Green Options » weapons grade plutonium http://greenoptions.com/tag/weapons-grade-plutonium Posts tagged 'weapons grade plutonium' Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:00:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Cut Corners on a Plutonium Plant? Ugh http://ecoscraps.com/2008/09/02/cut-corners-on-a-plutonium-plant-ugh/ http://ecoscraps.com/2008/09/02/cut-corners-on-a-plutonium-plant-ugh/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:00:51 +0000 Shirley Siluk Gregory http://ecoscraps.com/2008/09/02/cut-corners-on-a-plutonium-plant-ugh/ U.S. Department of Energy at Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)A chemical engineer points to serious safety concerns at a South Carolina facility being built to convert recovered plutonium into fuel rods for nuclear power plants. Dan Tedder, emeritus professor of chemical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a former independent technical reviewer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), says the NRC “want(ed) me to water things down (and didn’t) want me to criticise … When they go operational, there’ll be safety problems. Or they’ll be in there with jackhammers tearing things out and rebuilding.”

Just what you want to hear about a mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility designed to handle weapons-grade plutonium, huh? You can read the whole account here (PDF).

Image credit: U.S. Department of Energy via Wikimedia Commons.

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