cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/48838029
Today, in things I’d read on a fading screen in a half destroyed building in a Fallout game…
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.
“Weapons grade” is actually more stable and less prone to blowing up without constant management, who knew?
Nothing-burger.
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.
You don’t need weapons-grade material for power.
Now I’m wondering if plants that are designed to run enriched uranium will have to be totally rejiggered or it’s a relatively simple change.
Other nations should be responding to this as an attack. It’s endangering the whole world.
That’s what we’ve been trying to tell the world about Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and even Cuba. That last one’s strategically debatable, but for the rest “we should treat it as an attack” was a lie then.
Its no more or less of a lie now. Encouraging other countries to embrace reactionary foreign policy is no more of a good idea than following the US’ lead on the matter.
Um, you have drawn the wrong conclusion from your mostly correct observations. The US has been the threat to real world peace (as opposed to coercing consensus from the Western world through defense compacts) the entire time.
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.
Ah. Well. Now I know how they’re funding themselves.
They’re illegally selling weapons grade plutonium to sanctioned countries, PMCs, rebel groups, and if I had to guess other companies in general to start the next step of a cyber punk dystopia: armed corporate conflict.
you can’t build Skynet without a nuclear arsenal, after all
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
Article talks about energy but not why they’re using weapons grade plutonium for that purpose. Anyone got an informed reason?
Thanks americans who sold the rest of the world to your masters
I also posted this here a few days ago and it got deleted. Hurrah if it remains, it’s worth a post here!
Oh we’re all gonna die
True, but how and when and why matter.
Why is easy, they like killing people. That’s literally why the Nazis did it.
When is a ???
How will largely be famine and disease, but large numbers from the blast and radiation itself.
Is there a functional difference between “weapons grade” plutonium and the plutonium that would be used in a nuclear reactor?
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.
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.
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.
Yes, “weapons grade” has a higher purity being almost entirely made of fissile isotope Pu-239
“Reactor grade” has a greater variety of isotopes.
The functional difference is that the higher purity is required to make nuclear bombs, hence “weapons grade.” Purity was a significant hurdle in nuclear arms development and one if the reasons the US got the bomb before Germany or the USSR which both struggled to get sufficient purity.
I’ve been saying all along, a name like Sam Altman is obviously an android here from the future to ensure the rise of Skynet. Why else would an AI need nuclear weapons?
GPT will know what to do with it, and keep track of how much ot has.
… actually maybe GPT will be sent to the nearest habitable planet as an tool for preparing aliens for human contact, or just a peaceful info exchange.
Does he need it for his DeLorean?
