None of the countries that have developed nuclear weapons have gotten their plutonium from nuclear waste because there are much easier ways to get weapons grade plutonium.
Form the wikipedia page:
"Ordinarily (in spent nuclear fuel), plutonium is reactor-grade plutonium. In addition to plutonium-239, which is highly suitable for building nuclear weapons, it contains large amounts of undesirable contaminants: plutonium-240, plutonium-241, and plutonium-238. These isotopes are extremely difficult to separate, and more cost-effective ways of obtaining fissile material exist (e.g. uranium enrichment or dedicated plutonium production reactors)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
As the wikipedia article points out a very good approach to deal with nuclear waste would be burn the waste in pyrometallurgical fast reactors like the proposed Integral Fast Reactor. (For background on the Integral Fast Reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor)
Trying to throw the waste in the sun would be one of the worst possible imaginable ways of dealing with nuclear waste.
> None of the countries that have developed nuclear weapons have gotten their plutonium from nuclear waste
Just because someone hasn't done it before doesn't mean someone won't in the future.
You're also ignoring the larger threat to that plutonium; the issue that someone may not want to separate the contaminants. If they're making a dirty bomb, they don't care if it has contaminants or not.
You're also ignoring the larger threat to that plutonium; the issue that someone may not want to separate the contaminants. If they're making a dirty bomb, they don't care if it has contaminants or not.
So which is worse for that, having a fuck-ton of seriously nasty stuff sitting around forever, or concentrating the nasty stuff to a much more manageable volume and then fairly quickly shipping it off to be destroyed (in a way that just happens to provide useful energy out of the deal).
>Just because someone hasn't done it before doesn't mean someone won't in the future.
It isn't random chance that no one has developed nuclear weapons using nuclear waste from a commercial reactor. It is because it would be far more expensive, a far bigger engineering challenge and far more difficult to hide than any of the other ways to create a nuclear bomb.
>You're also ignoring the larger threat to that plutonium; the issue that someone may not want to separate the contaminants. If they're making a dirty bomb, they don't care if it has contaminants or not.
I didn't talk about dirty bomb because the original statement I was replying too was saying that reprocessing akes plutonium easy to separate out and was a nuclear proliferation risk. It is impolite to criticize me for not bringing up a different issue. In the case of a dirty bomb, it would be many times less dangerous than a nuclear weapon would be and there are many, many potential sources of material for a dirty bomb that would be much easier to obtain and work with than the waste from a commercial nuclear reactor.
As I said before, a very good approach to deal with nuclear waste would be recycle it.
Form the wikipedia page: "Ordinarily (in spent nuclear fuel), plutonium is reactor-grade plutonium. In addition to plutonium-239, which is highly suitable for building nuclear weapons, it contains large amounts of undesirable contaminants: plutonium-240, plutonium-241, and plutonium-238. These isotopes are extremely difficult to separate, and more cost-effective ways of obtaining fissile material exist (e.g. uranium enrichment or dedicated plutonium production reactors)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste
As the wikipedia article points out a very good approach to deal with nuclear waste would be burn the waste in pyrometallurgical fast reactors like the proposed Integral Fast Reactor. (For background on the Integral Fast Reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor)
Trying to throw the waste in the sun would be one of the worst possible imaginable ways of dealing with nuclear waste.