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Chapter
The Dream: A Future Powered by Plutonium
During the secret US World War II nuclear-weapon project, the scientists in the small group designing the facilities that would produce the plutonium were deeply concerned about what nuclear weapons might mean...
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Chapter
Civilian Plutonium Separation and Nuclear-Weapon Proliferation
The United Nations was founded immediately after the end of World War II in the hope of preventing an even more catastrophic war fought with nuclear weapons.
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Chapter
A Much Worse Accident That Almost Happened in Fukushima: A Fire in a Dense-Packed Spent-Fuel Pool
The previous chapter discussed the nightmare caused by the continuation of reprocessing despite the failure of the fast-breeder dream: accumulation of plutonium that could make tens of thousands of bombs.
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Chapter
Deep Disposal of Spent Fuel Without Reprocessing
With no need for startup plutonium for thousands of plutonium breeder reactors and with plutonium recycle in light-water reactors (LWRs) not economic, reprocessing and breeder advocates now argue that separati...
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Chapter
Continuation of Plutonium Separation Without Breeder Reactors
Because of their high costs and technical problems, liquid-sodium-cooled fast-neutron breeder reactors (FBRs) did not come into widespread use as power reactors. The US Atomic Energy Commission’s vision of a p...
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Chapter
Early Dry-Cask Storage: A Safer Alternative to Dense-Packed Pools and Reprocessing
Canceled and delayed plans for reprocessing, and delays in identifying central-storage and burial sites for spent fuel have resulted in nuclear utilities in a number of countries dense-racking their spent-fuel...
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Chapter
The Case for a Ban on Plutonium Separation
The previous chapters have described the history of reprocessing, starting with its role in the US World War II effort that produced the plutonium-based nuclear bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.
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Chapter
Overview
One of the first tasks of the secret US World War II nuclear-weapon project was to to produce plutonium for bombs.