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Plutonium comes from failure of primary containment subsequent to partial meltdown of fuel rods, probably those containing MOX.

Is this radioactive steam, precipitated by rain or snow, and infiltrating the soil, or is it in the water table from liquid leaks?

Inquiring minds want to know.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II

by eurogreen on Tue Mar 29th, 2011 at 05:02:09 AM EST
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eurogreen:
Plutonium comes from failure of primary containment subsequent to partial meltdown of fuel rods, probably those containing MOX.
I suspect a bayesian analysis will show the plutonium is more likely to come from regular fuel rods, in which
About 1% of the mass is 239Pu and 240Pu resulting from conversion of 238U, which may be considered either as a useful byproduct, or as dangerous and inconvenient waste.
That's after 5 years of operation, so after 1 year of operation a regular fuel rod will contain 0.2% plutonium, etc.

For instance, the spent fuel pool at reactor number 4 contained the regular amount of spent fuel as well as the full complement of fuel in the reactor. On average, 0.6% of that fuel is Plutonium.

The same is true of all the other fuel in all the other reactor buildings, except for reactor 3 which has 1/5 MOX fuel in the reactor core and none in the pool (is that right?) for an average of 1% plutonium, half of that coming from the fresh MOX in the core.

So you have 3 reactors at 0.6% and one reactor at 1%, 0.5% of which being from MOX. So the MOX plutonium is 0.5% / 2.8% = 35% of the plutonium in buildings 1-4.

So, in what may be my last act of "advising", I'll advise you to cut the jargon. -- My old PhD advisor, to me, 26/2/11

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 29th, 2011 at 05:13:43 AM EST
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