Utility company plutonium?

[Richard Hull]

In the very interesting book, "The curve of Binding Energy", see posting

view.php?site=fusor&bn=fusor_books&key=1098295457

Reference is made to the continual reprocessing of nuclear fuels that was a daily ongoing process in the 1970's. The utilities would send their spent fuel assemblies to the GE reprocessing plant in Morris, IL. Here, they were sliced and diced and disolved in nitric acid. The upshot is that usable and recovered Uranium U235 would spill out as enriched UF6 and out of another spigot would dribble reactor bread Pu239 as its nitrate.

The book notes that this was returned to the utility and the materials stored by them? It was noted that thousands of kilograms were in the possession of the power utilities all over the U.S.

I would think the government would have long ago, (since this book was written), scooped this stuff up or purchased it from the utilities to get a handle on its whereabouts. The book sort of points to this as just another way that PU239 could be stolen or lost or pilfered.

I also assume that this plant and all fuel reprocessing has also long ago ended, as the utilities are just about at max capacity in their holding pools for spent fuel assemblies. (Which, by the way, are only 3% consumed according to the book.)

Interestingly they speak of the Plutonium turning point. A point at which the utilities would have enough on hand to use newer reactors scheduled for the nuclear energy future of the mid eigthies!? Evidently another still-born concept that didn't happen due to the 1979 three mile Island event knocking the gilding off the lilly.

Richard Hull

[3l]

Hi Richard:

It wasn't Three Mile Island that creamed it but a bunch of DOE
Clowns that told the peanut farmer that coal based oil and coal slurry pipelines wound be the way to go. That Plus Jimmy Carter's fear of plutonium and small countries getting the bomb thru diversion. Too bad he didn't consider that Big Bussiness would virtually hand the means of production to them. So the Canadians made the money on the sales of Candu Reactors to India ,Iran , and Pakistan. India and Pakistan got their A-bombs. Americans are left with this stupid policy that is dumb at best and failed miserably at worst. We have enough "plute" to service the country's electrical needs for at least one hundred years sitting in used fuel assemblies.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[davidtrimmell]

Hi Richard, I really doubt that the Government allowed any privetly held utility to hold any weapons grade Pu. It may be possible if it was done by one of the publicly owned utilities like TVA. But even there it would seem unlikely, but perhaps in the early days (1950's and maybe early '60's) when the AEC was more involved...

It is disturbing if you look at some of the Weapons sites like Hanford and Rocky Flats, and see what the MUF's (material unaccounted for) were. I know that at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant in the early sixties had about 2 kilos per year unacounted for two years running, and they could not say it was lost in the system as it just wasn't there. The person they brought in to find the problem (and find the Pu!) ended up saying "...maybe it went out the stack." But stack monitoring and on site alpha monitoring never accounted for this...

Regards,

David Trimmell

[Richard Hull]

Thanks for the replies Larry and Dave.

Larry is right on the Canucks makin' th' dough on the reactor boom.

Just like in China where R12 refrigerant is still in production and used almost exclusively after they bought most of Dupont's R12 line parts. We invent and then others bring to market. We always bite the bullet and let others profit. We outlaw processes here that others take over. We are self-assured we are doing that which is right only when we are cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Regarding the Plut holding; I would imagine that, ultimately, the government took it and gave the companies plut credits against the time they needed it as fuel in the coming 1980's plut energy switchover that never came.

A lot of the reactors they hyped in the mid seventies never came on line I bet, either. Like the High Temp reactors, etc.

The book is better in the second reading as you can catch more little details.

Richard Hull

[3l]

Hi David:

That stack was Isreal.
The CIA appropriated the plute all 2kg and sailed it to the coast of Isreal.
In fact nearly all the "MUF" was diverted to Isreal.
Where tragically it sank.
4 months later Isreal was a nucler power..go figure.
The DIA investigated the Hanford heist of nearly 12 kg of plute
but were pulled off the job by higher ups.
Same with the "fire" at Rocky Flats.
It is really an open secret...Tom Clancy wrote "Sum of all Fears around this incident in 1969.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[Richard Hull]

A little more reading and some investigation on the power compnay plut.......

