[uint8_t]

"Just prior to welding the plutonium surfaces are cleaned in the inert atmosphere of the welding box to remove oxide and foreign material. If the oxide film is light, it can be removed by wire brushing. If this is not satisfactory, sanding or an abrasive wheel can be used."

In case you are wondering what you'd do with tools, consumables, entire workspaces and ductwork contaminated by that kind of dust, well, these folks buried it in a trench on a mesa overlooking the Rio Grande [1]. The dump is large enough to contain the Empire State Building and, by one account, whole machines like forklifts were just pushed right in [2]. No "highly esteemed deed" was commemorated there, indeed.

1: https://n3b-la.com/area-g-tru/

2: Los Alamos, Hidden Colony, Secret Truths by Chuck Montaño (2015)

[a_vanderbilt]

The creation of contaminated tooling continues at the Pantex plant in the Texas panhandle. The plutonium pits for the US nuclear arsenal are serviced there. When cores get recycled a ton of nuclear-contaminated waste gets created. Oil, lathes, air filters, etc. The existence of the plant makes the recent musings on secession by the Texas legislature a hilarious thought.

[zoklet-enjoyer]

I don't understand the connection there

[TFortunato]

I think they are stating the odds of the federal government actually allowing secession to go through would be...minimal at best, given these assets in the state.

[a_vanderbilt]

Bingo. 100-200 physics packages go through the facility annually, and if you think Uncle Sam got mad when someone touched his boats, try touching his nukes.

[a_gnostic]

Nothing a treaty won't solve. Access to West Berlin through the Iron Curtain was a thing.

[bloak]

One could also compare with Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome being in Kazakhstan.

[samus]

West Berlin was of minimal strategic importance though. It had highly symbolic value of course.

[buildsjets]

First, we take Manhattan. Then, we take Berlin.

[euroderf]

The NY Air National Guard has B-52s and tankers. Hopefully they would launch a disarming strike on any attempt by Texas to go nuclear.

[api]

Nobody serious thinks Texas secession is a good idea. It’s performative nonsense to rile up idiots.

For an international analogy it’s along the same lines as Putin claiming the sale of Alaska was not valid.

[kurthr]

Every single piece of nuclear ordinance goes through that area. There are likely hundreds of near functional nuclear warheads under maintenance at any moment.

They're a larger nuclear power than China, England, France, or any country other than Russia and the US. What they don't have are delivery systems.

[RexM]

SpaceX launches out of Brownsville.

[hef19898]

Just because SpaceX has rockets that go to space doesn't mean those rockets are ICBMs.

[thsksbd]

It does though. Any rocket that can go into leo can fall within a mile without trouble.

And that's with 1950s guidance technology. Add modern controls and a SpaceX can crash into a site with 100 m no problem

[khuey]

Any rocket that can put a payload in orbit is an ICBM capable of launching at least that payload at another continent.

[arethuza]

Or the codes to make the Permissive Action Links (PAL) work.

[thsksbd]

If they have the physics package they don't need the codes. Those codes to deter a grunt or rogue commander. A place like Texas can easily make bombs out of the physics packages

[WatchDog]

I’d imagine that they have everything they need to make devices without a PAL.

I believe you need a code in order to disassemble a PAL protected device without it self destructing, presumably these disassembly codes are different from the arming codes.

[avs733]

"sure you can secede"

"sweet! look at this nuclear weapons plant that's now ours"

"sure, enjoy!"

"HEY...you just left us the giant nuclear waste dump, where's the boom booms?"

[iancmceachern]

Also look into the glovebox and exhaust duct fires at Rocky Flatts.

There is a famous news clip where the DOE representative is denying there is a fire on live TV with a big fire visible behind them.

It's also the only time one federal agency (FBI) raided another (DOE).

They also had a bunch of the kind of radioactive waste your talking about sitting in 50 gallon oil drums that just rusted away in the open air.

[justinator]

Reminds me of what they did near me at Rocky Flats - well: before it was raided by the FBI, shut down, cleaned up, an reopened as a nature reserve. e

[ramijames]

Every single time I come across information like this, I hate humanity just a little bit more.

