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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (6802)	10/22/2001 11:23:45 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

To add to Michael's post, who added to Jill's post.. :0) Uranium in finely divided form is readily ignitable, and uranium scrap from machining operations is subject to spontaneous ignition. You can take almost any material and grind it into a fine enough power to the point where it's combustible. There used to be a big issue with VW Beetle engine cases burning like torches because they were made out of magnesium. And aluminum superstructures on steel hulled British destroyers were accused of "burning" once hit by an Exocet missle. And if you REALLY want to perform a neat trick, take some steel wool (without soap) and put a match to it... But as you rightly stated, in solid form, plutonium and other radioactive metals have a rather high combustion point. And besides, the current designs for nuclear reactors revolve around encapsulating the fuel pellets in ceramic or high temperature glass, thus never will be in powder form. And if the glass melts, it will coagulate the radioactive material and form into a bigger piece of radioactive glass. Btw, we wouldn't have so much spent fuel if we were permitted to reprocess it and use it again as every other nuclear power nation does. Hawk