The Jihad against Depleted Uranium Continues....

[Master of Ossus]

i got a question...why is this whole stuff called Jihad and not Crusade?

Aren't they pretty much the same thing?

They are, but in the West, Jihad has a negative connotation, while crusade has a positive one.

[Uraniun235]

DU is uranium with the U-235 removed, leaving only the U-238.

Reprocessing is a process in which useable fuel is extracted from spent fuel rods. This both produces more fuel which can be used again in a reactor and also greatly reduces the amount f high-level radioactive waste that must be disposed of. However there are only a couple plants currently running that do this because its cheaper to mine more uranium and procrastinate on a long term storage site for the waste.

As planned the US government was going to operate several plants to handle all US spent fuel, which would have left us with a small fraction of the waste we have today. However due to expense, what was suppose to be a net gain process was actually a massive net loss resulted in funding being cut quickly.

I heard the real reason was that the reprocessed stuff was easier to convert to weapons-grade, so they were "afraid terrorists would steal some" or some crap like that.

Pu: That would actually be quite ironic, considering that reprocessing would cut down on waste products, and thus cut pollution.

[Admiral Piett]

Since it is U-238, can't you convert it to plutonium in a breeder reactor, meaning there actually is a use in power generation or weapons, assuming the US can do this neglecting the political reasons not to. Too bad we got too many enviromentalists and paranoid people.

The breeeder reactors,which use plutonium as fuel and sodium as coolant are the most dangerous type of reactor in civilian service.There are simply too many safety problems to make them a viable alternative to lightwater reactors and the other types.Not even the soviets built many of them,that should tell you something.The coolant does not react well when it enters in contact with air and water,they are the only reactors that could explode (in theory at least) and plutonium is more dangerous than uranium (it is much more toxic from a chemical point of view for example).As far as I know only the frenchs have built one large scale power plant and they have shut it down a few years ago.

Depleted uranium is byproduct of of the isotopic refinery process necessary to manufacture fuel for the lightwater reactors.These reactors need a percentage of U235 higher that the uranium normally would have.

[Pu-239]

The proliferation of DU is also a problem

Not really. Worthless for nuclear bombs, thus the whole D part of the name, and dirty bombs, alpha partials are stopped by large amounts of moister in the air or thin sheets of newspaper.

And its use as armor or tank shells is really not much of a threat. Anyone who can get enough of it to use it for such has sufficent resoruces that they could just as easily use other things, there is no added threat just convenience for them. DU is pretty much worthless of anything but shells, armor and select forms of radiation shielding.

I'm thinking more along the lines of the Chinese using it (just paranoid) or Russia selling DU rounds.

[Mike_6002]

Damn UN Wusses afarid to use the good ammo who cares there Serbs everyone hates them (I'm not a racist) but there a bad people who did horrible things to the Croats, Albainas, Muslims

[Pu-239]

What about the gas cooled breeder reactors, instead of the liquid sodium ones? Of course you have the problem of the reactor blowing up like a nuclear bomb, and the toxicity of plutonium, and the relative ease of converting Pu into weapons.

[Admiral Piett]

What about the gas cooled breeder reactors, instead of the liquid sodium ones? Of course you have the problem of the reactor blowing up like a nuclear bomb, and the toxicity of plutonium, and the relative ease of converting Pu into weapons.

Gas cooled breeder reactors? Never heard about them.Usually high density fuel reactors such as these use liquid metals as coolants,sodium or lead alloys.

[Sea Skimmer]

What about the gas cooled breeder reactors, instead of the liquid sodium ones? Of course you have the problem of the reactor blowing up like a nuclear bomb, and the toxicity of plutonium, and the relative ease of converting Pu into weapons.

Gas cooled breeder reactors? Never heard about them.Usually high density fuel reactors such as these use liquid metals as coolants,sodium or lead alloys.

Same here. The only breeders I've ever heard of used liquid sodium.

[Pu-239]

Britain has some standard gas cooled (Magnox) reactors. There is (was) a water cooled experimental breeder reactor, converting thorium, but making the reactor cores was too expensive.

http://pw1.netcom.com/~res95/energy/nuc ... eeder.html

For Gas-Cooled Fast Reactors-

http://web.mit.edu/canes/research/modfastgas.html
http://www.iaea.or.at/inis/aws/fnss/abs ... _0154.html
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl ... gle+Search
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl ... gle+Search
http://www.iaea.or.at/inis/aws/fnss/abs ... 54_14.html
http://www.google.com/unclesam?num=100& ... gle+Search

I'm not sure any have actually been built though.

[Pu-239]

Bump

[Admiral Piett]

Actually I am probably wrong about plutonium being more toxic than uranium from a chemical point of view.Chemical toxicity is probably the main factor with DU,but with plutonium radiations are the main problem.
This however does not change the fact that plutonium is one of the most dangerous substances in the world and that breeder reactors are more dangerous than the others types.When I speak about the possibility of a nuclear explosion I do not mean something on the scale of Hiroshima.
The explosions that could take place within the core of a breeder reactor can be measure in terms of kg of TNT rather than in thousands of tons of TNT.Still they could be enough to breach the containment vessel and spread the plutonium outside.Since the quantity of plutonium necessary to cause lung cancer if inhaled is astronomically low things can become nasty.

