Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
    Each country has the right to waste their own money as they see fit. However, the subject of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing has a significance beyond any single country’s choice of worthwhile projects. The continued production of plutonium poses serious problems for the entire world in terms of the environment and global security.
     Although they may be committed to closing the nuclear fuel cycle, at some point Japan and South Korea must face reality and make some hard decisions about how to permanently dispose of their spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. has also been having trouble make a commitment to construct a geological repository for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The earliest the U.S. could have such a repository is 2050.
      The spent nuclear fuel cooling pools around the world are rapidly filling up with spent fuel assemblies. Without permanent repositories, some of these assemblies will have to be moved to temporary storage in concrete and steel casks or their reactors will have to be shut down, The book describes for the first time that the world came close to a much worse nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011 that actually occurred. The crowded cooling pools there could have produced a lot more radioactive materials to contaminate the ecosystem than they ultimately did.
     However, the greatest concern is that a tiny amount of the world’s stockpile of plutonium could be obtained by terrorists who could construct what is called a dirty bomb. This is a conventional explosive surrounded by radioactive materials that could be used to contaminate an area. Terrorists could also develop devices to disperse radioactive materials in urban centers triggering panic and evacuation.
     Plutonium was first produced eighty years ago. Since then over five hundred tons have been produced. The International Atomic Energy Agency states that it would only take about eighteen pounds of purified plutonium to make a nuclear bomb. Doing the math, the three hundred tons of plutonium supposedly dedicated to civilian power production could be used to construct more than thirty-five thousand nuclear warheads.
     Continuing to accumulate plutonium is not only a risk because of the possibility of terrorists obtaining it. It also leads to tension between countries. China is worried because Japan has more plutonium than China does. On the other hand, South Korea has no plutonium stockpile. The authors of the book point out that a seldom mentioned concern is that the production and stockpiling of plutonium ostensibly for use in civilian energy production could also be a source of weapons grade plutonium for a possible nuclear weapons program.
   The authors of the book make a serious case for the international community to come together to end the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and the production of plutonium, There have been negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament for a fissile material cutoff treaty which would ban the production of plutonium for weapons manufacture but it has been frozen for years. There is also a definite need for a ban on production of plutonium purportedly for civilian energy production.
     This book is detailed but accessible. It provides a clear picture of idea whose claimed benefits are illusions but whose danger is all too real.