The United States is struggling to handle the excessive amounts of plutonium generated at the cores of its many retired nuclear reactors, according to a new report, raising fears that it might end up in the wrong hands.
Today, there are some 54 metric tons of surplus plutonium stored in nuclear facilities the US Department of Energy operates around the country, according to Reuters.
In Pantex, a plant located near Amarillo, Texas, the surplus plutonium has long exceeded the 20,000 cores, also known as “pits,” that regulations allow such facilities to store in their temporary storage facility.
That means a mishap in the process, which is mostly done manually by contract workers, can trigger massive nuclear explosions.
You can read the rest @
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/04/24/559540/US-plutonium-Pantex
That final claim is total BS. No "storage mishap" involving the pits can trigger a "massive nuclear explosion". You can find the reasons why on the Internet.
In a former life, I worked at the Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. DWPF was designed to put high level waste into glass logs for long term storage in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. At one time there also was a plan to put excess plutonium into the glass logs to make it impossible to pilfer.
Unfortunately, people like former Senator Harry Reid made it impossible to construct the nation's high level waste storage facilities, so now we have no plan for dealing with plutonium or any of the high level waste which continues to be generated.
Yes, we have a problem; but the number of dumbasses responsible for it is so long I doubt this computer could handle it.
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