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Dude! Where's My Plutonium?
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"The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists." -- Dave Barry
"The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists." -- Dave Barry
Buy it back (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Buy it back (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it bother anyone that most of the the missing plutonium is thought to have been lost in the waste water and "dissolved in other elements"?
It is bad enough that the waste is radioactive. But plutonium is also very poisonous. If the controls on the plutonium itself have 3% error rates, how about the controls on the waste?
what teens are saying ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what teens are saying ... (Score:2)
What slashdot twenty-somethings are saying:
"I still havent lost my virginity"
Re:what teens are saying ... (Score:2)
In Other News (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Other News (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In Other News (Score:2)
Re:In Other News (Score:1)
be on the lookout for a modified DeLorean
Checked ebay? (Score:4, Funny)
I this case I believe them. (Score:2)
If it were a country other than Japan I might be more concerned, but in this case I think they are on the level. Still, it is a serious error.
Concern (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Concern (Score:1)
You really do want them to have it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd much rather like Japan to know where it is rather than not because of the fact that they are on the level.
So? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a number of issues with this article. First of all, the only thing they are going on seems to be that they are 3% short of the estimated amount of plutonium.
I recall that there have been issues [bbc.co.uk] in the past with Japan's nuclear plants, so why is this any surprise?
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, Japanese authorities estimated that 120 of the 206 kg were lost to the usual processing losses, leaving only 86 kg that are really missing. That's just about 1% of the total expected amount. A bad estimate seems to be the most reasonable explanation.
Flux copacitors, Lybians, and Time Machines (Score:4, Funny)
And you only need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux copacitor, besides, if you are going to build a time machine you might as well do it with style.
Re:Flux copacitors, Lybians, and Time Machines (Score:1, Informative)
The obvious answer (Score:2, Funny)
Duh.
Lessee - where might it be? (Score:5, Funny)
If the mere 1/5 ton of Pu that we leaked was "missing" doesn't clue you in, please rest assured that you'll bitterly regret any nuclear mistakes in our direction.
Your loving neighbor,
Japan"
In other news, scientists have discovered a new species of glow-in-the-dark fish near the Oopsiliki Nuclear Facility...
Auditers caught 'em half-way between using fudged-upward numbers (to make productivity look good) and fudged-back-down numbers (to account for what actually ships). (This kind of stuff has happened in the U.S.A.)
Measuring & accounting so sloppy that there's no way to tell if the "missing" stuff ever existed...or if much more is missing.
Stolen by __________, who then did ___________with it
It's an off-the-books loan to CowboyNeal.
their government has it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:their government has it (Score:2)
In the words of the immortal Dr. Strangelove: "Yes, but the whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world?".
give you another example (Score:1)
There's a world "official" list of nuke kaboom owners, then there's reality. I imagine there's at least a few more nations possess them then what let on publically and officially.
Obviously I can't *prove* japan has nukes, but I'd wager a significant sum on it without hesitation. The closest I've seen them come to admitting it was a statement by one of their defense guys a few months ago (sorry no link handy) about how fast and how hard they could respond to an attack. The expertise is more than there, they possess the plutonium now some large amount is "lost", and they were working on their own bomb in the 40's and might have made it had they started sooner.
Re:Lessee - where might it be? (Score:1)
Not feelng much better. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait.. lemme get this right.
It's either not a problem since it's just somewhere around, like your car keys
or
It's like someone car keys, someone else took it out for a ride, but we don't know who and if it is ok.
*boggle*
My mum says... (Score:4, Funny)
It's obvious what happened (Score:4, Funny)
C'mon people, this is Japan we're talking about here. The most realistic answer is that Godzilla ate more plutonium than they realized on his last ramage across Japan. Since he attacks Japan so damn often, it's not surprising that their inventory counts get off once in awhile. Just relax, everyone. Everyone knows Godzilla only attacks Japan. The rest of us don't really have to worry.
GMD
Re:It's obvious what happened (Score:1)
The Sky is falling (Score:5, Informative)
and the poster suggest a major mishap, I feel obliged to post a summary:
There is a large discrepancy between the projected
output and the registered amount of output.
Partly, this is considered to be due to some less dramatic unaccounted ways of
leaving the factory than through the hands of north-korean spies, like dillution in waste-waters and diffusion into other
materials.
There is still a large amount left, which cannot have left the factory by these means.
Still, it is most likely not 'lost', since it might have not been produced at all.
It is a discrepancy between actual and projected numbers.
These discrepancies do always occur since no measurement is perfect. An error margin of 1% can be attributed to the measurement alone. The factory had a discrepancy of 3%.
Both numbers aren't very reassuring. But actually, I'm more afraid of the things that aren't reported.
Re:The Sky is falling (Score:2)
Before, I have heard about 10Kg to 20Kg discrepencies happening elsewhere (Sellafield/Windscale) but never 200Kg.
Still troubling (Score:2)
If banks advertised regular "it's no big deal" accounting errors of +-3% in large bills and bearer bonds, I imagine you'd see a lot more embezzlement than you do today.
