Name: Susan C Robinson
Status: Other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
How do you plan to dispose of the plutonium from nuclear warheads?
Will this
be done At Argonne National Labs in Lemont, IL?
Replies:
That is a really good question Susan, I have been wondering that myself. Some
of the research work needed to answer the question "how do you dispose of the
plutonium from H-bombs" will be done at Argonne, but the actual disposal
probably will not be done there. It is too risky to handle large quantities
of plutonium in populated areas like Chicagoland - both because an accidental
release might do a lot of harm to the people there, and because with more
people around it would be harder to protect the plutonium from thieves. I
know that a burial site for civilian nuclear waste is being prepared in the
Nevada desert, but I am not sure what the military plans to do with its
plutonium.
I found two government reports that should help answer your question. The
first is a 1990 General Accounting Office report called "Nuclear Health and
Safety: The Status of GAO's Environmental Safety and Health Recommendations
to DOE." The second is a summary report by the Office of Technology
Assessment called "Complex Cleanup: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear
Weapons Production", published in 1991 by the US Government Printing Office.
Ask your librarian for help finding copies of the report by interlibrary loan,
or by calling the Superintendent of Documents or the National Technical
Information service to purchase the reports.
NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.
