From Jan Wieman, Borssele Nuclear Power Plant
Rob Edwards’s story about turning MOX fuel into bombs is nothing really new
(2 June, p 4).
It is a scare story, which does not take into account the
real-life facts in Western society. (We do not really know what is happening in
Russia, where the downfall of the socialist society has lamentably sometimes
resulted in a breakdown of even the most elementary nuclear security).
The fact that possession of plutonium would be a potent terrorist threat is
obvious. Just because of that, security in all facilities which handle
plutonium, such as those of British Nuclear Fuels, is extremely tight. The MOX
fuel, because it has a somewhat higher radiation field than natural uranium
fuel, is always handled in heavy shielded containers. So theft is not easy; it
is practically impossible.
If any was stolen—and there is no known example in the MOX industry of
this happening—the radiation field of the material would make the culprit
easy to detect. It would take a would-be terrorist months, if not years, to make
a bomb, and the intelligence community would have plenty of time to work out
detection schemes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and, in Europe, the Euratom
safeguards, keep account of every gram of MOX. It is impossible for terrorists
to swipe kilograms of it unnoticed and then play with it.
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