The Hague: Suicide Manual
May 5, 2011
The La Hague Plant
on the northern coast of France
There is a Wikipedia page providing some information about the La Hague site, a "reprocessing center" located in Cotentin, on the northern coast of France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COGEMA_La_Hague_site
You will learn that this plant, the most polluting in the world in terms of nuclear discharges, was commissioned in 1961, half a century ago (...).
For decades, the La Hague plant has been recovering "waste" from various French and foreign nuclear facilities, and "processing" this material.
In reality, this process
is entirely focused on chemically extracting
1% of plutonium produced by fission in nuclear reactors—created when non-fissile uranium-238 captures fast neutrons—from uranium. This purified plutonium is then packaged into small units and shipped to MELOX in Marcoule, in southern France. There, the plutonium is diluted by 7% into uranium-238, forming a new "nuclear fuel" known as MOX (mixed oxide).
This MOX fuel can then be used in consumer countries to extract plutonium for military purposes.
Why go through the costly process of enriching uranium via centrifugation, like the Iranians, when it would suffice to buy MOX and extract plutonium-239 using a simple chemical technique to build explosive fission bombs?
This method is considered by Americans as "proliferation."
This means that, in the long term, this technique could allow every country in the world to produce its own atomic bombs.
This fuel is currently used in 20 of France’s 58 operating reactors.
The construction of the EPR reactor further expands its use (it was specifically designed for this).
For a long time, we failed to realize that the introduction of MOX signaled a subtle shift from uranium-235 fission to a process based on plutonium-238 fission.
Now, people are beginning to understand the extreme danger of this substance, which has a strong tendency to bind to human tissues after inhalation or ingestion of dust. The human body cannot eliminate it; the characteristic elimination time from human tissues is 50 years. These particles are highly (100%) carcinogenic. This is not radiation exposure,
but biological contamination—undetectable by any measuring instrument.
This contamination could occur in the event of a nuclear accident releasing debris from fuel assemblies.
This has already happened and continues to this day since the explosion at reactor number 3 of Fukushima, which was loaded with MOX.
Plutonium dust has been detected in the United States.
The impact has spread across the planet, and some experts claim it could cause up to a million cancers.
To stop the release from reactor number 3, it would be necessary to extract its fuel rods and, at minimum, submerge them in a specially designed pool.
Yet access to these elements is impossible, and it remains unclear when such access might become possible, either in the short or long term.
It is essential to continue cooling the "shut down" reactor’s fuel elements, whose core is largely melted and still releasing tens of megawatts of thermal energy. A closed-loop water circulation system coupled with a heat exchanger could help dissipate this heat—but the reactor’s deteriorated condition makes this impossible.
The Japanese are forced to use open-loop cooling by injecting or spraying fresh water.
This water, circulating through the damaged core, is responsible for releasing debris from fuel elements that escaped the zirconium tubes containing them and have melted.
The water becomes laden with plutonium particles and a wide range of highly toxic radionuclides. Part of it turns into steam, escaping into the atmosphere. The remainder accumulates in a network of cracks—impossible to locate or seal—caused by the earthquake in tunnels beneath the reactor. TEPCO then pumps this water, which has so far been stored in tanks.
When the tanks are full, TEPCO has simply discharged the highly radioactive water into the nearby ocean, apologizing to local residents and fishermen.
All of this will continue until a closed-loop cooling system can be established. ...
We cannot understand how the reactor remains inaccessible due to the high levels of radioactivity surrounding it.
Two companies are directly responsible for this deadly dispersion:
- The Japanese company TEPCO
- The French company AREVA, which manufactures and markets the new plutonium fuel at its MELOX plant.
TEPCO’s apologies. When will AREVA’s leaders apologize?
But there is something even more serious.
Over more than five decades of operation, the La Hague center—far from being a "recycling center," but rather a facility for conditioning, extracting, and selling plutonium fuel to Marcoule—has accumulated a stock that defies imagination, the size of which is not specified on the Wikipedia page.
Sixty tons of plutonium
The assemblies containing this plutonium are currently stored in four pools located at La Hague, housed in buildings whose roofs are not armored but made of only a thin protective layer (...)
The Devil’s Kitchen
Plutonium is denser than lead (19 kilograms per liter).
These calculations show that 60 tons of plutonium correspond to 3.15 cubic meters—capable of fitting into a cube measuring 1.46 meters on each side.
The La Hague plant is a reprocessing center, recovering the most dangerous and toxic substance in the world. Given what is happening at Fukushima, a logical response would be to stop MOX fuel production, close the MELOX plant in Marcoule, and halt the reprocessing of "devil’s ash" at the La Hague facility.
La Hague is not a treatment center, similar to a landfill—a "nuclear trash bin."
It is a safe place.
Here is a small challenge, level certificate.
A manufacturer has a stock of 60 tons of plutonium. A barrel of oil holds 160 liters. One barrel of oil has a capacity of 160 liters.
Barrel of oil
One gram of plutonium releases as much energy as one ton of oil. Oil also has an average density of 0.88 kg per liter. Its average market price is around $100, or €73. Calculate the number of oil-equivalent barrels corresponding to a cube of plutonium measuring 1.46 meters on each side. Calculate the euro value of the plutonium stock currently stored at La Hague.
60 tons = 60,000,000 grams = 60 billion kilograms of oil equivalent.
Divide by 140 pounds, which corresponds to the weight of a barrel.
We get:
428 million barrels.
At €73 per barrel, this amounts to:
€31.2 billion
The La Hague plant has the capacity to process 1,700 tons of "spent fuel" annually. It currently processes about 1,000 tons per year. Keep this figure. From this mass, 1% plutonium can be recovered—10 tons per year.
This represents the explosive power of 1,428 atomic bombs.
If we ignore the cost of reprocessing (chemical), this contribution amounts to an annual revenue of:
€5.2 billion per year