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Experts warn plutonium stocks could soar in East Asia

8 Comments
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON and MARI YAMAGUCHI

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8 Comments
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A new, and "beautiful Japan" -- thanks, Abe! Getting ready to make the bomb that destroyed it at the end of WWII.

-5 ( +2 / -7 )

why do we need 1000 nuclear bombs a year exactly? are they mad?are we fighting some aliens?why do we care about weapon grade plutonium? The people who run these shows must be absolute raving blood and destruction thirsty lunatics.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

There are 11 metric tons in Japan and another 36 metric tons reprocessed in Britain and France waiting to be returned to >Japan — in all enough for nearly 6,000 atomic bombs.

Your article doesn't say anything about blast yield of the 6,000 atomic bombs in kilotons or megatons.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

That should take you close... probably enough to blow this planet to pieces...

http://gizmodo.com/5899569/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-to-blow-up-the-entire-planet

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Plutonium is the power source of the future. Nanotechnology will open the floodgates of cheap, safe, and abundant nuclear power. The day we stop using oil is near.

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

Given that the method of destruction of nuclear warheads in the US-Russia nuclear weapons control agreements was to use the material from these warheads in the same sort of reactors that the plutonium stockpiles that the article claims can be used as source material for nuclear bombs, because the plutonium from such reactors was not feasible to process into the material for nuclear weapons, there seems to be some confusion about what sorts of plutonium actually can be processed into nuclear bomb material. The nuclear weapons technicians are on record saying that the plutonium recovered from spent fuel rods cannot feasibly be processed to remove the toxically radioactive isotopes that would make handling, even with the most robust equipment, of the plutonium from spent rods well before the enrichment levels reach weapons useable grades. They also say that the only source for weapons useable plutonium are specially designed reactors where fuel rods, rather than being left inside the reactor until they are no longer useful as fuel for the reactor, are only in the reactor for a short (a few weeks) period of time before being removed, then processed to remove the plutonium.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Follow the TEPCO little guidebook ~> Drop all in the nearby ocean. Problem solved.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Japan needs to maintain "screwdriver" distance from a credible deterrent in case an administration even more feckless and incompetent than the current one suddenly leaves them unprotected in the face of a Chinese 250 bomb arsenal.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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