Nuclear Related Questions

I'm just waiting for N. Korea or Iran to do something so my small field becomes popular again. haha

Originally posted by COKKENBALLS Speaking of Greenpeace, I love the way the Chinese gov't deals with them. They shoot at them :) Anyway Han, I have a real question. How does the layman cut through all the BS in the fish-wrap about countries like Iran enriching uranium for warheads. Is Iran close? WTF is yellow cake, besides yummy?

Sorry for the lengthy response... I broke it down into sections, if you wanted to skip anything.  I can elaborate on anything that is unclear, or you are interested in.

The Short and Dirty of the situation,
News outlets coverage of North Korea is fairly accurate.  However, they sensationalize the f*** out of Iran.  Aside from not announcing a two enrichment faculties, they haven't really violated the NPT.  This mandates such enrichment facilities be announced to the international community ~9 months before operations, which, as the IAEA confirmed, the Iranians weren't doing.  For transparency, we'd like to know when any country starts construction of any nuclear facility.  Yet, these aren't the mandates of the NPT.

Currently, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons.  Yet, with the same technology they poses to make nuclear power plant fuel, they can make weapons material.  North Korea is miles, or should I say Kilometers, ahead of Iran.  They have Plutonium, created from a small 5MW reactor (5 times as big as my school's reactor), to make ~10 nuclear weapons.  They have detonated one underground, showing they know not only how to get the weapons material, but also can detonate it in the highly difficult window to achieve of less than .00001 seconds.

Some background - feel free to skip.
1) Rocks with Uranium Ore in them are turned into Yellowcake, which is just Uranium Oxide (U3O8, UO2, UO3.)
2) This Uranium "concentrate" has 0.7% of a desirable "isotope" or subtype of Uranium, Uranium-235.
3) The Yellow Cake is turned into a gas, Uranium hexafluoride (UF6).
4) Gas Centrifuges then "enriches the % of the desirable isotope, listed above, to whatever % you want. (~4% for a power plant and >90% for weapons)

To more directly answer your question,
There is a difficult problem that arises when you discuss National Sovereignty and Nuclear Technology; how does the international community ensure nuclear technology is being used for peaceful power purposes and not weapons projects, when each country has it's own law, courts, "secret" programs, etcetera.  Our solutions has been the IAEA, International Atomic Energy a**ociation, and their NPT, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  As we can see, the vast majority of nations, including Iran, agree to be inspected and monitored.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/NPT_Participation.svg

From this perspective Iran is a much better country than North Korea, who isn't monitored at all.  As American's we have nothing to immediately fear from either country.  Iranian weapons would go strait to Israel.  North Korea continues to reserve their stockpile like the Emo kid of the world, ready to, if provoked, "turn Seoul into a sea of fire," as said by a North Korean reunification translator in the early 2000s.  Targeting the largest GDP and a country with over 2,000 nuclear warheads is clearly not a high priority of any country.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=highest+gdp

It's all good.  haha.

Originally posted by SRC_ROLLTIDE Originally posted by HanFei Originally posted by SRC_ROLLTIDE Even if global warming wasn't in part due to human activity... There is a consensus for anthropogenic (caused or produced by humans) global warming by the following organizations: I know but even with all that "evidence" some still try and argue against it as human produced...I was simply trying to show that there are other benefits to reducing emissions other than slowing/stopping global warming i.e. clean air

Well said, such is the nature of fallibilism and skepticism.

Originally posted by SRC_ROLLTIDE Even if global warming wasn't in part due to human activity...

There is a consensus for anthropogenic (caused or produced by humans) global warming by the following organizations:

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- National science academies of the G8+5
- InterAcademy Council
- International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
- European Academy of Sciences and Arts
- Network of African Science Academies
- National Research Council (US)
- European Science Foundation
- American a**ociation for the Advancement of Science
- Federation of American Scientists
- World Meteorological Organization
- American Meteorological Society
- Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
- Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
- Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
- Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
- International Union for Quaternary Research
- American Quaternary a**ociation
- Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
- International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
- International Union of Geological Sciences
- European Geosciences Union
- Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences
- Geological Society of America
- American Geophysical Union
- American Astronomical Society
- American Institute of Physics
- American Physical Society
- American Chemical Society
- American Society for Microbiology
- Institute of Biology (UK)
- World Federation of Public Health a**ociations
- American College of Preventive Medicine
- American Public Health a**ociation
- American Medical a**ociation
- American Statistical a**ociation
- Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
- Water Environment Federation
- Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management
- Federal Climate Change Science Program (US)

That is neither political, bad science, or pseudoscience.
 - HanFei

Originally posted by SRC_ROLLTIDE so in your opinion, just how much cleaner is energy produced by nuclear power vs fossil fuels?

Nuclear Power Plants release virtually no airborne pollutants during operation.

Roughly half of US electricity comes from coal.
In an average year, a single, typical coal plant generates:

• 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), comparable to cutting down 161 million trees.
  
  
• 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs.
  
  
• 500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility.
  
  
• 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness.
  
  
• 720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease.
  
  
• 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.
  
  
• 170 pounds of mercury, where just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat.
  
  
• 225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.
  
  
• 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.

Source - http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html

so in your opinion, just how much cleaner is energy produced by nuclear power vs fossil fuels?  

consumption should generally track population growth correct?

Were roughly icreasing the number of reactors by 33%, but im a**uming these are newer more efficeient/powerful reactors than the intstalled base so nuclear output over the next 8-13 (a**uming 3 year build out lead time) years should increase by more than 33% correct.?

 

I have some serious questions:

Originally posted by InHuMaNe_KiLLa I do!!! How many atom bombs are there in the U.S and the entire world xD?

http://www.project.org/images/graphs/Nuclear_Weapons.jpg
The exact number fluctuates.  Currently, it's going down.  The Mega-Tons to MegaWatt program, which has or will expire soon, down blends highly enriched bombs to low enriched commercial fuel.  This was between the US and Russia, bringing each down to ~1,000-1,500 warheads a piece.   To be more direct to your question, world total probably sits around 3-5 thousand warheads.  Some bombs can have more than one warhead to maximize yield.

In the Uranium bomb at Hiroshima, less than 1 gram of matter was turned into energy, just to give a sense of scale for how much energy matter contains!