The government bought 100% of all power company recycled plut. It got sent to Hanford Wa. for Gov't use.

However..................in 1970 they refused to buy or store any more power company plutonium!!!! The power companies freaked!!!!! The plutonium was stored or sold to bonified foreign allies. Storage by the power companies was a frightening thing.

Many power companies used specially constructed State owned nuclear storehouses to send their Birdcages of useless Plut.

One story in the book. Tells of a New York State nuclear energy commision warehouse that was off in the boondocks with one man as the total staff there only 8 hours each day! It is estimated the metal building had over 2500 kilograms of Idle Plut there!!! I am assuming, again, that the government has ultimately picked up all of the stuff by now!!!

So there was a time when private companies scurried about to find safe haven for Plut from their recycled fuel that the government just wasn't interested in. (very unsettling)

On a few occassions back then as much as 20 kilograms of plut was sent out on a common carrier mixed in with other freight! This ultimately ended by law. It is still allowed to go via common carrier, but it must be the only thing on board the truck.

Richard Hull

[davidtrimmell]

So, who was doing the reprocessing? Westinghouse at Hanford? GE had the prime there previously and there was some bad feelings (same people, though...). Really the research reactors were the ones with special nuclear material just "sitting around". Although I remember my step-dad telling me about when he worked at Grand Gulf during startup, the first shipment of fuel just arrived and was off loaded at the time he was still able to just walk on and off site with little security. This was 1981, I think. Of course this was Port Gibson Miss.
"To beautiful to burn...” and all.

What one could do with 2 kilos of 99% Pu-239!

I prefer to think about the nice rainbow I saw today!

David Trimmell

PS. Any one who complies with the regs can ship whatever they want.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-colle ... -0025.html

[Richard Hester]

The was at one time private sector processing until the contamination debacle at West Valley, NY. Hopfully the Pu in the spent fuel rods has been well-larded with Pu240 to make it unattractive for weapons use...

[Richard Hull]

The NY facility was massive and indeed did reprocess fuel rods for years! This was the primary reprocesser, but there were two others. GE operated the facilities. This maybe why the State of NY built the 70 foot by 160 foot storage building a hundred miles from the reprocessor. Many of the power companys just as soon leave their plut in NY in what they viewed as a safe facility. (which it was not.) All in all, pretty scary stuff.

The book continued on to note that the Atomic Energy act of 1946 included no role for civilian or private interests. Ike's Atoms for Peace program sought to share the atom with developing nations. The critics of the program labeled the effort "Kilowatts for Hottentots". They felt that putting a 50 megawatt nuclear plant in 1950 Zululand would be ridiculous. Who would plug in what!

The program also turned the AEC into not only a regulatory agency, but a booster and cheerleader for nuclear power in the U.S. This role would soon become its main function. The utilites were not keen on nuclear as the bill for startup was way more than what they were already selling.

The Eisenhower government could see an energy crunch in the future and knew that nuclear power would solve such problems if started soon. The government would insure the plants against hazards as no insurance company would touch the industry.

Still, the power utilities balked. What made the utilities say "oh, why didn't you say so in the first place" was the government's firm statement that if the utilities weren't going to go "nuclear" immediately, the government would plan to go "utility" immediately. This puckered up enough power company butt holes and they agreed to give nuclear a trial. Ultimately, most came to enjoy the power that was so heavily government subsidized. The plants paid back the power companies investments rather quickly and it looked as if all was roses.

Public opinion and three mile island really took the "happy" out of nuclear power and today we and the power companies are living off old reactors that should have been naturally replaced and shutdown years ago. It is a testament to the good engineering of the 60's and 70's that so many are still on line and pumping out energy onto the grid.

We need new nuclear plants desparately. We have the fuel, we have the need, but not the public's feel of need............YET.

