The White House is providing plutonium to Sam Altman's Oklo, one of four US companies chosen to test experimental reactor designs.
  • meco03211@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    24 days ago

    Is there a functional difference between “weapons grade” plutonium and the plutonium that would be used in a nuclear reactor?

    • Kirp123@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      24 days ago

      Yes.

      From Wikipedia:

      Plutonium is identified as either weapons-grade, fuel-grade, or reactor-grade based on the percentage of 240Pu that it contains. Weapons-grade plutonium contains less than 7% 240Pu. Fuel-grade plutonium contains 7%–19%, and power reactor-grade contains 19% or more 240Pu. Supergrade plutonium, with less than 4% of 240Pu, is used in United States Navy weapons stored near ship and submarine crews, due to its lower radioactivity.

      Weapon Grade Plutonium has lower concentration because Plutonium has a high rate of spontaneous decay which means it leads to issues with detonations in bombs.

    • eerongal@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      0·
      24 days ago

      Yes, actually. They’re both different mixes of plutonium isotopes. Iirc reactor grade plutonium is far more stable than weapons grade (because blowing up is less desirable for reactors than bombs), and has some different properties when used.

      • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        You’ve got it backwards. Weapons-grade is more stable. Less stability is fine for reactors, because they are designed to manage the reaction on an on-going basis and not, in general, blow up.

  • Chainweasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    ChatGPT is going to nuke my house for repeatedly asking it if there’s a seahorse emoji.

    In all seriousness though, I assume it’s for nuclear power to satisfy the exponentially growing need for electricity, but if we’re going to be building reactors they should be powering the grid and reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, not privately owned reactors for corporations.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    24 days ago

    On Tuesday, the US Department of Energy (DOE) launched an application for interested parties to apply for access to a maximum of 19 metric tonnes — a little under 42,000 pounds — of weapons-grade plutonium, which has long been a key resource undergirding the US nuclear arsenal.

    42,000 pounds of weapons grade plutonium…

    Fat man was around 15lbs…

    So this would be enough to make ~2,800 nuclear bombs of similar strength to put into context how much this is.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        The whole thing is insane…

        Like, “we” don’t even let some countries have nuclear reactors, because it can (over decades) result in a couple ounces of this shit.

        And we’re giving double digit metric tons to some crazy chatbot brain rotted billionaire.

        The amount of fucked this is can not be understated. This is something worse than we’ve started 20 year wars over

  • zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    And the title could not be further away from reality.

    To save you a click: Sam Altman was in the board of directors of a startup, which is working with uranium. Sam Altman left that position weeks ago. Sam Altman is not getting his hands on plutonium, nor is OpenAI.

  • crusa187@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    We started the forever war with Iraq because of claims they were making this stuff, unequivocally proven false. Now we’re just giving it away to one of the most sociopathic psychopaths on the planet. This won’t end well.