Re: for the close of all fission nuclear reactor in the world

On Feb 28, 2:16 am, "cr88192" <cr88...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
of course, I guess it could be possible, if some of the people involved were
effectively willing to go on a suicide mission to get it, and even then,
that is assuming they can get access to the reactor core, and can manage to
steal said fuel rods (and, after all this, have the technology to isolate
the plutonium from the U-238...).

it would likely be much easier for said terrorists to buy said plutonium
from the PRC or russia or something...


The proliferation risk (which I think is overblown, although not
ignorable, BTW) has more to do with the shipment of large quantities
of plutonium-238 based reactor fuel around the world, not the breeder
reactors themselves. Plutonium is *easy* to separate from uranium and
other material via any number of straight-forward chemical or
physical* processes. Unlike the difficulty of enriching uranium,
which cannot use chemical processes, since U-235 and U-238 are
chemically and physically (except for mass) identical. That ease of
separation makes plutonium based fuel a tempting target for someone
wanting to build a nuke.


*One method: heat it to about 700C, and what melts is the plutonium.
The required equipment is available in any high school metal shop that
can melt and cast aluminum.
.

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