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April 2, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Hoist on a Nuclear Petard? Army Wants “Battlefield” Nuclear Reactors

Gunmen in Pakistan set ablaze these NATO oil tankers carrying fuel to occupation forces in Afghanistan Aug. 22, 2011. The Army thinks light, portable nuclear reactors would be better than diesel. Photo: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images

A soldier’s fear of being “hoist on your own petard” means being accidentally wounded or killed by the detonation of one’s own bomb. Now comes the US Army’s announcement of “Project Dilithium,” a scheme worthy of science fiction to make a small, portable nuclear reactor that can be hauled—alongside occupying military forces—to remote military outposts to provide electricity. The Army says such reactors could reduce the number of diesel tanker caravans transporting tons of fuel, could shorten military supply lines, and eliminate some easy targets (below). But  putting a reactor in a warzone would be to exchange one easy target for another, one that would risk catastrophic health and environmental damage if the unit were to suffer containment failure. Even Popular Mechanics had the common sense to push back, noting that The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports that “… it would never be safe enough to deploy on the battlefield. The risk of meltdown and radiation release would be too great ever to justify deploying the reactor into the field, the scientists say.” The Bulletin slammed the proposal, warning: “An operating nuclear reactor is essentially a can filled with concentrated radioactive material, including some highly volatile radionuclides, under conditions of high pressure and temperature. Even a reactor as small as 1 megawatt-electric would contain a large quantity of highly radioactive, long-lived isotopes such as cesium-137—a potential dirty bomb far bigger than the medical radiation sources that have caused much concern among security experts.”

— Popular Mechanics, Feb. 25; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb. 22, 2019

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, War

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