NUCLEAR WHITE PAPER
High level summary
Nuclear Power Generation and it's risks and connections to Atom Bombs
The purpose of this technical white paper is to provide the American public with enough background to understand the basics surrounding the generation of Electric Power from radioactive materials and how it is connected to similar technologies involved in making atom bombs and in what ways it is not connected. The paper will also provide some data on risks involved in using radioactive materials for electricity.
This article is written in order to provide the interested reader and listener of primary news services with the information needed to be more knowledgable about the topics in the news such as the Iran and North Korea negotiations on uranium enrichment.
Sources of energy for electric power
There is plenty of Uranium available (mostly U238 in nature) to produce electric power for several hundred years in conventional boiling water reactors and enough for thousands of years if breeder reactors are improved and used. All of this is true no matter how big the population (food will be the limiting factor for population).
Nuclear electric power creates small amounts of pollutant, breeder reactors have the least waste and shortest radioactive half-life (20 years) for the waste. A boiling water plant (most in use today) has (probably) ten times the waste materials with thousands of year half-lives.
Coal fired electric power plants have the greatest quantity of pollutants, the highest CO2(greenhouse gas) and largest quantity of waste products, sterile ash, that leaves large areas of infertile land.
Oil and natural gas fired electric power is cleaner than coal but is wasteful of a limited resource and is becoming more costly than coal. Oil electric power would make sense in oil rich countries with limited industrial development and where nuclear proliferation is risky.
Electric power is needed for the making of Hydrogen fuel for automobiles. Hydrogen doesn’t just make itself from chemical processes without external electrical input.
Nuclear fuel processing for electric power and for bombs
Uranium in nature tends to contain 0.7% or less Uranium 235, the type of Uranium needed for fission, for both nuclear bombs and electric power. Most of the rest of uranium ore is U238. The number, 238, refers to its atomic weight.
U235 must be present at 3% or greater in the U238 fuel in order for a boiling water reactor electric power plant to work. To get 0.7% U235 enriched to 3% U235 in large enough amounts to run an electric power plant a large enrichment facility is needed. Enrichment is done by centrifuging the different atomic weight Uranium's so that the heavier element can be taken off to leave the enriched U235.
To make a bomb from U235 it has to be at the 90% purity level in most cases.
It takes a smaller enrichment plant to enrich natural uranium to bomb level only because there is less fuel needed at the end. It takes many more cycles of enrichment to get the U235 to 90%.
An electric power plant can be designed to create Plutonium (Pu239) as an end product, which can then be chemically separated from the other uranium fuel to make a bomb. The best form of reactor for this purpose is the PHWR or pressurized heavy water reactor which starts with U238 and finishes with PU239 and generates electric power in between.
A fast breeder electric plant can be fueled in such a way that it’s bred plutonium is less amenable to separation for bomb making than either the uranium or plutonium from the BWP or the PHWR. Enrichment is not needed at a fast breeder electric plant.
Boiling water plants (that use heavy water) and the enrichment processes needed for them tend to make bombs most easily because they don't need enrichment.
Nuclear electric power is the cleanest and most likely long term energy solution on the planet and we must find a way to provide energy without creating a situation where we blow ourselves up. This is what should be being discussed in the news, not whether satellite photos show a unranium enrichment plant or not.The presence of enrichment plants is not proof of bomb making intentions. On the other hand, once an enrichment plant is available the bomb making part is hideable and feasible.
Nuclear Wastes and other wastes
