Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu
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Russia's only polonium-producing reactor idle for two years
No reactor can produce polonium--it is a natural decay product of uranium-238. It is not a fission product--indeed, no fission product is as heavy as Po-210. Nuclear fission actually removes uranium-238 from action (by converting it to Pu-239) and prevents it from decaying to polonium.
Someone's not doing their homework in Russia.
You have to stick the bismuth into the reactor - the reactor certainly doesn't produce polonium by itself. A declassified physics study document shows the reactions and amounts involved.
Of course, Marie Curie isolated hers the natural way.