|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
Nuclear Plants May Get Military Role NewsMax.com WiresDALLAS -- The Bush administration is advancing a plan to use commercial nuclear plants to produce tritium to boost the power of nuclear weapons, The Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday. The project was proposed in 1998 during the Clinton administration, reversing a long-standing U.S. policy that urged other nations not to use civilian nuclear power plants to manufacturer bomb-making materials. In recent weeks, the Bush administration has proposed using one or more commercial nuclear plant reactors in Tennessee to produce the tritium, the News reported. The Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Plant, south of Spring City, Tenn., is the first plant designated for the project. The United States needs the tritium to restore old weapons and make new ones, according to the newspaper. The material has not been produced since an outmoded federal facility closed in 1988 and the Clinton administration decided against building a new plant to produce it. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must approve the project. The TVA on Aug. 20 asked the commission for a license amendment that would allow the Watts Bar plant to begin producing tritium along with power, its normal function. The TVA's Sequoyah plant, northeast of Chattanooga, also could become a tritium factory. Tritium is used to boost a conventional nuclear bomb into a more powerful hydrogen bomb but it decays at a rate of 5.5 percent per year. The supply in older weapons must be restored over the years. Every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal contains tritium. Critics of the plan say the project will undermine U.S. support of separate commercial and nuclear programs, encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weaken confidence in international nuclear treaties. "Pakistan has nuclear weapons now, and North Korea, Iraq and Iran are on the edge of that decision," said physicist Kenneth Bergeron, who worked for 25 years at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico on nuclear weapons research. "They might just say that if the United States is doing this, then the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is history."
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: |
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2008 NewsMax.Com |