U.S. Seeks to Give Weapons-Grade Plutonium to Startups for Fuel
nytimes.comIran war negotiations speed run: Iran becomes startup, nuclear material is now granted for startup purposes, we can get our navy out of there. Brilliant.
Move fast and meltdown
WTF
TFA goes into some detail, with the alternative being dilution and burial. Meanwhile dilution and sale to private reactors seems far more useful given the energy that went into creating that PU in the first place, and the good it could do as fuel.
It's literally swords into plowshares, what's the problem other than the fact that the word "Plutonium" gives people hives?
Trusting startups to dispose of it properly if they go bankrupt seems like an absolute disaster waiting to happen. Netflix has/had an interesting series "radioactive emergency" based on real events that seems to be a fairly plausible outcome. The "Goiânia accident in Brazil occurred on September 13, 1987".
The US is significantly more developed and less locally corrupt than Brazil, never mind Brazil in the 1980s.
I still don't trust failing startups to handle radioactive waste properly.
Trust isn’t a factor, regulations and DOE control are. You also seem to be really overestimating the amount of fissile material any one facility will have at any given time.
> regulations and DOE control are
That’s still trust. DOGE wasn’t helpful keeping trust in the capabilities of government agencies to enforce regulations
DOGE was a joke, the DOE is not and has a proven track record of controlling nuclear material in far more challenging scenarios than some startups with enough diluted PU for a reactor. Those risks are frankly trivial compared to the ones related to pollution and climate change people are willing to endure because it doesn't tickle their monkey brain with the "nuclear" word.
> DOE is not and has a proven track record of controlling nuclear material in far more challenging scenarios than some startups with enough diluted PU for a reactor.
Really? In the case of the Apollo affair, also known as NUMEC affair, the DOE lost enough enriched uranium for several nuclear bombs. NUMEC wasn't a big company.
Your statement is backwards. The larger the organization using the material is, the easier it is to control its use. Multiple cases of "some startups" are the opposite of that and a lot harder to control.
> enough diluted PU for a reactor
Diluted PU is chemically separable, no need for fancy centrifuges, "some startup" can easily extract weapons grade material and it doesn't take much to cause irreparable harm to the US.
> Those risks are frankly trivial compared to the ones related to pollution and climate change people are willing to endure because it doesn't tickle their monkey brain with the "nuclear" word.
A rogue nuke can do a lot more damage than pollution, especially in the current political climate. You severely underestimate the difficulties of safeguarding nuclear materials too. Pollution and climate change are several orders of magnitude less risky than willy-nilly distribution of plutonium.
And of course, "monkey brain" is a cheap manipulation attempt.
In order:
In 1965. So much has changed since, especially when it comes to accountability and tracking of nuclear material and waste.
Yes in theory, no in practice the attempt to do so would probably require a state sponsor. Now you have US companies transferring PU to a foreign power to turn into weapons grade? For what? The pleasure of ending up in ADX Florence until they die?
It really can't, over a million people die annually from air pollution alone, never mind the billions expected to perish as a result of downstream effects of climate change. Frankly a nuke or two is nothing by comparison, even if this story had anything to do with nuclear weapons...
...WHICH IT DOES NOT.
> So much has changed since
There's no solid proof that the changes were for the better, but such a proof is absolutely necessary. If anything, we've been recently observing deepening quid pro quo between government and business, at the expense of public interests.
> would probably require a state sponsor
The probability of that is far above zero while it should be practically indistinguishable from it - which is not realistic.
> It really can't, over a million people die annually from air pollution alone, never mind the billions expected to perish as a result of downstream effects of climate change.
It's pretty clear you're looking at the wrong equation. I am all for nuclear power but plutonium is absolutely irrelevant to the plight of pollution and climate.
Nuclear power has to be built slowly with great caution together with renewables in order to exclude Fukushimas, Chernobyls and Three Mile Islands. It's hard as it is even without plutonium in the mix. Much like in the case of rushed AI and data centers, "move fast and break things" is the wrong attitude here.
There's conventional uranium fuel with low enrichment which is hard to separate, it can work as well or better than plutonium for power in civilian installations, the latter isn't necessary, it only adds risk without any benefit compared to uranium.
> Frankly a nuke or two is nothing by comparison,
This is breathtakingly wrong. What follows "a nuke or two" can wipe out 90% of the globe, and the US isn't going to be spared. If you don't understand that, you need to research more.
Practically every time a corporation ends up polluting the environment the government ends up paying for it.
Which seems like a good reason not to hand out a bunch of nuclear material...
1) Pu is incredibly toxic
2) You can make nuclear bombs out of it. If it's too diluted, you can purify it with normal chemical processes and then make your bombs. It's not like uranium where you need a monstrously expensive isotope separation process to get the fissionables out.
3) Even if ransomware gangs don't get their hands on the Pu, billionaire tech bros with nukes sounds dystopian enough in its own right.
4) Even ignoring the weapons proliferation aspect, startups building Pu-fueled power reactors seems like a dumb idea. Thorium-molten salt may be a little harder but holds lots of promise. It's being built in China now.
> If it's too diluted, you can purify it with normal chemical processes and then make your bombs. It's not like uranium where you need a monstrously expensive isotope separation process to get the fissionables out.
While technically it is possible to separate plutonium out chemically, it is extremely difficult to do in practice. Plutonium separation plants are more expensive than uranium enrichment plants, and that's the reason states pursuing clandestine nuclear weapons programs choose uranium enrichment over plutonium. Uranium enrichment was much more expensive in the 40s and 50s when the US built up its plutonium production infrastructure, all of which was shut down in the 80s. Modern centrifuges make uranium enrichment cheap and simple, and the only economical source of plutonium is dismantled nuclear weapons.
PU is toxic, but hardly uniquely toxic. All of the "UPPU" guys from the old days died of natural causes at a ripe old age so clearly mild exposure is no death sentence. As far as proliferation goes I'm not sure how... ransomware gangs are going to switch to presumably armed interdiction and extraction of highly sensitive nuclear material. As a country we manage quite a lot of nuclear material and so far your scenario hasn't come to pass.
So yes there certainly are downsides to anything involving nuclear energy, just like there are downsides to fossil fuels, or the toxic heavy metals so often involved in "green" energy. The upside of nuclear energy is a lack of emissions after the initial construction, minimal mining to support it compared to other options, long working lifetimes and high efficiency.
But people love to focus on Hollywood inspired nightmare scenarios.
You are missing that there is weapons grade plutonium with only Pu239 and reactor grade with some Pu240. The Pu240 spoils the fission reaction. Reactor grade might be usuable for bombs, but then all spent fuel is a problem.
Mix some weapons grade and reactor grade plutonium and end up with reactor grade that can't be used. Reactor grade plutonium already gets used in reactors.
But imagine 2D-metamaterialized twisted-angle plutonium! Pure Stargatium!
Bzzzt...…