Galen Winsor - What stopped plutonium economy?

Galen Winsor - What stopped plutonium economy? Galen Winsor describes his hands-on experience with used nuclear fuel and radioactive materials. He explains how the rules associated with his profession changed during the period from 1947-1982.He also questions why those rules changed and who benefitted from the changes Galen Winsor was a hands-on nuclear expert in the fullest sense of the phrase. Before irrational radiation protection rules were imposed, he and his colleagues directly handled used fuel. Since they needed to touch radioactive materials to accomplish their mission, they could not maximize distance or use shielding. Instead they limited their exposure time and depended on just one out of three of the triple protection means learned by all radiation professionals – “time, distance and shielding”.

According to his story, Winsor and his colleagues knew enough about the material that they were handling to prevent most skin burns, but they had a job to do and did not allow a desire to lower doses below the level of immediate risk to impede their successful accomplishment.

During his more than 30 years of professional involvement in handling nuclear materials, Winsor stubbornly refused to change his habits. He considered the used fuel pool at the Morris, IL recycling plant to be his personal “warm swimming hole”, he gave talks during which he licked uranium dioxide off of the palm of his hand and he once filled a two liter bottle from a used fuel pool and kept that water on his office desk for a daily drink.

If you pay close attention, you should come away with the impression that Winsor was not foolhardy; he was well aware of the real behavior of the materials that he measured. In Winsor’s opinion, imposition of unreasonably tight rules associated with radiation protection has been a cost-increasing strategy akin to the “feather bedding” practices of railroad engineers.

Winsor passed away a few years ago. He was in his 80s and his death was apparently from the normal kinds of natural causes that afflict people of a certain age.

Throughout Winsor’s talk, he points out the physical value of the irradiated material that some people insist on calling high level waste. He asks the final important questions – “Who owns the plutonium?” and “How much is it worth?” He recognizes that using it beneficially threatens a number of powerful interests.