Wednesday, April 21, 2010

US and Russia Agree to Plutonium-Disposal Accord

BY MEAGHAN BOLAND

In April 2010, President Obama and Preseident Dmitriy Medvedev came together to discuss a 10 year old agreement at the Nuclear Security. Summit. At the end of President Clinton’s term these two nations agreed to start disarming nuclear weapons. The goal is to ultimately eliminate the nuclear threat. Each country has promised to reduce their arsenals by ridding them of 34 tons of plutonium each. This is the equivalent of 17,000 bombs. They will begin in 2018 because faciclities must be constructed to get the job done properly. The reason that the agreement has not been honored till now is there were discrepancies over funding. It was agreed upon that Russia will spend $3 billion and the US $400 million. The biggest environmental concern is where will the plutonium be disposed? Both leaders have agreed that the plutonium will be used in commercial nuclear plants for consumer use. This is the most environmentally, and militarily, safest way to rid us of many deadly weapons. The nuclear plants will be able to convert this plutonium into energy and fuel for both consumer driven nations. It creates a lot of cleaner energy as opposed to oil and coal energy. This is a clear example of how you can use one problem to potentially start to fix two.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/US-Russia-Finalize-Plutonium-Disposal-Accord-90778634.html

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/12/us_russia_to_update_plutonium_disposal_deal

5 comments:

  1. Any article about Nuclear waste disposal is highly interesting to me. I believe that current methods of "disposal" such as cooling tanks, and subterranean entombing clearly put the problem off for a later time. These methods have only a short time off effectiveness, and with the half life of these materials outliving a couple of generations, we will see the effects in our lifetime.

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  2. I highly doubt both countries intend to dispose of all their nuclear weapons, having some nuclear weapons creates peace because counties are less willing to go to war if total destruction is possible. however, both the U.S. and Russia have a surplus of nuclear weapons, so disposing of some of them and using them for energy is a very useful idea.

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  3. I agree with Marcione...Both countries will never 'dispose' of all their Plutonium; therefore, we need to incorporate some sort of enforcement policy to be insured that the excess Plutonium is actually being safely transfered to the new nuclear plants being constructed. Neither country would ever completely scrap the nuclear program in concern of other countries, say Iran or China or North Korea, that have a more radical form of current government willing to use such weapons to accomplish an objective for that country. All in all, I like the idea, and that they are thinking of how to benefit the US and Russia citizens, but only time will tell whether the policy accomplishes its intended goals.

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  4. I was very happy when i heard about this. I only hope trends of this nature continue, and other nations follow the lead.

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  5. Around half of U.S. nuclear fuel already comes from downgraded Soviet era weapons grade Uranium. This not only gets rid of warheads, but also prevents more uranium from being mined. Uranium mines are horribly dangerous both to the workers(lung cancer) and the neighboring environment(radioactive contamination). So continuing to downgrade nuclear weapons serves two positive purposes, even though it won't do much to affect the possibility of nuclear war.

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