Antinuclear

All types of nuclear reactors can be used for nuclear weapons

Nuclear does not have the answers we need, Sydney Morning Herald, SCOTT LUDLAM, March 10, 2010 -“…….claims made about the “proliferation resistance” of novel nuclear power concepts do not stand up to scrutiny.

Dr Hansen is keen on the “integral fast reactor” concept. However, Dr George Stanford, who worked on an IFR research program in the United States, notes that proliferators “could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor — operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material”.

The second nuclear power concept being promoted by Dr Hansen involves using thorium as the nuclear fuel instead of uranium. But thorium doesn’t solve the weapons proliferation problem. Irradiation of thorium in a reactor produces uranium-233, a fissile material that can be used in nuclear weapons — indeed, the US has successfully tested several uranium-233 weapons.

As the only country to have seriously pursued thorium power, India provides one of the few real-world glimpses into the brave new world of fourth generation nuclear technology. India intends to use fast reactors to produce weapons-grade plutonium that will be used to co-fuel thorium reactors. That system is at odds with the rhetoric of “proliferation resistant” fourth-generation technology, and the production and transport of weapon-grade plutonium also makes it much more dangerous than conventional nuclear power.

Anyone who has bought into the rhetoric about “proliferation resistant” fourth generation nuclear power might want to see if they can get their money back.Dr Mark Diesendorf, an academic at the University of NSW and one of the participants in the Melbourne Town Hall debate, notes that: “On top of the perennial challenges of global poverty and injustice, the two biggest threats facing human civilisation in the 21st century are climate change and nuclear war. It would be absurd to respond to one by increasing the risks of the other.

Yet that is what nuclear power does.”Increasing the risk of nuclear war brings us back to climate change. Recent scientific research details the climatic impacts of nuclear warfare. The use of 100 weapons in nuclear warfare — just 0.03 per cent of the explosive power of the world’s nuclear arsenal — would result directly in catastrophic climate change with many millions of tonnes of black, sooty smoke lofted high into the stratosphere. Needless to say the social and environmental impacts would be horrendous.Nuclear does not have the answers we need

March 10, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear weapons