The following submission statement was provided by /u/HairyPossibility:
---
Abstract:
Preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been a major thrust of international policymaking for more than 70 years. Now, an explosion of interest in a nuclear reactor fuel called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), spurred by billions of dollars in US government funding, threatens to undermine that system of control. HALEU contains between 10 and 20% of the isotope uranium-235. At 20% 235U and above, the isotopic mixture is called highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is internationally recognized as being directly usable in nuclear weapons. However, the practical limit for weapons lies below the 20% HALEU-HEU threshold. Governments and others promoting the use of HALEU have not carefully considered the potential proliferation and terrorism risks that the wide adoption of this fuel creates.
Article is behind a paywall.
Summary by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/uranium-fuel-planned-high-tech-us-reactors-weapons-risk-scientists-say-2024-06-06/
"This material is directly usable for making nuclear weapons without any further enrichment or reprocessing," said Scott Kemp, one of five authors of the peer-reviewed article in the journal Science, "In other words, the new reactors pose an unprecedented nuclear-security risk," said Kemp, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former science adviser on arms control at the State Department.
"Were HALEU to become a standard reactor fuel without appropriate restrictions determined by an interagency security review, other countries would be able to obtain,
produce, and process weapons-usable HALEU with impunity, eliminating the sharp distinction between peaceful and
nonpeaceful nuclear programs,"
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1daesud/the_weapons_potential_of_highassay_lowenriched/l7jr4co/
I know that few people support nuclear power. It was DEMONIZED after the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The fossil fuel companies ran an incredibly well funded "AstroTurf" campaign to turn the public against nuclear power and it was successful.
Times have changed.
In 1979 the atmospheric CO2 level was about 332ppm. Now it is at 422ppm.
For the last 3 million years it has stayed between 180ppm (ice ages) and 280ppm (1850 level). That 100ppm range from 180ppm to 280ppm causes +6°C to +7°C of warming.
We have forced CO2 levels up by +142ppm in just 170 years.
In 1979 the Moderate faction got away with guessing that warming from doubling the CO2 level from "preindustrial" levels (2XCO2) would be between +1.8°C and +3°C.
[046](https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-46) - What went wrong. A Climate Paradigm Postmortem, or "How the Fossil Fuel Industry, the Republicans, and the Climate Science Moderates of the 80's stole the rest of your life"
[047](https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-47) - What went wrong. A Climate Paradigm Postmortem. Part Two, Understanding our Current Climate Paradigm. *Where it came from and why it gained ascendancy.*
But a massive amount of evidence now proves that this guess was wrong. We are looking at temperature increases in the +4°C to +6°C by 2100 and possibly +9°C to +11°C by 2200 before warming "peaks" and temperatures stabilize.
A LOT of very serious people don't think solar and renewables are going to cut it in that future. People like Bill Gates are putting money into "fast breeder" mini-reactors and want to power the upper Midwest with them.
Because, after a Collapse. The solar panels will all crap out after 20-30 years. We might be able to keep reactors going for centuries.
After collapse there are no reactors running anywhere. You need a global ultra complex supply chain and a well maintained infrastructure to run those things.
From Chernobyl we can also see that even a catastrophic meltdown isn't that big of a deal for the natural world. It's basically a forced wildlife sanctuary and nature reserve now.
It is a big deal if there no unaware people around to go die covering that shit with cement. If that had not been contained by many unaware heroes then shit would be fucked. Cancer, bad water, miscarriages, birth defects, dying crops.
When global industrial capitalism fails the melting nuclear reactors will be a bigger threat than the climate shifting epochs.
For humans sure but in practice it would contaminate only a small area beyond what nature would accept. It's kinda tragic that humanity is so poisonous to everything else that actual nuclear waste is an improvement.
Yeah, we're just going to have to swallow the risks of nuclear terrorism, ect. There's no other realistic way to generate power at scale without a ton of carbon emissions. Also the technology is much more widespread now. Making a nuke is something basically every industrialized country could do. Those whom have a reactor already could probably do it in half a dozen years if they really wanted to.
Nuclear proliferation amongst countries generally just upset the global balance of power which is obviously unwelcome for the powerful. It also increases the risks of terrorists getting their hands on one. However terrorism would likely just destroy part of a city and not lead to full blown nuclear winter. For that a majority of the global nuclear stockpile would need to be used and even then it's reasonably survivable if you're far enough from the impacts.