[Spooky23]

Near my hometown, an army train depot closed in the 60s. I imagine some sergeant tasked with making shit go away just dumped barrels of TCE and burned various materials in pits.

Today, a plume is contaminating groundwater at quite a distance.

[dboreham]

I think all railroad maintenance facilities have similar groundwater problems.

[Gibbon1]

When I think of Hunters Point I think of Gommer Pyle pouring a bucket of expired radium paint into a hole dug in the base commanders flower garden.

[konstmonst]

Why hate yourself? Violence is a part that makes us human. Without it we are not human If we will not learn to control it, we will die. But in the end everything does. Also, being prepared is important. Si vis pacem, parabellum.

[Ma8ee]

Most of us manages very well not being violent, and have no desires or urges to be violent. Aren’t we humans then?

[konstmonst]

I just had another thought about this: without violence - you cannot have peace. Sure, you can threaten violence if peace is not kept, but if you are not prepared to use violence to uphold your threat - your threat is useless. I think Putin is a great example for this. He showed us, that violence is actually a valid tool to achieve your goals nowadays. I mean sure I and people like me don't like violence but just because we don't, doesn't mean others somewhere else also don't and won't use it. We cannot avoid being confronted with violence at least at some points in society. We need to understand that it is also part of us and be able to deal with it or channel it. When I read the definition of violence I found on google: "behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something." Is there really any human who at least in some way didn't somehow use force to hurt someone, even as a kid? Don't we actually nurture application of violence in soldiers? I just have a feeling, that there is some insight here, that violence is not all that useless and maybe is a trait that made humans at least in part successful. OK, it make bring our downfall through nuclear war, but what other catastrophes wouldn't? We will fall down one way or another if we will not prepare. Also, what is a benchmark for success here? Is humanity that survived 300,000 years better than the one that survived 400,000 and who will be there to measure it?

[konstmonst]

It is not what I said. I meant violence is part of being Human. If you do not use it does not mean that you do not have it. It is not about blindly applying it. It is not only a negative thing, it is an evolutionary advantage versus species which is not violent. It is just another tool of enforcing you will over the will of others. For example some people have to obey the law because of a threat of violence of the state. I mean if you remove all our societal conditioning and learning, it all boils down to violence, like it was for first humans. I do not advocate violence, I think hating humanity for it is not rational. Clauzewitz said: "War is the continuation of policy with other means". So essentially violence is the continuation of policy when you can not achieve your goals by other means. This is just my view on it, take it or leave it.

[comboy]

Plutonium half life is like 90 years. It wouldn't get to the top 10,000 list of bad things we did in the last 100 years.

[adrian_b]

That is the Pu238 isotope that is used in thermoelectric generators.

Most of the plutonium produced in nuclear reactors is Pu239. This is the isotope that is useful as nuclear fuel and for nuclear bombs. As another poster has already written, it has a half-life of 24 thousand years, so there is no chance to get rid of it easily, unless it is recovered and used as fuel.

There exists also the Pu244 isotope, with a half-life of 80 million years.

This isotope is produced only in negligible amounts in nuclear reactors, but it is produced in supernova explosions, so the Solar System and the Earth had contained plutonium besides uranium and thorium in the beginning, during the first few hundred million years of their history, but the plutonium has decayed until now.

[HPsquared]

24000 years actually

[PaulHoule]

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_plutonium

The main reason people believe a nuclear waste dump needs to last a stupendously long time is because of the long lifetime of Plutonium 239 and some related actinides.

Reactors with a fast neutron spectrum could consume those actinides, the remaining waste becomes less radioactive than the original uranium in 1000 years which is within the time that we've had buildings last, social structures last, etc. In that scenario you have little fear that carefully buried waste incorporated in glass will leach out.

If you are looking 100,000 years down the road like you are with Yucca Mountain it is likely the facility has long been flooded and soluble Uranium will migrate in the direction of Death Valley whereas the Plutonium will not migrate because it is insoluble in water. I think it is sublime that the Pu239 decay chain goes through U235 which retains the nuclear fuel value.

In the "once-through" fuel cycle almost all of the waste buried is unburned U and Pu fuel, the fast reactor cycle could consume all of that starting with the waste that is cooling out now.