The Hague: a manual for suicide
May 5, 2011
The Hague factory
There is a website, on Wikipedia, that provides some information about the site of The Hague, "a reprocessing center located in Cotentin".
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_de_retraitement_de_la_Hague
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_de_reprocesado_de_La_Hague
There you will learn that this factory, the most contaminated in the world regarding nuclear waste, was put into service in 1961, half a century ago (...). It is managed by the private company AREVA.
For several decades now, the factory in The Hague recovers the "waste" coming from different nuclear power plants, French and foreign, and "reprocesses" it.
In reality, this reprocessing is entirely aimed at the chemical extraction of the 1% of plutonium produced by fission in nuclear reactors that use uranium as fuel. This plutonium is formed by the capture of fast neutrons by the nuclei of Uranium 238. The pure plutonium is packaged in small containers and sent to the MELOX factory, in Marcoule (located in the province of Gard). There, the plutonium, 7%, is diluted with Uranium 238, and this mixture constitutes a new nuclear fuel called MOX (Mixed Oxides).
The "consumer" countries of nuclear fuel can also use this MELOX chemical process and thus extract the plutonium for military purposes. Why do the Iranians insist on enriching uranium ore by centrifugation if they can buy MOX and extract the plutonium 239, the explosive type of fission nuclear bombs?
This MELOX process is considered by the Americans as "proliferation".
This means that, in the medium term, this technique will allow all countries in the world to have atomic bombs.
This fuel is currently used in 20 of the 58 active reactors in France and the construction of new EPR reactors will generalize its use (they were designed for this purpose).
What has been ignored for a long time is that the introduction of MOX as nuclear fuel represents the discreet shift from the fission of Uranium 235 to a functioning by the fission of Plutonium 238.
Everyone is beginning to realize the extreme danger of this substance, which has a great tendency to bind to cellular tissues after ingestion or inhalation in the form of dust. The human body is unable to eliminate these particles; the characteristic time for the cellular tissue to reject and eliminate them is about fifty years. These particles are 100% carcinogenic.
We are not talking about irradiation but rather about contamination, barely detectable by measuring instruments.
This contamination could occur in case of a nuclear accident with the release of radioactive material from the fuel assemblies. This has already happened, and the continuous emission since the explosion of reactor number 3 of Fukushima, which was loaded with MOX. Plutonium dust has been found in the United States!!! This dispersion is taking place throughout the planet and some experts estimate that it will be the cause of a million cancers.
To stop this dispersion coming from reactor number 3, it would be necessary to remove the fuel rods and at least submerge them in a specially designed pool for this task. Unfortunately, access to these elements is impossible, and it is not known when this can be done in the near or distant future.
The cooling of the fuel elements of this "shut down" reactor is a priority, since the core, largely melted, continues to produce several megawatts of thermal energy. The circulation of water in a closed circuit, along with a heat exchanger, would allow the evacuation of the heat. However, the deteriorated state of the reactor makes this physically impossible to perform. The Japanese are forced to implement an "open circuit" cooling, either by injection or spraying of fresh water. This water, which circulates directly in the damaged core, is loaded with all kinds of materials and in particular with the fuel elements (plutonium particles and a whole range of highly toxic radioisotopes) that were initially in zirconium tubes but have melted due to the high temperatures.
This toxic water evaporates, in part, and rises into the atmosphere.
Another part filters through the cracks opened by the earthquake, which are impossible to locate and difficult to seal, into the galleries located in the basement of the reactor. The company TEPCO has begun to pump this radioactive water and put it into barrels that, once filled, are dumped into the ocean not far from the plant. That is, presenting their most humble apologies to the neighbors and fishermen in the area.
All of this will continue until a closed circuit cooling system is built.
And it is not known how or when this can be done, since it is impossible to approach the reactor due to the high level of radioactivity.
Two companies are directly responsible for this deadly dispersion of radioisotopes:
-
The Japanese company TEPCO
-
The French company AREVA that produces and markets this new plutonium-based fuel in its MELOX factory.
Excuses from the TEPCO managers. When will the excuses from the leaders of AREVA come?
But there is still more serious.
After five decades of operation, this center in The Hague, which is not a "reprocessing center" but a center for the extraction and sale of plutonium-based fuel, has accumulated a stock that is beyond imagination and whose importance is not specified on the Wikipedia page.
Sixty tons of plutonium
This plutonium is currently stored in four pools, located in The Hague, inside a building whose roof is not armored but made of a thin metal sheet (...)
The kitchen of the devil
Plutonium
is a more dense element than lead (19 kg per liter). Do the calculation. The sixty tons of plutonium correspond to 3.15 cubic meters, or the same as can be contained in a cube of 1.46 meters on each side. In concrete terms, this plutonium is stored in containers the size of a one-kilogram sugar box and arranged at the bottom of the pools.
The Hague factory presents itself as a processing center, which recovers the most dangerous and toxic material we have in the world. Considering what is happening in Fukushima, the logical reaction would be to stop the production of MOX fuel, to close the MELOX factory in Marcoule and not to recover this devil's ash in The Hague.
The Hague is not a processing center, comparable to a waste center, or a "nuclear garbage dump".
It is a safe
I propose the following problem, which corresponds to the COU (or now to the second year of high school LOGSE).
An industrialist has a stock of 60 tons of plutonium. A petroleum barrel can contain 160 liters.
Petroleum barrel
One gram of plutonium produces as much energy as a ton of petroleum. Petroleum has an average density of 0.88 kilograms per liter. The average price of a petroleum barrel is around 100 dollars, or 73 euros. Calculate the equivalent number of petroleum barrels, corresponding to a cube of plutonium of 1.46 meters on each side. Calculate, in euros, the value of the plutonium stock currently stored in The Hague.
60 tons = 60,000 kilograms = 60,000,000 grams = 60,000,000,000, sixty billion...