A disruptive approach to eliminating weapon-grade plutonium - Pu burning in a molten salt fast reactor

The successful implementation of disarmament treaties of the last centuries has led to significant amounts of weapon-grade Plutonium which are currently stored in high security storage facilities. Disposing this Plutonium should be seen as 'good housekeeping' avoiding unnecessary costs and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-08, Vol.13 (8), p.e0201757
Main Authors: Merk, Bruno, Litskevich, Dzianis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology and Life Sciences
Burning
Chemical properties
Disarmament
Disruptive technology
Electricity pricing
Engineering and Technology
Engineering schools
Environmental aspects
Fast nuclear reactors
Feasibility studies
Hazard mitigation
International conferences
Medicine and Health Sciences
Molten salts
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear energy
Nuclear power plants
Nuclear reactors
Nuclear weapons
Physical Sciences
Plutonium
Reactors
Security
Storage
Storage facilities
Treaties
Weapons
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Summary:The successful implementation of disarmament treaties of the last centuries has led to significant amounts of weapon-grade Plutonium which are currently stored in high security storage facilities. Disposing this Plutonium should be seen as 'good housekeeping' avoiding unnecessary costs and the hazards of storing this material indefinitely. In addition, the disarmament is only brought to a successful end when the Plutonium isn't available for the production of new weapons anymore. We propose a disruptive approach for Plutonium disposition and demonstrate the feasibility in a neutronic study. Burning of weapon-grade Plutonium in a molten salt fast reactor is significantly more efficient than in the studied other reactors, while efficient process design has the potential to reduce the security concerns significantly. The proposed system could turn about 1.25 tons of weapon-grade Plutonium into electric energy worth £ 0.5 to 1 billion/year, depending on the electricity price while avoiding the hassle and eliminating the risk of high security Plutonium storage. In conclusion, burning of the weapon-grade Plutonium resulting from disarmament could be an economically very attractive approach to reduce the nuclear threat.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0201757