Safety of Nuclear plants in a corrupt or dangerous country.

[Everten P.]

I wanted to know if there are any Nuclear reactors that could not be dismantled or salvaged to make nuclear weapons. I thought this would be important because of the growing reliance of nuclear power and the things it can provide for impoverished countries. I am doing this for a essay question I had for school about how nuclear plants can corrupt countries or make them dangerous even in times of low manpower, I wanted to know if there was a complete solution or not to the issue. Thank you for your time:).

Edit: It would be preferable if the technology existed or had been time tested, but if thorium is the only answer then I will be willing to accept.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Everten P.
Clarification

[smjjames]

Huh? Nuclear Power plants alone don't corrupt countries.

[K^2]

There are different kinds of reactors, some more dangerous than others. In particular, there is a class of nuclear reactors called breeder reactors which can generate weapons grade plutonium, among other things. While there are legitimate reasons for wanting to build breeder reactors, especially if country's supplies of nuclear fuel are low, building a breeder reactor is also one of the steps in developing a nuclear arsenal. So naturally, it makes everyone worried when a country decides to build one.

[Brotoro]

What an odd essay question. Power plants don't corrupt countries.

[UmbralRaptor]

The enrichment and/or reprocessing methods for Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 can simply be run to higher enrichment levels to get weapons-grade materials. Uranium-233 can be produced from Thorium-232, so Thorium reactors can be used to produce weapons. (though with much greater difficulty)

I am doing this for a essay question I had for school about how nuclear plants can corrupt countries

o_O

growing reliance of nuclear power

That's literally the opposite of what is happening

Edited July 6, 2015 by UmbralRaptor

[Zephram Kerman]

I'm no expert on nuclear power, but I've learned a few things lately. I think you should focus your research on the different types of fuels used by various reactors and weapons, especially what that fuel turns into as it decays. That will lead you to understand what K^2 wrote about breeder reactors.

I agree with Brotoro, and I'll expand on it a little: power plants don't corrupt countries, people do. The source of corruption is hidden within the hearts of people.

By the way, there's a lot to be said about the improved safety systems of Generation 3 reactor designs, as opposed to earlier designs.

[TheSaint]

Having a nuclear reactor built for you by someone else doesn't really do anything for a nuclear weapons program. Commercial reactor fuel is only enriched to between 3% and 5% U235. (Weapons-grade uranium needs an enrichment level of at least 85%.) And reactor fuel is usually in the form of uranium dioxide pellets embedded in a zirconium matrix, not in the form of solid uranium. There isn't any way you could simply pull the fuel out of a reactor and make a weapon out of it without extensively reprocessing and enriching it. You will accumulate Pu239 in the fuel, but, again, you will have to process that out of the spent fuel and enrich it. These are not simple processes. If the nation in question has the capability of performing these processes, they're certainly already capable of building their own reactors from scratch.

[Elthy]

Building a nuclear bomb is no easy task and wont happen if a few bad people decide to do it while a country falls apart. Its way more likely that someone would build a "dirty bomb", a conventional explosive with radioactive material for contaminating e.g. a city. That wont require a university full of nuclear scientists, only a few people willing to handle radioactive material.

[kiwi1960]

A nuclear power station cannot be dismantled to make nuclear weapons... that is the long and short of it.

However, you MIGHT be able to make a dirty bomb with such things, but eben so, its not the same, and even if you could make a nuke, you would be lacking the tech know how to deliver said bomb to the target (a missile) with any degree of accuracy... and on top of that, you would need a reliable detonator.

For all its hype and propaganda, North Korea hasn't managed to build a reliable missile, let alone the detonator. besides, out of their current stockpile, they would be lucky to get one basic bomb that may, or may not work.

As has been said, Nuclear Power Stations do not corrupt nations, but corrupt leaders would use anything if they thought it gave them an advantage.... Again, North Korea has made a number of deals with Japan, South Korea and the USA to halt its nuclear program in exchange for fuel oil and food. Then, when that runs out, the restart the program and ask for more aid... That tactic won't work now, which is why they are suggesting War every now and then... the leadership there is as about as corrupt as you can get.

Dammit, Elthy, you beat me to the dirty bomb aspect of this question.

[peadar1987]

People have covered pretty much everything I would have to say on this already, so most of this is for clarification:

-Nuclear chain reactions are difficult to make happen. Power plants generally use natural or slightly-enriched uranium as their fuel. Only a small proportion of natural Uranium is U-235, which can sustain a chain reaction. The rest is U-238, which can be split if it is hit by a neutron of the right energy, but doesn't produce enough neutrons of the right energy when it splits to sustain a chain reaction.