Richard Hull

[Adam Szendrey]

I'm all for nuclear power...as long as it's done properly, safely, and waste problems are dealt with.
In my oppinion new plants should be pebble bed type, or any other kind of reactors that have a negative thermal neutron gradient (if i'm using the proper terms here), meaning that as their temperature rises, fission rates decline, stabilizing the temperature, avoiding a meltdown, or a runaway.
It does sound scary, that nuclear waste was dealt with ,such a way.

Adam

[gpierce]

There is also the <a href="http://www.ga.com/gtmhr>GT-MHR.</a> Safe and highly efficent.

[ChrisSmolinski]

Richard Hull wrote:
> We need new nuclear plants desparately. We have the fuel, we have the
need, but not the public's feel of need............YET.

Amen. The latter will come, eventually. Hopefully in advance of the lead-time
on the construction of several dozen nuke plants.

[Richard Hull]

Chris hit on my constant fear......................That we realize we need nukes and finally give in at the 11th hour and hastily paste up nuke plants as needed to make the masses go quiet again. This is a plan for the ultimate TMI disaster.

The nuclear industry is a proven technology and a mature industry and at first we can just dust off the old plans for the best models still working and trouble free and start careful construction. We should not screw with success that is on record and could only do worse than cookie cut the the best of the best.

Meanwhile newer and better fission technologies can be put forward and tested. (Somethng we should have been deeply involved in for the last 30 years.)

Slapping plants together scares the hell out of me and would be a fools errand and a ticking bomb.

Richard Hull

[badflash]

I happen to work at a Nuclear Power Plant. The disccusssion here is mostly conjecture and pretty much off base. Utilities have not been able to use reprocessed fuel as long as I have been in the industry, and that is 24 years. All the spent fuel that we ever had is still on site, except for the load of thorium fuel that Rickover picked up to make the Shippingport Light Water Breeder.

We have had to go to dry cask storage to make room in out spent fuel pool due to the government refusing to take the spent fuel they had agreed to take 30 years ago.

Commercial Nuclear fuel in not suitable for weapons due to the high concentration of PU-240. This pollutes the plutonium and prevents weapons from being made from it.

The utilities have never ben licenced for weapons grade fuel and so could never own it. The highest concentration of fissionable isotopes is limited by the licence to about 5%. You need 97% pure fissionable isotopes of U235 or Pu239 to make a bomb. There are plans to mix recycled weapons with fuel to use it up, but this would only be tothe 5% level. The isotopes would be de-natured so to speak with PU-240 to prevent weapons use.

Spent fuel far too hot to steal. It would take someone with the resources of a nation to separate the plutonium from the other hot trash, then they would need a diffusion system or other expensive stuff costing billions to enrich it to weapons grade.

I'm pretty sure all the stuff that was reprocessed by GE came from Navy Reactors and the Navy Prototypes out east.

[davidtrimmell]

I really do have to agree with Jack here. It may be possible that something was done at TVA early on, but not at any commercial plant. The only stuff I ever saw over 90% was in the "flux" thimbles. They are used to detect fission rates in the core and contain 100-400 miligrams of U-235. Nasty things if they ever get jamed while retracting from core after shutdown...

Jack IP1 was a Thorium based reactor wasn't it? I know folks who worked IP in the early eigties and they said they used the IP1 contaiment for temp storage of some LSA.

I saw what was done to Surry. They took that plant from a real sh*t-hole to something to brag about. Replacing mucho pipe and valves, but shows that if you have the resources a plant can last indefinatly on its site. Good chemistry and maintenance are the only way. I was friends with a couple of engineers who were kept busy for many, many years working on TMI MODs, and yes we are safer for them. A accident at a US plant will only release moderate quantities of nobel gasses and some Iodine, not serious population hazard. Now shipping the spent fuel to Nevada does pose some real risks since our rail infrasructure is crap. But this would be a good opertunity to do some serious investment in the infrustructure of this country to make it as safe as possible, and promote more public transport via rail. But as I see it it ain't going to happen soon, as the money is being spent bombing Iraq. What a waste...

