The Plutonium Cycle

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Demonstrators protest against Windscale reprocessing plan. Branchero pronouncer that:

"A distinctive feature of the revolutionary process in Chile i that it began and continues within the frame work of the bourgeois institutions of the past..

... we have essentially retained the old state machine. Government offices are staffed mainly| with the old officials forces, observing the status of a professional institution (!) take no part in political debate and submit to the lawfully constituted civilian power.

"Bonds of cooperation and mutual respect have evolved between the army and the working class in the name of a patriotic goal of shaping Chile into a free, advanced, and democratic land."

This view was elaborated further by Stalinist poet and Chilean ambassador in Paris, Pablo Neruda.

His words, "As for our army, we love it. It is the people in uniform" , should serve as a watchword for all time against the Stalinist "peaceful road" to Pinochet-style dictatorship.

It was the refusal of Allende and his CP allies to mobilise the masses to confront and destroy the capitalist state or expropriate the capitalist class in Chile which left the door open for Pinochet's coup.

Disarm

Allende, along with the Stalinists, opposed the development of any opposition to the officers in the armed forces, and of course fought against the formation of soviet-type organs of power which could have instituted the dictatorship of the proletariat in Chile.' In jointly acting with Allende to disarm the workers prior to the coup, the Stalinists in effect helped open up Pinochet's road to power.

Corvalan's speech, eagerly sold in England by the "Moscow-line" New Communist Party, clearly shows that neither wing of Stalinism offers workers a break from the reformist "peaceful road to socialism"

an independent Opposed Both sections of Stalinism stand firmly opposed to proletarian revolution and for peaceful coexistence with capitalism both on a world scale, and on a national level.

Moscow's limited criticisms of the "Euro" Communist Parties centres not in any way on the Popular Frontist policies of these parties but solely on Kremlin fears that the CPs have become more responsive to their "own" bourgeoisie than to Brezhnev and the Kremlin.

The period in which Moscow could manipulate the mass CPs of France, Italy and Spain at will in the interests . of Stalinist world diplomacy seems at an end.

But for workers in turning from the class collaboration of these CPs to seek a solution in the "Moscowline" alternative offers nothing but further confusion and Chile-style defeats.

Independence

The answer to Carrillo, to Berlinguer or to Corvalan must be the fight in every country to construct Trotskyist revolutionary parties as part of a reconstructed Fourth International, to carry through a consistent struggle for the political independence of the working class.

Plutonium is first produced artificially in conventional thermal nuclear reactors, as a waste product.

Naturally occuring Uranium is used to fuel these thermal reactors, and contains two isotopes of Uranium U238 (97%-98%) and U235 (2%-3%). U235 is the part which fissions, producing two fission products (which are anything resulting from dividing 235 roughly by two, e.g. lodine 131 and Barium 107).

Every time the U235 splits it gives off about one and a half neutrons, which bombard the U238, and change its atomic structure, so that it becomes Plutonium 239.

Gradually, there is a buildof Plutonium 239.

Stored

Roughly, a 1,000 Megawatt power station will produce 250 kilograms of Plutonium 239 per annum, or about 1% of fuel put into it.

This Plutonium is associated with the fission products and unburnt Uranium, which are highly radioactive.

One of two things can be The cycled reactors, stored at until it is NETIS done with these:

1. They can be stored. After a few years it will cease to be dangerously radioactive.

But it will be a constant worry to its owners, as it could fall into the hands of "terrorist" groups.

Undesirable

However, storage is undesirable chiefly for environmentalist reasons.

The problem becomes one of limiting the number of dumps, rather than having one for every thermal reactor.

2. The waste can be used; after reprocessing, either for military purposes, or as fuel for fast reactors.

When this happens, the spent thermal reactor fuel is stored for 5-10 years, then sent to a reprocessing plant, where Plutonium, Uranium and remaining fission products are extracted and separated.

Windscale

Uranium is then reback into thermal and the Plutonium is the reprocessing plant required for use.

This is what will happen at Windscale. When the fast reactor building programme gets under way, then the Plutonium will go to be used immediately.

When used, the Plutonium is mixed with depleted Uranium and fabricated into fast reactor fuel which is then dispatched to the reactor.

During this process, which can take about three months, the Plutonium is not accompanied by radiation of any appreciable amount.

What must be understood is that the fast reactor incinerates Plutonium all the time that it is in operation.

Reactor core

It also produces Plutonium, and it is possible to operate it so that it produces either slightly more or slightly less than it incinerates.

A fast reactor has a reactor core, in which the fuel is placed and, surrounding it, there is a blanket which can absorb the neutrons which escape from the core.

The fuel which is put into the core contains a percentage of Plutonium Oxide which is mixed with Uranium Oxide (typically 20% Plutonium Oxide and 80% Uranium Oxide).