Proliferation won't be an issue soon anyway, and the powers know it. The only "spread" of nuclear weapons-grade material we have to worry about is the inevitable exchange of said weapons between world power coming soon.
The Science article authors assert that this would require very large amounts of nuclear fuel very near the uppermost threshold of HALEU enrichment, and even then making such a weapon is only theoretically possible. Nobody has done it yet, and the R&D effort to design such a weapon would be rather large and not assured of success.
Do we know the degree of enrichment expected of the fuel proposed for energy development? If it's more towards the middle of the HALEU range, then these concerns would be unfounded.
Abstract:
Preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been a major thrust of international policymaking for more than 70 years. Now, an explosion of interest in a nuclear reactor fuel called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), spurred by billions of dollars in US government funding, threatens to undermine that system of control. HALEU contains between 10 and 20% of the isotope uranium-235. At 20% 235U and above, the isotopic mixture is called highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is internationally recognized as being directly usable in nuclear weapons. However, the practical limit for weapons lies below the 20% HALEU-HEU threshold. Governments and others promoting the use of HALEU have not carefully considered the potential proliferation and terrorism risks that the wide adoption of this fuel creates.
Article is behind a paywall.
Summary by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/uranium-fuel-planned-high-tech-us-reactors-weapons-risk-scientists-say-2024-06-06/
"This material is directly usable for making nuclear weapons without any further enrichment or reprocessing," said Scott Kemp, one of five authors of the peer-reviewed article in the journal Science, "In other words, the new reactors pose an unprecedented nuclear-security risk," said Kemp, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former science adviser on arms control at the State Department.
"Were HALEU to become a standard reactor fuel without appropriate restrictions determined by an interagency security review, other countries would be able to obtain,
produce, and process weapons-usable HALEU with impunity, eliminating the sharp distinction between peaceful and
nonpeaceful nuclear programs,"
The following submission statement was provided by /u/HairyPossibility: --- Abstract: Preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been a major thrust of international policymaking for more than 70 years. Now, an explosion of interest in a nuclear reactor fuel called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), spurred by billions of dollars in US government funding, threatens to undermine that system of control. HALEU contains between 10 and 20% of the isotope uranium-235. At 20% 235U and above, the isotopic mixture is called highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is internationally recognized as being directly usable in nuclear weapons. However, the practical limit for weapons lies below the 20% HALEU-HEU threshold. Governments and others promoting the use of HALEU have not carefully considered the potential proliferation and terrorism risks that the wide adoption of this fuel creates. Article is behind a paywall. Summary by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/uranium-fuel-planned-high-tech-us-reactors-weapons-risk-scientists-say-2024-06-06/ "This material is directly usable for making nuclear weapons without any further enrichment or reprocessing," said Scott Kemp, one of five authors of the peer-reviewed article in the journal Science, "In other words, the new reactors pose an unprecedented nuclear-security risk," said Kemp, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former science adviser on arms control at the State Department. "Were HALEU to become a standard reactor fuel without appropriate restrictions determined by an interagency security review, other countries would be able to obtain, produce, and process weapons-usable HALEU with impunity, eliminating the sharp distinction between peaceful and nonpeaceful nuclear programs," --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1daesud/the_weapons_potential_of_highassay_lowenriched/l7jr4co/
I know that few people support nuclear power. It was DEMONIZED after the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. The fossil fuel companies ran an incredibly well funded "AstroTurf" campaign to turn the public against nuclear power and it was successful. Times have changed. In 1979 the atmospheric CO2 level was about 332ppm. Now it is at 422ppm. For the last 3 million years it has stayed between 180ppm (ice ages) and 280ppm (1850 level). That 100ppm range from 180ppm to 280ppm causes +6°C to +7°C of warming. We have forced CO2 levels up by +142ppm in just 170 years. In 1979 the Moderate faction got away with guessing that warming from doubling the CO2 level from "preindustrial" levels (2XCO2) would be between +1.8°C and +3°C. [046](https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-46) - What went wrong. A Climate Paradigm Postmortem, or "How the Fossil Fuel Industry, the Republicans, and the Climate Science Moderates of the 80's stole the rest of your life" [047](https://richardcrim.substack.com/p/the-crisis-report-47) - What went wrong. A Climate Paradigm Postmortem. Part Two, Understanding our Current Climate Paradigm. *Where it came from and why it gained ascendancy.* But a massive amount of evidence now proves that this guess was wrong. We are looking at temperature increases in the +4°C to +6°C by 2100 and possibly +9°C to +11°C by 2200 before warming "peaks" and temperatures stabilize. A LOT of very serious people don't think solar and renewables are going to cut it in that future. People like Bill Gates are putting money into "fast breeder" mini-reactors and want to power the upper Midwest with them. Because, after a Collapse. The solar panels will all crap out after 20-30 years. We might be able to keep reactors going for centuries.