Just a thought.
Not so troubling (Score:2)
Banks work with exact numbers, when you measure you don't. You calculate with unexact values.
The rest is stochastics and theory of errors, which I'm probably not qualified enough to lecture about. Suffice to say, that the probability you have the exact value is practically zero.
The error margin, or more positively formulated, the confidence interval, describes the region in which the real value lies with a probability of 66% (Gaussian-distribution). An interval twice as large gives you 95% certainty.
Lastly, what I tried to emphasise in my summary:
It is not a discrepancy between the real value and the accounted value, but between an expected value and the registered amount.
Assertions (Score:1)
There is a large difference between banks and physical applications. Banks work with exact numbers, when you measure you don't. You calculate with unexact values.
1. Clearly if they failed to notice the discrepancies until they reached 206kg, so there must not have been a lot of day-to-day measurement. One assumes that they would have adjusted their predictions prior to this point if they were consistently seeing less output than expected.
2. In the absence of such day-to-day measurement I stand by my point. If someone had the opportunity to embezzle several kg of plutonium, there would be a reasonable chance that the plant managers would never find out (if they did find out, they could sound the alarm to the authorities, investigate their workers, etc.) So there's essentially one less line of security between the plant and potential purchasers than I'm comfortable with.
The plant security may be more than adequate. But if anyone can find a way to penetrate that security and hijack some Plutonium, this plant has advertised a huge vulnerability.
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to scream at the breeder reactor advocates. We can't seem to keep track of the relatively small amount of Plutonium that we generate. Imagine if we move to a Plutonium-economy and have to ship the stuff from place to place.
My bad! (Score:4, Funny)
And soon you will be able to buy it.... (Score:2)
Great Spoof (Score:1)
It's mine now (Score:4, Funny)
I do find it odd though that missing Plutonium makes the science Pages and Kotoflekannon (sp) made the main page.
Priorities I guess
In other news... (Score:1)
Local authorities suspect the synthesis of chemical weapons, including nitroglycerin. Homeland Security has been alerted.
Christ, give me a break.
Re:health hazards (Score:1)
Sweet. (Score:1)
Keeping in with the theme of the topic...
What they were able to account for: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What they were able to account for: (Score:1)
Tonnes are "missing" in the U.S. (Score:2, Informative)
Tonnes of plutonium are "missing" in the U.S. for pretty much the same reason. Process accounting is just not all that accurate, and keeping track of things at the 1% level means that there's lots of opportunity for error.
All this story is saying that that the measured amount is 3% lower than the estimated amount, and for anyone who has ever tried to calculate the results of a complex process with an accuracy of 1%, this is not a big surprise.
On the other hand, these sorts of "accounting losses" do provide an opportunity for terrorists to get their hands on the stuff secretly. This is very much like "coin clipping" back in the days when money was made out of gold or silver--get a coin, pare a bit off the edge, pass it on at face value, and eventually you've enhanced your wealth by a significant amount. Milling of coin edges was introduced to prevent this practice, with indifferent success.
Unfortunately, there's no practical defense against this kind of thing, which should make us just a little leary about the prospects of "peaceful" nuclear power. My own attitude is "nuclear power if necessary, but not necessarily nuclear power."
--Tom
Everything I know I learned from SFII (Score:1)
Throw super-fireballs and energy beams from their hands, that's what!
We already know that every single one of the Japanese are fluent in martial arts, but now it appears that the the Japanese goverment is using plutonium to convert their entire population into kung-fu-kickin', fireball-flickin' seizure-inducing ninja supersoldiers!
Shit I'd steal plutonium given the opportunity (Score:1)
If I had some plutonium ( like enough for a bomb, it might be cool to put it in some water and have the Cerenkerovov ( sp ) radiation as a nite-light in my room.
If I had plutonium I'd paint it with that stuff thy use to put the plastic grips on tools so it wouldn't make no dust or get on my skin, and toss it to my friends. It would be so funny when they caught a tiny 7 kg slug and dropped it ( have to make sure 7kg won't chain react and make too much radiation ) maybe use less, than 7 kg but isn't that the 1/7 the size of a soda can, but it would be kewl to amaze your friends with the wieght of your 'lump of lead'
If I had plutonium I'd try to make a bomb out of it. Then I'd take it to the desert and blow it up. If it went off that would frikken ROCK. I always wanted to see on of them suckers go off. I'd do it on the 4th of july and invite some friends to have a bonfire and like a 30 pack of Natural Ice. They ought to blow up a nuke in the desert every year on the 4th of July so ppl can party in the desert around the perimeter. That would be kewl.
Unaccounted consumption (Score:1)
Makes it a bit tricky to track though, either they have a process that's inefficient, or somebody with sticky (and now possibly glowing) fingers.
Realistically, N. Korea can supposedly make their own nuclear material with the reactor they're revving up, so it probably hasn't been snitched by them. One would think that if anyone took it, they could trace the radiation signature though... this stuff probably leaves some time of trail.
It wasn't stolen! (Score:2)
Sound familiar? (Score:1)