David Trimmell

[badflash]

Unit 1 was a thorium blanketed reactor with a U235 core. It bred U233 from Thorium 232 and we had the world's only supply of the stuff soaking in our Fuel Pool when Rickover came looking for it. So far as I know that is the only commercial fuel ever shipped off site anywhere. We have all th rest.

As for shipping, this is as safe as anything else. The shipping containers can survive anything without rupturing. The fuel must decay on site for years before they can be shipped, so there is little direct hazzard with the amount of shielding they have. I've seen videos of the testing where they have a truck hit broadside by a freight train, and smash it head on at 100+ MPH. Like evrything else nuclear they are built like a brick S**T house.

It is shipping of pesticided, petro chemicals, toxic waste that scares the bejesus out of me. Ever see a gasoline tanker burn down an overpass made of conrete & steel?

[Richard Hull]

If one reads "the curve of binding energy" in 1973 there was an active program of nuclear power plant extraction of used fuel assemblies. This was done at two or three locations at that time. There was a period, I have no idea how long or brief that the government WOULD NOT purchase the separated plutonium any longer and it was the nuclear power industry's job to secure it.

This very book might have been the catalyst for immediate change and restructuring, for Ted Taylor was fighting tooth and nail to have the government lock down every gram of fissile material. This book was an expose' of the loose acconting and security techniques of the AEC and power industry in specific and gave the lie to people thinking that a lone intelligent inspired and inventive man with fissile material in his hands could not make a bomb.

Admittedly the biggest lapses and loses were government loses which over the period 1955-1973 totalled over 170 kilograms. Also, this could have been deliberate to funnel, under the table, fissile material to certain selected allies or to other areas not desirable to divulge. Some of the government facilities had noise bands in the 20 gram per day range, according to officials at the sites in the early 1970's!

In the book in interviews with AEC people and industry security people there are countless individuals who note that there was a "noise band" in the accounting for fissles. An adroit person in touch with the noise level could admittedly skim gram quantities each working day and they would never be missed. Over 60 kilograms at one facility over two years went missing. Admitted this was a massive facility and handled huge amounts, but that much!!! Other facilities never kept fractional gram records only gram records and lost a kilogram here and there each and every year.

Richard Hull

[Brian McDermott]

I remember hearing a story about how a whole freight shipment of Plutonium went missing many years ago. Apparently, through some paperwork error, the Plutonium got shipped to a shoe warehouse, where the employees had no idea what they had received. The mess was eventually sorted out, but it shows how (comparatively) haphazard people were back then about the transport and storage fissile material.

[badflash]

Again, I would ask for specifics on any of this. This has the smell of an uban legend. Indian Point (where I work) is one of the oldest nukes in the nation. We still have ALL of our old fuel. Who's did they reprocess?

Before any of our fuel could be shipped (except the stuff Rickover took), reprocessing was a dead issue.

[badflash]

Curiouser and curiouser. check http://www.osti.gov/html/osti/opennet/d ... srepo.html
Looks like there was a period of time before 1972 when fuel was reprocessed. Some was retained in the commercial world, but was not bomb grade due to the content of PU-240.
http://www.osti.gov/html/osti/opennet/d ... /tab3.html shows the concentrations and amounts. It looks like this was used in the Fast Breeder Reactor programs.

[3l]

Hi Jack:

The Kerr Magee Cresent facility that Karen Silkwood worked at used recycled Plutonium from reactors. In this pilot plant a 20 ton
batch of Mox fuel was turned out for the SEFOR plant in Fayetteville , Arkansas during the late sixties. 1969 Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor, honored as a Nuclear Historic Landmark for resolving a key LMFBR safety issue by demonstrating the inherent negative prompt-Doppler power coefficient in mixed plutonium-uranium oxide cycle.
SEFOR The FBI ruled the death of Silkwood as an accident but not everyone was happy. The Sefor plant was almost another disaster like the Fermi 1 in Detroit. Barrels of plutonium contaminated sodium was carted to Hanford for disposal. People at the DOE were tipped of defects in the manufacture of the fuel tubes, an inspector was supposted to meet Silkwood to get evidence. But she died in route. Sefor had a power excursion 12 months later ,many fuel rods cracked and a multimillion dollar project was shelved.

