just found a statistic that, "There is about 1.5 million tonnes of depleted uranium available, from both military and civil enrichment activity since the 1940s" ( source ). Does anyone know what the 'reserve time' becomes if you include that 1.5 million tons of depleted Uranium? Is the DU included in those 200-500 year estimates, or if you include that, does the figure jump up to something more like 600 to 5000 years of reserve energy (I assume that there is far more depleted uranium in the world than enriched uraninum, since natural uranium only starts out with about 1 percent U-235, and they enrich it up to 3-5% [ source ], which tells me there should be something like 2-4 times more depleted uranium than enriched uranium out there - that is, I'm assuming that to get 1 ton of uranium enriched to 3% U-235, you must start out with about 3 tons of 1% U-235 natural uranium, and get rid of about 2 tons of U-238)?
The way I look at it, all that depleted uranium is like Amish Friendship Bread. That is, you need some other (active/fissile) waste from a reactor to start breeding it, but then it becomes 'active', and you can use the fissile 'waste' from that fuel to 'start' the next batch of depleted uranium in a fact reactor, right?
Has anyone done a calculation, then, of how much 'reserve' energy we have when you include the DU in the estimates of available energy from current nuclear 'waste'?
A ton of uranium if fully utilized will produce about a gigawatt year of power. So the energy available from the already mined uranium is about 1.5 million gigawatt years of power.
The electrical demand will go from 3,873 billion kilowatt hours in 2008 to 5,021 billion kilowatt hours in 2035.
These numbers should be grist for your calculator to give you what you are after.
By the way, the TWR is a one time through (not a breeder) sodium cooled fast reactor that uses depleted uranium as fertile and enriched U235 as fissile for startup.
Yes, thank you. As near as I can tell, most of the figures I've seen about how long we can power the country on our 'waste' is probably not including the depleted uranium left-over from enrichment. I've seen some people give figures of 100's of years of power, while others give 1000's. Partly that might be due to more conservative vs less conservative estimates of demand growth, but I think it probably is that the people saying 1000's of years are including all the DU.Axil wrote:These numbers should be grist for your calculator to give you what you are after.
According to what I've been reading on the Intellectual Ventures site about TerraPower, it is a breeder - the 'travelling wave' is constantly, slowly (takes 60 or 80 years for the wave to travel top to bottom through the fuel), breeding the fertile uranium in plutonium in-situ by hitting it with neutrons, then fissioning the newly transmuted plutonium, until almost all the original U-235 is gone? How is that not breeding?By the way, the TWR is a one time through (not a breeder) sodium cooled fast reactor that uses depleted uranium as fertile and enriched U235 as fissile for startup.