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dc.contributor.authorWalker, William
dc.date.accessioned2021-09-10T14:30:35Z
dc.date.available2021-09-10T14:30:35Z
dc.date.issued2021-09-07
dc.identifier275308711
dc.identifier705f3418-41e9-42fb-9464-7f710bcfc0ca
dc.identifier000693423600007
dc.identifier85114473321
dc.identifier.citationWalker , W 2021 , ' The history of nuclear power's imagined future : plutonium's journey from asset to waste ' , Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , vol. 77 , no. 5 , pp. 259-264 . https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2021.1964257en
dc.identifier.issn0096-3402
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/23943
dc.description.abstractSeparated civil plutonium should be formally regarded as a waste, not a fuel that has value. It is time for governments and industries to acknowledge – everywhere – that civil reprocessing, plutonium’s provider, is a waste-generating and complicating technology, a source of dangers and burdens rather than putative benefits. Much better solutions to spent fuel management and energy production now exist. Long unwanted as fuel by utilities, immense stocks of plutonium have accumulated in France, Japan, Russia, and the UK from reprocessing programs launched in the 1970s. Politically embedded, they continued long after the “plutonium economy” and its fast breeder reactors had lost credibility. China, a recent advocate, should beware of the costs of going down this road and of stoking insecurities in Asia and beyond if connections to weapon programs are feared. Drawing upon a recent book by Frank von Hippel, Masafumi Takubo, and Jungmin Kang, this essay provides a fresh perspective on plutonium and reprocessing’s troubled international histories, including histories of imagined futures that have so heavily influenced their politics and economics.
dc.format.extent6
dc.format.extent1068303
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofBulletin of the Atomic Scientistsen
dc.subjectNuclear futuresen
dc.subjectPlutoniumen
dc.subjectReprocessingen
dc.subjectFast breeder reactoren
dc.subjectNuclear tradeen
dc.subjectSpent fuel managementen
dc.subjectNuclear historyen
dc.subjectNonproliferationen
dc.subjectJZ International relationsen
dc.subjectT-NDASen
dc.subject.lccJZen
dc.titleThe history of nuclear power's imagined future : plutonium's journey from asset to wasteen
dc.typeJournal articleen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. School of International Relationsen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2021.1964257
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden


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