Nuclear Power Plants

8 Pages 1955 Words

ample of this is North Korea; although it is not confirmed that they have nuclear weapons yet, it is true that they received illegal help in developing a nuclear program. Some of the fuel they were given to use in power plants was secretly transferred to an another facility where it could be used to make an atomic bomb.
In order to overcome this risk of nuclear fuel being stolen from plants, the Department of energy is trying to create a portable nuclear power plant (Newscientist.com Article US plans portable nuclear power plants). The goal of the department is to create a sealed reactor that will run for 30 years and can be left at a site. If any tampering occurs with the seal, the reactor would shut off and alerts will be sent over satellite to the DoE (Department of Energy) or the international agency overseeing the reactors. However, the project faces many obstacles before it can go into the market; Michael Levi of the Brookings Institution asks, “What happens if they [the country that the reactor was left in] don’t care about what we think? It would then be possible to break into the reactor and reprocess the plutonium rich fuel to make weapons,”(Levi, from “US plans…” par.15). There is always a threat of this technology being used for the wrong purpose if given to the wrong hands.
A new threat of nuclear terrorism...