-This has to be surrounded with many tonnes of moderator (graphite, water, or heavy water most usually) which slows down neutrons so they can actually interact with the fuel. Without the moderator, most neutrons are too high-energy to cause fission, they just bounce off things until they escape. Even with all of this moderator surrounding many, many tonnes of fuel, it is only just about able to produce a sustained nuclear reaction.

-Nuclear weapons don't have the advantage of being able to surround their fuel with moderator, as they have to be deliverable, so the fuel has to be highly enriched. It needs to be mostly U-235. As an example, weapons-grade uranium is enriched to about 90% U-235. The power station where I worked used uranium enriched to 4.2% U-235, which is absolutely useless for building a bomb. Enriching uranium is very, very hard to do, which is why only a few countries in the world have nuclear weapons.

If it helps, imagine nuclear reactions along the same line as chemical reactions. A lump of coal and a stick of dynamite both can undergo exothermic chemical reactions. Coal needs a lot of heat for a sustained period of time to burn, and even when it does, the release of energy is relatively slow and controlled. Dynamite explodes in a chain reaction when exposed to a naked flame. Nuclear fuel is like coal, nuclear weapons are like dynamite.

Of course, there is the possibility of a dirty bomb using the waste from the reactor. This would be an issue if an even moderately industrialised country wanted to cause some mischief.

[Everten P.]

From OP: Most of the information here was from the question itself and not personal knowledge, this was from a social studies book and understandably it wouldn't be entirely accurate on nuclear physics. Now thanks to you great members of the KSP community I can address the issue with a better understanding of the actual reactors and not just mass media fear mongering.

[AngelLestat]

Power plants don't corrupt countries.

<----- This

The real problem comes from nuclear plants not well maintained (or without good waste procedures) in countries were current rulers are corrupt.

[Scotius]

Being a cynic, i'm pretty sure there is a lot of corruption happening when contracts for new power plant are granted. Likewise when construction starts, and shady people do their usual tricks to get their share of money. But such things happen even if a church or hospital is being built - so, no. Nuclear power plants do not corrupt nations - people corrupt other people for their own gains.

[KerikBalm]

From OP: Most of the information here was from the question itself and not personal knowledge, this was from a social studies book

This question was so poorly written, that I shudder to think what that book could be teaching

[TheSaint]

This question was so poorly written, that I shudder to think what that book could be teaching

And people wonder why my wife and I decided to homeschool our kids.

[Wesreidau]

And people wonder why my wife and I decided to homeschool our kids.

Because you're anti-education, obviously.

The OP describes the sort of loaded question I used to get when I was in school. The correct answer is to launch into a tremendous, scathing satirical essay about how access to cheap electrical power will corrupt all the poor subsistence farmers living on foreign aid and half-starved goat's milk by making them materialistic consumers. Throw in that the women will be less likely to die of cancer and lung disease as electric hot plates replace their traditional chimney-less wood-and-dried-manure cooking fires that plague them with smoke inhalation as they build fires in the pre-dawn light. Of course this is bad, because without a pit of smoking goat dung to slave over, women might be corrupted into such unfeminine tasks as seeking employment outside the home. Then they might have a say in where their money gets spent instead of being economically chained to their husbands. And don't forget that with air conditioning their infants won't die from heat waves, and that just means they'll grow up to breed more corrupted humans in otherwise pristine African savannas that only foreign eco-tourists should trod on with our petroleum-derived water-resistant synthetic fiber Birkenstocks.

Also be prepared to fail the class in a blaze of glory. Oh, college humanities classes. You were enjoyed.

[YNM]

Hmm... Yeah silly question.

Referencing What-If? :

But just to be sure, I got in touch with a friend of mine who works at a research reactor, and asked him what he thought would happen to you if you tried to swim in their radiation containment pool.

“In our reactor?†He thought about it for a moment. “You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.â€Â

I guess the same for all countries. For fuel enriching, if you can enrich may as well you operate one from the start already without any other sides involved.

[LordFerret]

What an odd essay question. Power plants don't corrupt countries.

I'm actually kind of inclined to disagree with that lol. It appears to me the owners of said power plants and those they do shady business with (state governments), results in ever increasing rates for customers ... even though science and technology constantly provide new means for ever cheaper power production. Same with telecommunications ... when is the last time your cell phone or internet access bill rate dropped?

