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Tritium on Ice: The Dangerous New Alliance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power

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The dangers of a United States government plan to abandon its fifty-year policy of keeping civilian and military uses of nuclear technology separate.In December 1998, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced that the U.S. planned to begin producing tritium for its nuclear weapons in commercial nuclear power plants. This decision overturned a fifty-year policy of keeping civilian and military nuclear production processes separate. Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, is needed to turn A-bombs into H-bombs, and the commercial nuclear power plants that are to be modified to produce tritium are called ice condensers. This book provides an insider's perspective on how Richardson's decision came about, and why it is dangerous. Kenneth Bergeron shows that the new policy is unwise not only because it undermines the U.S. commitment to curb nuclear weapons proliferation but also because it will exacerbate serious safety problems at these commercial power facilities, which are operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority and are among the most marginal in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review of the TVA's request to modify its plants for the new nuclear weapons mission should attract significant attention and opposition.Tritium on Ice is part expose, part history, part science for the lay reader, and part political science. Bergeron's discussion of how the issues of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear reactor safety have become intertwined illuminates larger issues about how the federal government does or does not manage technology in the interests of its citizens and calls into question the integrity of government-funded safety assessments in a deregulated economy.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge : The MIT Press., 2002

Collation

1 online resource (x, 234 pages) :illustrations

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262268233

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Nuclear engineering
Tritium
Ice condenser containment
Nuclear nonproliferation.
Nuclear weapons

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Kenneth D. Bergeron

Other Information

Cataloger

jemadi

Source

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Validator

jemadi

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6917.001.0001

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