In a message dated 03/16/2000 12:59:48 AM Eastern Standard Time,
jonkc@worldnet.att.net writes:
> Thousands of tons of plutonium exist on the earth and more is made every
day,
> but most of it is mixed in with other extremely lethal radioactive waste
so
> it's
> very hard to work with without separating it out in a chemical
reprocessing
> plant.
> It only takes a few pounds to make a bomb so I want it hard to work with,
I
> don't
> want a reprocessing plant.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
>
One proposal I have read about (and nothing was done about) was the use of
synchrotron radiation, scaled to emit vast amounts of directed gamma rays for
a comparitively short distance. Theoretically this bombardment of gamma rays
should initiate a reaction for fissile and fertile materials, allegedly
rendering them eventually harmless. Plutonium, instead of a 24,000 year
half-life would go half-lfe in 6 months. Also the process would produce a lot
of excess thermal energy to be used for additional energy production.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:05:22 MDT