Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the president for Institute of Energy and Environmental Research in Washington.
They have about 10,000 bombs worth of surplus separated plutonium sitting around in France, unused.
Every plant generates about 30 bombs worth of plutonium every year.
When you separate it, you have a situation that's quite complicated.
There's discussion in Washington today about proliferation.
So, that's enough about France.
Solar energy doesn't have problems that run into tens of thousands of years.
It doesn't generate 30 bombs worth of plutonium every year to run a gigawatt plant.
You said we produce enough waste for 30 bombs?
The process of going from waste to bombs isn't very straightforward.
You are absolutely right, Senator.
Mr. Chair, I don't want the committee to be left with the impression that somebody can
just go get a cask and make a bomb. It is not trivial. To be left with that impression
misleads this committee.
No. I'm sorry if I left that impression. I started with France, where they do separate
the plutonium. You do have to go through that process of separating the plutonium.
The French do have 10,000 bombs worth of separated plutonium that's surplus, that's sitting around.
You're quite right that it is a complicated process that would take a lot. But there are
advocates in this country that we should do that, be like France.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani's misleading statement regarding the nature of spent fuel goes far
beyond the challenge of chemical separation.
Only select isotopes of Plutonium can be used for weapons.
For example, Pu-238 was the very first isotope of plutonium discovered and cannot be used
to make a bomb. We use it in radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
Apollo astronauts used plutonium RTGs to power their science equipment. The Mars rover, Curiosity,
is entirely powered by RTGs, enabling a wider array of power-hungry experiments and improved
mobility than Spirit or Opportunity ever had.
The Mars exploration rovers often found themselves short on power as dust settled on their solar
panels.
They were the only source of energy, and the Martian winter was approaching.
The part of it that really breaks my heart is that we just didn't have power to drive
anymore.
In fact, any space probe sent beyond the asteroid belt has been powered by RTGs because at that
distance from the Sun solar panels are useless. A well-powered Curiosity roaming Mars and
these spectacular images are all courtesy of Plutonium-238.
Within each element or family of atoms, there can be different members, each one having
the same number of protons but differing in the number of neutrons. The total of an atom's
protons and neutrons is it's atomic weight.
These different members of the same element or atom family science calls isotopes. Tin,
for instance, have a great many isotopes. Others, like aluminum, are lone wolves with
just one.
These are the plutonium isotopes found in spent fuel rods. There is Pu-238. NASA has
almost run out of 238. They'd love to get their hands on more 238.
I salute you.
But if you're Dr. Evil...
This organization will not tolerate failure.
...You want plutonium-239. In fact, you need 90% of the plutonium to be 239. You also need
to keep plutonium-240 below 7%. 240 spontaneously fissions. That's a showstopper.
Sorry. I farted.
Are we choosing between space exploration and weapons here? No. Spent fuel from power
reactors does not let us do either. We won't power space probes with it, we won't fuel
Mars rovers with it and no one will build a bomb out of it.
Its only practical use is to be recycled as nuclear fuel and release the remaining 95%
of its stored energy. That is its only use.
Every plant generates about 30 bombs worth of plutonium every year.
A power reactor creates plutonium which is not weapons-grade. This number is zero.
Isotopic separation of uranium is an expensive but developed technology.
Isotopic separation of plutonium is not.
A power reactor creates plutonium which is not weapons-grade.
Weapons-grade plutonium can be created in a military rector or a research reactor.
A research reactor is not designed to produce power, but rather to irradiate materials for
testing purposes and to create life-saving medical isotopes.
Samples of raw material such as pure uranium-238 can be slid in and out of the reactor, much
like a kiln.
Such a reactor could also be used to create weapons-grade plutonium by lightly toasting
uranium with neutrons for just 59 days and no more.
Power reactors are very different. It takes a month to reload the reactor.
The fuel stays inside it for 6 months while the lid is bolted on, making the spent fuel
well below weapons-grade.
Weapons-grade plutonium can also be created in a dual-purpose reactor such as the RBMK
model, known to most people as the Chernobyl reactor.
Energy is generated until the fuel rods are lightly toasted. Then the fuel rods are removed
before they become spent.
Weapons-grade plutonium can also be created by operating some Western-style reactors,
such as CANDU 6, illegally. Most Western reactors are designed to make this task of toasting
fuel extremely difficult, because it takes an entire month to shut down a reactor and
remove fuel rods.
The lack of electrical production during the shutdown is easily detected by satellites
and on-the-ground inspectors.