[Admiral Piett]

Britain has some standard gas cooled (Magnox) reactors. There is (was) a water cooled experimental breeder reactor, converting thorium, but making the reactor cores was too expensive.
I'm not sure any have actually been built though.

I do not have now the time to read all the material but aren't you referring to the standard graphite-gas-natural uranium reactors?
They have been around since the beginning of the nuclear era,although now lightwater reactors are the large majority.
They are in anycase pretty different from the breeder reactors.

[Vympel]

Damn UN Wusses afarid to use the good ammo who cares there Serbs everyone hates them (I'm not a racist) but there a bad people who did horrible things to the Croats, Albainas, Muslims

Oh yeah and the Croats, and Albanians were entirely blameless huh?

500,000 Serbs were displaced from Bosnia to Serbia thanks to the Muslim Croats, and the KLA in Kosovo were classified as narco terrorists by the State Department until they became politically expedient- then hey presto they're freedom fighters.

As to the 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo, it was a blatant lie blown out of all proportion to justify military action. The US administration was screaming at the top of its lungs about 200,000 dead or some such nonsense. No such thing happened.

[Lex]

Aren't they pretty much the same thing?

nah, only islamics made Jihads, Crusades were only made by Catholics

[Pu-239]

Britain has some standard gas cooled (Magnox) reactors. There is (was) a water cooled experimental breeder reactor, converting thorium, but making the reactor cores was too expensive.
I'm not sure any have actually been built though.

I do not have now the time to read all the material but aren't you referring to the standard graphite-gas-natural uranium reactors?
They have been around since the beginning of the nuclear era,although now lightwater reactors are the large majority.
They are in anycase pretty different from the breeder reactors.

Read the ones at the bottom. It's called a Gas cooled fast breeder reactor
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl ... gle+Search

[Pu-239]

I don't think any have actually been built though.

[Admiral Piett]

I don't think any have actually been built though.

Possible.There have been many types of reactors which have not gone past the conceptual or the experimental phase.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Actually I am probably wrong about plutonium being more toxic than uranium from a chemical point of view.Chemical toxicity is probably the main factor with DU,but with plutonium radiations are the main problem.
This however does not change the fact that plutonium is one of the most dangerous substances in the world and that breeder reactors are more dangerous than the others types.When I speak about the possibility of a nuclear explosion I do not mean something on the scale of Hiroshima.
The explosions that could take place within the core of a breeder reactor can be measure in terms of kg of TNT rather than in thousands of tons of TNT.Still they could be enough to breach the containment vessel and spread the plutonium outside.Since the quantity of plutonium necessary to cause lung cancer if inhaled is astronomically low things can become nasty.

Plutonium is arguably one of the single most dangerous substances in existence. Very radioactive, fissile, and very toxic.

Reactor cores can't go supercritical like nuclear warheads and explode. It takes painstaking detonation of compression charges in a plutonium-core implosion-type nuke to set up the supercritical mass for detonation. Needless to say, that doesn't occur in a reactor core.

Chernobyl happened because of steam explosions due to the safeties being killed.

[Admiral Piett]

Plutonium is arguably one of the single most dangerous substances in existence. Very radioactive, fissile, and very toxic.

Reactor cores can't go supercritical like nuclear warheads and explode. It takes painstaking detonation of compression charges in a plutonium-core implosion-type nuke to set up the supercritical mass for detonation. Needless to say, that doesn't occur in a reactor core.

Chernobyl happened because of steam explosions due to the safeties being killed.

Unfortunately the breeder reactors are the only type of reactor that can explode in a nuclear bomb fashion.You do not need compression to reach the critical mass.Just piling enough plutonium (it would happen even with highly enriched uranium) together will cause an explosion comparable to that of a few kg of chemical explosive.Of course the explosion would be far less eficient and thus far less powerful than that of a nuclear bomb but it would take place.This is a factor that is taken in consideration when breeder reactors are designed.Although if the containment vessel can effectively sustain the damage is anyone guess.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I've never heard this and I'm very skeptical. Quotes/site please. Now.

[Pu-239]

The original uranium bombs did not use compression. Essentially they shot a piece of uranium into another piece. For plutonium, this is not possible, since it would prematuraly detonate, so the compression was needed to compress a subcritical mass of plutonium into a denser supercritical mass. Of course, it would still detonate and release stuff into the air in a reactor.

http://www.airpowermuseum.org/trspcbmb.html
http://cornerhouse.icaap.org/briefings/ ... bar_3.html
http://users.rcn.com/agnews/FastBreederReactors.htm
http://www.nci.org/k-m/makeab.htm

[Pu-239]

Bump.

[Admiral Piett]

I've never heard this and I'm very skeptical. Quotes/site please. Now.

http://nuclearhistory.tripod.com/reactor.html#Liquid Metal Fast Breeder

"Unlike Light Water Reactors, Fast Breeder Reactors are capable of reaching the type of critical mass required to produce a low order nuclear explosion as a result of a power excursion that results in a meltdown of the fuel."

[Illuminatus Primus]

Conceded, Admiral.

[Admiral Piett]

Note that this is just one of the many reasons which make breeder reactors a safety nightmare.Only the frenchs have built a full size power plant.They had decide to build it in a period of increase of the uranium price.But now with the price of uranium failing there is no economical convenience.