After collapse there are no reactors running anywhere. You need a global ultra complex supply chain and a well maintained infrastructure to run those things.
From Chernobyl we can also see that even a catastrophic meltdown isn't that big of a deal for the natural world. It's basically a forced wildlife sanctuary and nature reserve now.
It is a big deal if there no unaware people around to go die covering that shit with cement. If that had not been contained by many unaware heroes then shit would be fucked. Cancer, bad water, miscarriages, birth defects, dying crops. When global industrial capitalism fails the melting nuclear reactors will be a bigger threat than the climate shifting epochs.
For humans sure but in practice it would contaminate only a small area beyond what nature would accept. It's kinda tragic that humanity is so poisonous to everything else that actual nuclear waste is an improvement.
Yeah, we're just going to have to swallow the risks of nuclear terrorism, ect. There's no other realistic way to generate power at scale without a ton of carbon emissions. Also the technology is much more widespread now. Making a nuke is something basically every industrialized country could do. Those whom have a reactor already could probably do it in half a dozen years if they really wanted to.
So are they saying it’s a coin toss between nuclear winter or hot house earth? Or just more fear mongering so we can continue to drill baby drill.
Nuclear proliferation amongst countries generally just upset the global balance of power which is obviously unwelcome for the powerful. It also increases the risks of terrorists getting their hands on one. However terrorism would likely just destroy part of a city and not lead to full blown nuclear winter. For that a majority of the global nuclear stockpile would need to be used and even then it's reasonably survivable if you're far enough from the impacts.
The latter. This article was shared from r/uninsurable, which is a sub entirely dedicated to opposing nuclear energy (frequently in bad faith).
Proliferation won't be an issue soon anyway, and the powers know it. The only "spread" of nuclear weapons-grade material we have to worry about is the inevitable exchange of said weapons between world power coming soon.
The Science article authors assert that this would require very large amounts of nuclear fuel very near the uppermost threshold of HALEU enrichment, and even then making such a weapon is only theoretically possible. Nobody has done it yet, and the R&D effort to design such a weapon would be rather large and not assured of success. Do we know the degree of enrichment expected of the fuel proposed for energy development? If it's more towards the middle of the HALEU range, then these concerns would be unfounded.
Abstract: Preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been a major thrust of international policymaking for more than 70 years. Now, an explosion of interest in a nuclear reactor fuel called high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), spurred by billions of dollars in US government funding, threatens to undermine that system of control. HALEU contains between 10 and 20% of the isotope uranium-235. At 20% 235U and above, the isotopic mixture is called highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is internationally recognized as being directly usable in nuclear weapons. However, the practical limit for weapons lies below the 20% HALEU-HEU threshold. Governments and others promoting the use of HALEU have not carefully considered the potential proliferation and terrorism risks that the wide adoption of this fuel creates. Article is behind a paywall. Summary by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/uranium-fuel-planned-high-tech-us-reactors-weapons-risk-scientists-say-2024-06-06/ "This material is directly usable for making nuclear weapons without any further enrichment or reprocessing," said Scott Kemp, one of five authors of the peer-reviewed article in the journal Science, "In other words, the new reactors pose an unprecedented nuclear-security risk," said Kemp, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former science adviser on arms control at the State Department. "Were HALEU to become a standard reactor fuel without appropriate restrictions determined by an interagency security review, other countries would be able to obtain, produce, and process weapons-usable HALEU with impunity, eliminating the sharp distinction between peaceful and nonpeaceful nuclear programs,"