The Devil's Kitchen
SUICIDE, USER MANUAL
May 5, 2011
****English version
Espanol/sauver_la_Terre/la_Hague_es.htm
The La Hague facility
There is a page on Wikipedia that provides some information about the La Hague site, "a reprocessing center located in Cotentin":
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usine_de_retraitement_de_la_Hague
Here you will learn that this facility, the most polluting in the world in terms of nuclear waste, was put into service in 1961, half a century ago (...), and is operated by a private company, AREVA.
The La Hague plant has been recovering, for decades, the "waste" coming from various French and foreign nuclear power plants, and "reprocessing" it.
In fact, this reprocessing is entirely aimed at extracting, through chemical means, the 1% of plutonium produced by fission in uranium reactors, via the capture of fast neutrons by the nuclei of non-fissile Uranium 238. This pure plutonium is then packaged in small containers and sent to the MELOX facilities, in Marcoule, in the Gard, where it is diluted to 7% in Uranium 238. The resulting mixture forms a new "nuclear fuel", called MOX (Mixed Oxides).
The MELOX chemical process can in turn be carried out in consumer countries, to extract plutonium for military purposes. Why go through so much trouble, as the Iranians do, to enrich uranium ore through centrifugation, when it is enough to buy MOX and chemically extract the plutonium-239, the explosive type of fission bombs?
The MELOX process is considered by the Americans as "proliferating".
In other words, this technique will eventually allow all countries in the world to possess their own atomic bomb.
MOX is currently used in 20 of the 58 active reactors in France. The construction of EPR (Pressurized Water Reactors) will generalize its use, as they were specifically designed for this purpose.
For a long time, it remained unknown that the introduction of MOX as nuclear fuel marked the quiet shift from the fission of Uranium 235 to a nuclear power plant operation based on the fission of Plutonium 238.
The extreme danger of this substance is now known to all: it has a strong tendency to settle in human tissues after inhalation or ingestion in the form of dust, which the body is unable to eliminate. Indeed, the time required for its elimination from human tissues is 50 years. These particles are highly carcinogenic, at 100%.
It is not irradiation, but contamination, which cannot be detected with measuring instruments. Such contamination can be produced in the case of a nuclear accident with the release of radioactive material from all the fuels. This is what happened, and continues to happen, after the explosion of reactor number 3 of Fukushima, which was loaded with MOX. Plutonium dust has been found in the United States.
This dissemination will affect the entire planet, and some specialists estimate that it will cause a million cancers.
To stop the dissemination of plutonium from reactor number 3, the fuel rods inside it should be extracted, and at least immersed in a specially designed pool. Now, access to these elements remains impossible, and it is still unknown when it will be possible, if in the near or distant future.
For now, it is necessary to continue cooling the fuel elements of this "shutdown" reactor, whose core, largely melted, continues to emit several tens of megawatts of thermal energy. A closed-loop water circulation, coupled with a heat exchanger, would allow the evacuation of this heat, but the deteriorated state of the reactor makes this impossible. The Japanese are therefore forced to implement an "open-loop" cooling system, through injection or spraying of fresh water. This water, circulating in the damaged core of the reactor, becomes contaminated with waste from the fuel elements that passed through the zirconium tubes that contained them, melted after the accident.
The water in question is therefore contaminated with plutonium particles and a whole range of highly toxic radionuclides. It is partially converted into steam, which goes into the atmosphere; while the rest flows, through a whole set of cracks caused by the earthquake and impossible to locate and close, into the underground galleries of the reactor. The company TEPCO is pumping this extremely radioactive water. At first, it collected it in special tanks, but when these were filled to the brim, TEPCO simply poured it into the nearby ocean, apologizing to the coastal residents and fishermen.
All of this will continue until a closed-loop cooling system is installed. It is not seen how this could happen, given that the reactors, extremely damaged, remain inaccessible due to the strong radioactivity in the surrounding area.
Two companies are directly responsible for this deadly dispersion:
- The Japanese company TEPCO
** - The French company AREVA, which produces and sells this new plutonium fuel at the MELOX plant**
The apologies of the TEPCO managers. When will the apologies of AREVA's executives come?
But there is worse.
During the five decades of operation of the La Hague plant (which is not a "reprocessing center", that is, a kind of high-tech landfill, but a center for the extraction and sale of plutonium fuel), AREVA has accumulated a stock that surpasses imagination, and whose size is not specified on the Wikipedia page.
Sixty tons of plutonium
The plutonium-containing elements are currently stored in four pools, located at La Hague, in buildings whose roofs are not armored, but simply made of sheets.
The Devil's Kitchen
Plutonium is an element denser than lead (19 kilograms per liter). Do the calculation: these sixty tons of plutonium correspond to 3.15 cubic meters, and could be contained in a cube of 1.46 meters on each side.
The La Hague plant is not a reprocessing center, comparable to a landfill, a "nuclear trash can"
It is a vault
Solve the following problem, middle school level:
An industrialist has a stock of 60 tons of plutonium. The oil barrel has a capacity of 160 liters.
Oil barrel *
One gram of plutonium emits the same amount of energy as a ton of oil. Oil has an average density of 0.88 kilograms per liter. Its average price on the market is around 100 dollars per barrel, about 73 euros. Calculate the number of oil barrels corresponding to a cube of plutonium of 1.4 meters on each side. Calculate the value in euros of the plutonium stock currently stored at La Hague.*
60 tons = 60,000 kilograms = 60,000...