Today, Western reactors are closely monitored by the United Nations International Atomic
Energy Agency to ensure that what emerges is spent fuel and not toasted fuel. Also,
weapons-grade uranium, highly-enriched uranium, can be created in a fuel enrichment facility
by enriching natural uranium far beyond what is needed to fuel a nuclear reactor.
Iran may have been pursuing nuclear weapons by this path until 2012, when Stuxnet went
into action. Stuxnet was a clandestine software tool used by the United States to destroy
billions of dollars worth of Iranian centrifuges. Iran's enrichment operation involved no spent
fuel, no toasted fuel, and no nuclear reactor whatsoever. It only involved uranium.
Finally, weapons-grade plutonium cannot be made by operating any Western power reactor
in a manner stipulated by international treaty since 1970, not even a CANDU 6. Legal operation
results in spent fuel, not toasted fuel.
Of the 16,000 nuclear warheads on the planet today, not a single one was created from spent
fuel plutonium.
Nor did plutonium from spent fuel explode in any of the 2,000 nuclear weapons tests
ever conducted.
Every plant generates about 30 bombs worth of plutonium every year.
This is a misleading statement.
It is misleading for France.
It is misleading for the United States, where Dr. Arjun Makhijani testified before Minnesota's
Senate.
Iran is the clearest contrast between Makhijani theoretical...
...And real-world doable.
By most accounts, Iran would like to posses an atomic bomb. They've been running a nuclear
power plant since 2012.
They have their own enrichment facility. They are a very capable nuclear power.
Why did Iran focus on uranium enrichment if their goal was weapons production? Because
trying to make a weapon with a commercial power reactor is foolish.
The entire world can see what you're doing.
Iran's centrifuges invited Stuxnet sabotage and billions of dollars of damaged hardware.
In contrast, Iran's power reactor is internationally monitored and operates without condemnation
from the United States.
Makhijani's fuel rod doomsday scenario sounds plausible only if you don't know what an isotope
is.
No. I'm sorry if I left that impression. I started with France, where they do separate
the plutonium. You do have to go through that process of separating the plutonium. The French
do have 10,000 bombs worth of separated plutonium that's surplus, that's sitting around.
No. You're quite right that it is a complicated process that would take a lot. But there are
advocates in this country that we should do that, be like France.
Yes, we should be like France. In the 1980s, France drastically reduced their carbon emissions
by turning to nuclear power.
Their per capita carbon footprint is lower than even Germany. France achieves this with
dated recycling technology and 1970s-style nuclear reactors.
As Dr. Arjun Makhijani travels the world conflating spent fuel with nuclear bombs, he's making
the job of any bomb-seeking nation easier, not harder.
This is because a nation's ability to extract toasted fuel from their reactor depends a
great deal on which reactor they've built.
Anti-nuclear activists have been taught to see all nuclear power plants as bomb factories,
and so there's less pressure on bomb-seeking nations to build reactors which make proliferation
impossible.
Iran's power reactor is technically capable of toasting fuel.
International monitoring is now essential.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani and anyone else who restates the bombs per gigawatt falsehood...
Each reactor makes 500 pounds of plutonium a year.
You only need 10 pounds to make a nuclear weapon.
You get the plutonium, which is great, because you can make bombs with it.
...Facilitates weapons proliferation. Confusion is not helpful.
...If we move to renewables in a big way. But you would not be able to have the kind
of power...
Yes, you would.
...That we have now.
Oh yes, you would.
I do think that we have...
Yes, you would.
I commissioned a report in America called "Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free."
It's a study that I set up by bringing a physicist called Arjun Makhijani.
By 2030, America could have all the energy it needs from solar, from wind, from geothermal,
from conservation.
To smelt aluminum or to make aluminum, it requires huge amounts of energy.
We've got to stop using aluminum cans. That's just crazy.
All this frozen food is just obscene too. We shouldn't be freezing food. When I was
a kid, there was not frozen food. We did all right.
You know in the winter, it's so hot inside you have to strip.
The thermostat should be lowered.
Why don't you hang your clothes outside in the sun to dry using the nuclear reactor in
the sky?
Every time you walk into one of those doors and it goes jwoo in front of you...
...That's powered by electricity. Every time you walk through a door that goes shhhh-shhh
, it's either a carcinogenic door or a global warming door, which means your kids have no
future.
It's sort of almost a testosterone supplement. I think it makes them feel strong and powerful,
because when you fission the atom, you actually harness the energy of the Sun.