During the course of the operation of the reactor the initial Plutonium is incinerated and some of the U238 is converted to Plutonium 239.

These two processes are roughly in balance and the operation of the reactor is "fine tuned" with the use of control rods.

The core of the fast reactor produces slightly less Plutonium than it incinerates.

At present, the blanket surrounding the core is made of U238, which in the course of operation of the reactor is converted to Plutonium 239.

Control

Therefore when the blanket is removed it contains slightly more Plutonium' than was put in.

In practice, the rate at which the blanket produces Plutonium exceeds the rate at which the core incinerates it.

After a suitable time, known as the "doubling time" enough Plutonium accumulates ~ TO 'breed" another reactor.

In principle, one could control the composition of the blanket of the fast reactor so that overall it did not produce an excess of Piutonium.

But in practice, this option has •not been seriously considered because the nuclear industry has envisaged a period of expanding use of fast reactors.

Analogy Each new reactor would need Plutonium from an older one, but when the number of reactors stabilised, so also would the production of Plutonium.

Put simply, existing thermal reactors produce Plutonium, thereby increasing the amount of Plutonium in the world.

Fast reactors control the amount of Plutonium in the world-producing either more or less as required.

The fast reactor does not "breed" Plutonium in the uncontrolled way that rabbits breed.

The analogy is much more like the way humans breed in the full knowledge of birth control techniques:

If the fast reactor building programme were launched now, it would take about ten years to complete.

Each plant would take 30-40 years to wear out.

By then we will know whether it is possible to build nuclear fission reactors, using heavy hydrogen, rather than Plutonium or Uranium.

Problems solved

In which case, as the fast reactors wear out, the fusion reactors can be phased in.

Since heavy hydrogen can be got from sea water, this would solve our energy problems for the next few millenia.

The answer to the question of the disposal of nuclear waste products is related to an understanding of the nature of the 'half life' of radioactive isotopes.

The more radioactive a compound is, the shorter the halflife, therefore the less of a long term problem it is.

The longer the half-ife, the less radioactivity it emits.

The apparently terrifying hatf-life of Plutonium (approximately 12,800 years) is therefore seen to be the most harmiess aspect of it.

Long term This problem also needs to be looked at in the context of the need to find long-term sources of energy and the alternatives that are available.

Fossil fuels cannot be a viable source of power for long, because there is only a finite amount of them, and that will out before very long.

While we have such resources we should put them to the best use we can, using them for manufacturing plastics, nylons and chemicals.

It would make more sense to use diamonds as fuel if they could burn, than to waste such valuable and limited resources as oil and coal by burning them up.

Also the pollution given off by fossil fuel power stations is a major environmental hazard.

In fact, a coal fired power station gives off over 10 times as much radioactive waste as the maximum permitted by i a nuclear power station.

"Idyllic"

If this country alone were to resort to wind-, wave- or solarpower it would require 12,000 miles of pontoons bobbing up and down around our coastline, one pylon with a propellor on the top of it every square mile and solar cells on top of every building.

One good storm and the whole country would come to a juddering halt.

"Alternative" sources of power should course continue to be investigated, and their possibilities exploited.

Nevertheless, it would be quite impossible to maintain a fully industrialised society which was solely dependent on them.

Environmentalist. groups, such as the Friends of the Earth' advocate the use of these sources, because they have no wish to preserve an industrialised society.

Seeing industrialisation simplistically as one of the evil products of capitalism, they would like to see us revert to an "idyllic" farming life, using minimum power and technology.

Such viewpoint ridiculous, but it is actually the only logical one to hold for the opponents of nuclear power.

Workers state

It is the alternative we will face anyway without nuclear power.

The Marxist position must be that it is impossible to build socialism except in a situation where it is possible for there to be enough for everyone.

Technological development, arising originally from capitalist enterprise, but available to a future socialist society, makes it possible for this to be the case.

But only by the revolutionary takeover of these means of production by the proletariat does this actually come about.

Clearly nuclear power used by a capitalist state will only help to perpetuate capitalism. • But a workers state with a planned socialist economy will also need an energy source.

Surely it would be preferable if it could take over the existing power stations, rather than to have to enter upon a crash building programme of its own?

ATOMIC STRUCTURE Electrons orbit round the nucleus of the proton and sometimes the neutron. Neutrons have no charge, but have mass.

In the stable form of atom, the number of electrons orbiting matches the number of particles in the nucleus.

In an unstable atom the number of electrons exceeds the number of particles in the nucleus, therefore - they "wobble".

They either emit radiation (eg. gamma-rays or X-rays) or they throw off particles. The most unstable atoms, eg. uranium and plutonium are very heavy and have masses of protons, neutrons and electrons.

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NDUS TAL age

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NO WINDSCALE NOW!

THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY FOR? PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL