U.S. warhead disposal in 15-year backlog

U.S. warhead disposal in 15-year backlog

www.usatoday.com

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans deep new cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal at a time when the government faces a 15-year backlog of warheads already waiting to be dismantled and a need for billions of dollars in new facilities to store and dispose of the weapons' plutonium.
The logjam of thousands of retired warheads will grow considerably based on a promise made in April by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to get their stockpiles far below levels set by current disarmament pacts.

Yet much of the infrastructure needed to dispose of those weapons don't exist yet, according

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15 year back up, uh. Sounds like a really bad toilet bowl back up, and Obama wants to cram it up even more. It sounds like Obama dosen't know what he is doing, or does he. Mr.Obama seems to be more interested in making American utterly defenseless. If Obama were to be in office for 8 years, the nuclear weapons he wants to decommission will have to wait another 8 years at least before the weapons are to be taken apart.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 13-5-2009 by scoopkill]

I got a really cool idea... Why don't they get all the missiles / rockets they can lay their hands on, top em off with the nukes and send them into space about 3 or 4 hundred thousand miles... Then set them off in the biggest firework display ever!!!!!!!!!

I got a really cool idea... Why don't they get all the missiles / rockets they can lay their hands on, top em off with the nukes and send them into space about 3 or 4 hundred thousand miles... Then set them off in the biggest firework display ever!!!!!!!!!

Because that is dangerous and irresponsible.

reply to post by djzombie


How is that dangerour and irrsponisble? It wouldnt harm earth being that the missles are thousands of miles out of our orbit?

Well according to the almighty Wikipedia the Ares V rockets being planned will....

be able to carry about 188 tonnes (414,000 lb) to Low Earth orbit (LEO), and 71 tonnes (157,000 lb) to the Moon

Now I have no idea exactly all these nukes would weigh, but even if you don't want a fire works display couldn't they just send 71 tonnes at a time on a long slow voyage to the sun?? Surley you get it going in in the right direction with enough momentum (taking into account the other large bodies like the 2 planets in the way) and it's going to inevitably end up in the sun.

And after a month or so it is well beyond any feasible chance of the wrong guys recovering it.

I still want the fire works display though.

Why send high grade material that could run nuclear reactors for 100s of years into space.

The pits from nuclear weapons can be mixed with lower grade reactor fuel material and depleted uranium to make reactor fuel.

This along with reprocessing used fuel rods would give the US enough fuel to run 500 reactors for 500 years without mining any more uranium.

The US has the uranium and other nuclear fuels (thorium)in used rods, old nuclear fuel and in the ground to run 1000+ reactors for 1000 years.

en.wikipedia.org...
www.futurepundit.com...
www.anl.gov...

Using the right nuclear cycle we have enough to last till the sun burns out.

In 1983, physicist Bernard Cohen proposed that uranium is effectively inexhaustible, and could therefore be considered a renewable source of energy.[4] He claims that fast breeder reactors, fueled by naturally replenished uranium extracted from seawater, could supply energy at least as long as the sun's expected remaining lifespan of five billion years.[4] - whilst uranium is a finite resource mineral resource within the earth, the hydrogen in the sun is finite too - thus, if the resource of nuclear fuel can last over such time scales, as Cohen contents, then nuclear energy is every bit as sustainable as solar power or any other source of energy, in terms of sustainability over the finite realistic time scale of life surviving on this planet.

We thus conclude that all the world’s energy requirements for the remaining 5×109 yr of existence of life on Earth could be provided by breeder reactors without the cost of electricity rising by as much as 1% due to fuel costs. This is consistent with the definition of a “renewable” energy source in the sense in which that term is generally used.

His paper assumes extraction of uranium from seawater at the rate of 16 kilotonnes (35×10^6 lb) per year of uranium and that the cost of electricity will rise no more than 1% due to fuel costs.[4] The current demand for uranium is already near 70 kilotonnes (150×10^6 lb) per year. Cohen's paper does not give a date when demand of uranium exceeds the supply of uranium. However, since he calculates using breeder technology uranium would be used at least 60 times more efficiently than today.



[edit on 13-5-2009 by ANNED]