...but yea, what Scotius said. ^

Edited July 6, 2015 by LordFerret

[Wesreidau]

I'm actually kind of inclined to disagree with that lol. It appears to me the owners of said power plants and those they do shady business with (state governments), results in ever increasing rates for customers ... even though science and technology constantly provide new means for ever cheaper power production. Same with telecommunications ... when is the last time your cell phone or internet access bill rate dropped?

...but yea, what Scotius said. ^

I disagree good sir.

“The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor.

But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals.

You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs.

My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.â€Â

― Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

[Windspren]

Nuclear power corrupts countries because they gain hundreds of LV-Ns, which they use to conquer the solar system.

- - - Updated - - -

This question was so poorly written, that I shudder to think what that book could be teaching

Hey, you should have seem my 7th grade Social Studies book.

[Moar Boosters]

There's plenty of material out there regarding nuclear energy and corrupt countries. The soviet union, North Korea, Iran, Israel and the American energy industry and all well known for corruption.

There have been specific incidents where material created by nuclear plants have been used for nefarious purposes, but proving such a thing would basically require you to solve the entire Litvinenko poisoning case. Even that doesn't really outline the cause/effect mentioned in your question.

Good luck with that!

[icecreamberni]

o_O

That's literally the opposite of what is happening

And thats a .... thing happening.

Germany is like: Nuclear reactors have a small chance of making a relative small space unusable. Better get the whole planet ....ed with coal power plants.

Edited July 12, 2015 by icecreamberni

[kreutzkevic]

People have covered pretty much everything I would have to say on this already, so most of this is for clarification:

-Nuclear chain reactions are difficult to make happen. Power plants generally use natural or slightly-enriched uranium as their fuel. Only a small proportion of natural Uranium is U-235, which can sustain a chain reaction. The rest is U-238, which can be split if it is hit by a neutron of the right energy, but doesn't produce enough neutrons of the right energy when it splits to sustain a chain reaction.

-This has to be surrounded with many tonnes of moderator (graphite, water, or heavy water most usually) which slows down neutrons so they can actually interact with the fuel. Without the moderator, most neutrons are too high-energy to cause fission, they just bounce off things until they escape. Even with all of this moderator surrounding many, many tonnes of fuel, it is only just about able to produce a sustained nuclear reaction.

-Nuclear weapons don't have the advantage of being able to surround their fuel with moderator, as they have to be deliverable, so the fuel has to be highly enriched. It needs to be mostly U-235. As an example, weapons-grade uranium is enriched to about 90% U-235. The power station where I worked used uranium enriched to 4.2% U-235, which is absolutely useless for building a bomb. Enriching uranium is very, very hard to do, which is why only a few countries in the world have nuclear weapons.

If it helps, imagine nuclear reactions along the same line as chemical reactions. A lump of coal and a stick of dynamite both can undergo exothermic chemical reactions. Coal needs a lot of heat for a sustained period of time to burn, and even when it does, the release of energy is relatively slow and controlled. Dynamite explodes in a chain reaction when exposed to a naked flame. Nuclear fuel is like coal, nuclear weapons are like dynamite.

Of course, there is the possibility of a dirty bomb using the waste from the reactor. This would be an issue if an even moderately industrialised country wanted to cause some mischief.

Very good answer.

I would like to point out, however, that there are much easier sources of radioactive material than nuclear waste. Think of Co-60, Se-75 or Ir-192 sources used by NDT or medical companies. Remember the Goiâna incident? (wiki). Nothing as spectacular as Chernobyl or Fukushima but way more insidious. And there are others...

I've worked with aforesaid isotopes and Co-60 in particular is nasty stuff. It takes a huge amount of distance (inverse square law) or concrete/steel to block it to the point of acceptable levels of radiation, depending on source activity.

How ignorance can kill you...

Edited July 15, 2015 by kreutzkevic

[radonek]

I would like to point out, however, that there are much easier sources of radioactive material than nuclear waste. Think of Co-60, Se-75 or Ir-192 sources used by NDT or medical companies. Remember the Goiâna incident?…

Good point. And could be worse.

…Nothing as spectacular as Chernobyl or Fukushima but way more insidious…

I would not even go as far as to call Fukushima "spectacular", just medialized scaremongering. It claimed lives of two technicians – who drowned in basement because of tsunami. Not funny for them, but as far as industrial accidents go, thats pretty tame.

[Rath]

Nuclear power corrupts countries because they gain hundreds of LV-Ns, which they use to conquer the solar system.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey, you should have seem my 7th grade Social Studies book.

or mine