We have to have humility and understand who we are. That we're not God. We're just fallible
human beings who make mistakes. Therefore, we must eradicate all things nuclear.
Caldicott is as anti-nuclear as anyone could possibly be.
These people should be tried like the Nazi war criminals were at Nuremberg.
I'm fed up with them.
Mozart and Shakespeare wrote by candlelight. Oooh, candlelight!
I'm writing an article for the "International Herald Tribune" now about the future of nuclear
power and I ended it by saying that.
The editor wrote back and said, "We don't want to encourage people to think they have
to go to candlelight again."
Bill Gates is doing some good work with his money. He's setting up to immunize all the
children of the world. He is taking responsibility.
You can do wonderful things with money if you've got it.
As I got focused on the work of my foundation and the lives of the poor, and I looked at
what innovations could improve their lives, allow them to have cheaper food fertilizer,
to have more building materials, to have a refrigerator, to have light to read at night,
I realized the very central role that energy plays in improving their livelihood.
We need breakthroughs.
Now if the solar guys get 10 times as cheap and solve the storage challenges they face
and the transmission difficulties where the energy is not exactly where you need it, that's
wonderful.
In fact, I invest some in those areas.
But when you look at the numbers and you say, "What could be significantly cheaper than
what we have today and located in every area," a nuclear is one of the few that may be able
to achieve that.
They trot people like Bill Gates out there to be our friends and to sell us this stuff.
Yeah, but you don't have to believe Bill Gates, because he's filthy rich.
Yeah, but a lot of people do.
Yeah, but don't. Where is your cynicism?
I know. That's what I'm saying.
You know, Americans are very gullible.
I commissioned a report in America called "Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free" by bringing in
a physicist called Arjun Makhijani.
I think this warrants at least the same amount of skepticism as any health report commissioned
by the tobacco industry.
Anti-nuclear activists read on Makhijani's website that an atomic bomb test was successfully
conducted with reactor-grade plutonium in 1962.
Anti-nuclear activists will not know that in 1962 reactor-grade had a much different
definition than it does today.
That same sample would no longer qualify.
The 1962 plutonium did not come from any United States power reactor spent fuel. It came from
a reactor capable of toasting fuel. If Dr. Arjun Makhijani wants to slow proliferation,
then he should explain to non-technical audiences what an isotope is.
That would be helpful.
If Dr. Arjun Makhijani wants to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then discussion
of the French nuclear program and Germany's Energiewende should also compare per capita
carbon footprints.
That would also be helpful.
When they get to be any meaningful percentage, that's where the problem of their intermittency
becomes overwhelming.
You can actually spend way more to try and solve that problem than you spend on the overpriced
stuff to begin with.
I think people deeply underestimate what a huge problem that is.
The economics are so, so far from being appropriate.
We have burned more brown coal as we haven't since 1990.
There is no logic to this!
What the GroKo is doing here.
Recently all the experts are saying: "Guy's you're messing this shit up"
And they still go ahead with it.
Just a few days ago on the subject of energy policy
GroKo (Grand Coalition) got - And I'm not exaggerating
a F minus grade with a letter for the parents.
Angela Merkel tries to take it calmly: Renewable Energy Act is a failure.
Such is the judgement of an expert panel which she appointed herself.
It is official now her own experts write that the green energy policies
make energy prices go up-up-up, and lead to less climate protection.
Every German last year forked out 240 Euros for green power fees.
Babies, seniors... every German!
A total of 21.8 billion euros for power which on the marked has a value of only 2 billion...
That's sick! It doesn't make any sense! Why do they do this?
Oliver,
There are things between heaven and Earth where logic doesn't get us any further
Here, one has simply only to believe!
Rod Adams is a nuclear engineer. He hosts Atomic Insights.
How much does a kilowatt hour of solar energy...
How many? We've talked for an hour already.
How much does a kilowatt hour of solar energy cost between the hours of 6:00 PM and 6:00AM?
That's a silly question.
No, it's not.
You know that.
I did read your book.
We have not had a good conversation because this is an ideological conversation...
Can you explain to people how you do that? I have an advantage, I've read your book.
I'd encourage any Minnesota Senator to listen to that interview.
You'd pay a lot more for electricity than we do today if we're simply going to generate
electricity from new sources with low CO2 output.
But if you do efficiency, you can come out at approximately the same cost as today for
energy services. That's how you do it.
Do you think that...
Bye.
OK.