Happy Fusoring!
Larry Leins
Fusor Tech

[badflash]

I was never confortable with the Fast Breeders. When I got out of the Navy in 1979 I interviewed the the Fast Flux Test facility at Hanford Wa. I didn't like what I saw.

Being a nuclear "insider" I know what nonsense Silkwood and China Synrome are. Jaws gone nuclear. Every site has a resident inspector (except Government facilities). I can cause trouble any time I like by walking to the NRC office and dropping a dime on the bad guys. Believe it or not, 10CFR50 requires me to do so if I can't resolve the issue. Whistle blowers are more feared than women bent on sexual harrasment. The surest way to never be fired in my buisness is to turn in your boss and make it stick. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does it puts the fear of got in the guys that would put money before safety.

I'm going to "follow the money" and see where ConEd's Plutonium went. I'll keep you posted.

[davidtrimmell]

You are completely correct regarding commercial Nuclear power, but in the DOE (and their contractors) it is an entirely different matter. It hasn’t been until the early ninties that any real oversight started happening. Historically they could just claim 'national security' and you had better keep your mouth shut. I had a friend who was good friends with a whistle blower at Hanford in the eighties, after he leaked the info about some of the single shell tanks leaking into ground water they called him in and showed him a years worth a receipts from any liquor store he had been in and told him he a drinking problem. They pulled his Q clearance saying he was a security risk... No clearance, no work.

But even while I work at Surry the first time in 1988, the resident was pretty lax. I pointed out several times we were smoking the outer protected area fence (well over NRC guidelines), but we were told it was ok and we had no other place to store the rad waste. Finally after a couple weeks a couple of NRC inspectors from region headquarters were coming down for a routine inspection, we were told we one shift to fix the problem...

David Trimmell

[Richard Hull]

Again, snag a cheapo copy of "the Curve of Binding Energy". It is not a greenpeace book. It is a tell all about Ted Taylor and his bomb work and his efforts to get some sort of high level, real control of fissile materials which seem to be very ill handled as late as 1972.

This was a transition time when the government had all the plut and U235 that they could cask up. There was no shortage of bombs in the arsenal and they could relax as regards where their next gram of bomb grade material was coming from. They no longer felt constrained to purchase the stuff from the utilities and were just then refusing to do it anymore. At the same time, there was no significant terroism beyond the odd hyjacking of a plane or two. Taylor could see the 'Nutball terrorist future' heading straight at the nuclear brass ring. He urged the fractional gram accounting and tight security around all fissile materials in any proportion even poisoned fuel plut.

It appears the book did, indeed, alter much in that all reprocessing ceased and all spent fuel is now bobing around in ponds at each respective user's site. There are load of specifics in the book, perhaps too specific, in that taylor and the author actually visit and talk with supervisors and others AT THE REPROCESSING SITES! You could do that then.

Richard Hull

[DaveC]

I am a little confused at the reprocessing claims, but have not read the book yet. Probably should do so.

have worked in the Utility R&D-Engineering business for about 30 yrs in East coast and West coast companies. Wrote some of the original corrosion protection specifications for the Peach Bottom 2&3 Units on the PJM system. To my knowledge, Jack is correct here. The utilities have never been able to recycle the spent fuel - which with about 97% recoverable fissionable fuel - is an enormous unplanned cost. It is this cost which has largely killed off the nuclear power enthusiasm on the technical side.

The uninformed "Fonda-ites" and other ignornant doom mongers, have made the political climate quite inhospitable at this time. But mercifully for all, they do not live forever. They too will pass.

I remember reading some DOE reports on the condition of liquid RadWaste handling at Hanford... At one point there were several million gallons of low level rad contaminated waste that had leaked into the ground because the tanks corroded through. There was even nervous speculation of a nuclear reaction in the soil from concentration of the waste products... to say nothing of the anxiety that the underground waste plume was headed for subterranean drinking water resources.

It really is not a history that inspires an enormous confidence in "gummint" handling of high risk materials.

Dave Cooper