Towards nuclear disarmament, fleeing dark business

1995/04/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Teknologia

Russian plutonium is news again. Last summer the illegal traffic of plutonium launched the situation of Russian nuclear power plants. Western researchers said that plutonium reserves that accumulate within reach of anyone and without any control, offer at this time a unique opportunity for dark businesses. In order to solve this, the governments of Germany and Russia signed a collaboration agreement to give another use to plutonium in nuclear weapons.

The first results of the collaboration agreement are already known. The Russian government has announced that its researchers have developed the technology to convert the plutonium of nuclear weapons into fuel and that it will be available shortly. At the experimental plant to be built in Russia, uranium oxide and plutonium will be mixed to obtain the new fuel called MOX. Analyzing the composition of the fuel can be said that the use of plutonium will be high. In this sense, he believes that the Russian government will be able to allocate the plutonium it has in stores to civil uses.

The idea that oxides of ambition, uranium and plutonium become fuels will not be an easy task. The right technology must be used and will be supported by the German company Siemens. In any case, finding funding sources for the project will be the most important challenge. The environmental organization Greenpeace denounces that the MOX fuel will not avoid the problem of plutonic traffic, but will hide it through commercial models.