gordon1986 - Slashdot User

Comment Re:nuclear warheads? (Score 1) 611

by gordon1986 on Monday January 05, 2009 @05:18PM (#26335185) Attached to: Distributed "Nuclear Batteries" the New Infrastructure Answer?

What does the poster mean by "is not capable of creating nuclear warheads". Does he mean, "does not create by-products or waste that, if refined and combined with additional hardware, could possibly be used to create a nuclear warhead". Do we currently have nuclear power plants that are also capable of producing nuclear warheads (warheads that actually react and go boom and not just spread radioactive waste everywhere)?

He means that the spent fuel cannot be chemically manipulated to produce the correct composition of Plutonium.

We do currently have nuclear power plants in the US which produce weapons grade spent fuel.

Comment Re:Smells like bologna (Score 1, Informative) 611

by gordon1986 on Monday January 05, 2009 @05:16PM (#26335153) Attached to: Distributed "Nuclear Batteries" the New Infrastructure Answer?

Nuclear warheads require a certain ratio of Pu-239. Plutonium nuclides cannot be separated or enriched in an isotopic manner. (ie: if the spent fuel has 4% Pu-239, 90% Pu-240 and 6% Pu-241, it will always have that composition, you can't enrich it to 50% Pu-239) Therefore, unless the original Uranium fuel has the correct ratio of U-238 to the other nuclides, weapons grade plutonium cannot be crafted from the fuel, at any time.

Slashdot Top Deals