Missing plutonium 'just on paper'

[emad]

BBC


Almost 30kg of plutonium apparently missing from the Sellafield nuclear plant is simply an auditing issue, it has been announced.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) confirmed 29.6kg of plutonium - enough to make seven nuclear bombs- was "unaccounted for" in auditing records.

Operator, the British Nuclear Group (BNG), said it was a discrepancy between physical and book inventories.

UKAEA said there was no reason to think there was any "real loss" of plutonium.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4272691.stm

[McCamy Taylor]

1. WTF?

:wtf:

[420inTN]

2. It's in the warehouse, but wasn't counted

At least, that's the impression I received. The plutonium is actually in the storage facility, but for some reason, wasn't listed on the audit sheets. Therefore, when they compared existing stocks, with the list of stocks that was supposed to be there, it was declared "missing".

[emad]

3. Poodle to spin this story as "Sellafield, a suburb of Tehran"???

incase those Rummy drone planes have a hard time looking for the stuff...

[Journeyman]

4. Great. Now some terrorist good at origami . . .

is going to kill us all.

[amazona]

5. that's what they always say

Heck, isn't that even what they tried to say in the Silkwood case back in the day? No plutonium ever goes missing anywhere, nosirree.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Vitruvius]

6. So true. This physicist has heard that "bookkeeping error" excuse again &

& again for 40+ years. Another popular excuse was "Oh, it was lost in processing"; this excuse was phased out when people pointed out that the missing amounts added up to a LOT of radioactive pollution; the chemical symbol for plutonium is Pu (P-U) because the discoverers realized that it is nasty stuff; it is not only radioactive; it's also a pretty good conventional (chemical) poison as well...

The problem is that the missing amounts are so large and the critical mass is so small; depending on how well you do the implosion in your bomb design, that missing 30 kg is enough for between 3 bombs (WWII-vintage implosion technology) and 9 bombs (modern implosion technology).

Interestingly enough, the first time I heard these excuses, the missing amount corresponded rather closely to the number of bombs in the "suspected" (i.e. known) Israeli stockpile. I wonder...


P.S: For the scientifically inclined, the better your implosion, the smaller the critical mass; in the 1950s, bomb designers discovered that you could implode the uranium or plutonium "pit" to 3 - 4 times the density of the solid metal; the critical mass was reduced accordingly, and the number of bombs in the U.S. stockpile more-than-doubled overnite. Modern designs can reach 5+ times the density of the solid metal.

By-the-way, none of this is secret anymore; nuclear bombs are a 60-year-old technology; everybody knows this stuff, all of it is available thru open sources; and a non-uncommon question on physics graduate general examinations (for an ordinary physics Ph.D.) is to calculate the relevant nuclear cross-sections (for fission by fast neutrons), from which it is a trivial exercise to derive the critical mass for a given implosion density.

Finally, for any Feds who may be reading this, I have never had any access whatsoever to any classified material relating to bomb or reactor design. Nor will I ever seek such access; the world has enough bombs, I do not wish to design bombs -- ever, and I wish to retain my freedom to comment on these matters.

[Orsino]

7. Come to think of it...

...one of the fall-back rationales for Gulf War II was purely a bookkeeping complaint: Saddam had failed to account for the destruction of his WMDs.

I love moral relativism.

[Komrade _azul]

8. Sweeettttt......

And now if I could explain away those pesky unpaid parking tickets as a regrettable accounting error....;-)

[rainbow4321]

9. Good excuse to use with a bounced check...

Um, the money is THERE, it's just missing on paper..kinda like "I must still have money left, I still have CHECKS"!