Each year around 20 tons of plutonium is produced

11-10-19  Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists:  “Nonetheless, additional plutonium will be required to produce warheads for missiles now under development, and India is reportedly building several new plutonium production facilities.”   https://www.yahoo.com/news/indias-nuclear-arsenal-keeps-growing-103000867.html

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  Pakistan is a nuclear weapon state outside of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.  It is believed to have about 120-130 nuclear weapons. Pakistan continues production of fissile materials for weapons.  As of the end of 2016, Pakistan had an accumulated stockpile estimated as about 280 kg of plutonium.  This plutonium has been produced at four production reactors in Khushab.  This estimate assumes that in 2016 Pakistan separated plutonium from the cooled spent fuel from Khushab-3 and Khushab-4 reactors, which began operating sometime in 2013 and in late 2014 or early 2015 respectively.  http://fissilematerials.org/countries/pakistan.html

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  A large piece of plutonium feels warm to the touch because of the energy given

off by alpha decay; larger pieces can produce enough heat to boil water.  At room

temperature alpha-form plutonium (the most common form) is as hard and brittle

as cast iron.  It can be alloyed with other metals to form the room-temperature

stabilized delta form, which is soft and ductile.

  Primarily however, plutonium is a byproduct of the nuclear power industry.  Each year around 20 tons of plutonium is produced, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

  According to the World Nuclear Association, over one-third of the energy produced in most nuclear power plants comes from plutonium. Plutonium is the main fuel in fast neutron reactors.  https://www.livescience.com/39871-facts-about-plutonium.html

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3-30-2011  According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the amount of plutonium detected does not exceed the levels normally tracked by Japanese authorities.   https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/03/30/how-dangerous-is-the-plutonium-leaking-from-the-japanese-nuclear-reactor/

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5-10-17   Plutonium, one of the radioactive substances that may be present at the Hanford site, has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that's how long it takes for half of the material to decay into more stable substances.  As such, it sticks around in the environment, and in the body, for a long time.

  Plutonium exposure can be very deadly for living creatures. A 2011 study in the journal Nature Chemical Biology found that rat adrenal-gland cells ferried plutonium into the cells; the plutonium entered the body's cells largely by taking the natural place of iron on receptors. That study found that plutonium also can linger preferentially in the liver and blood cells, leaching alpha radiation (two protons and neutrons bound together).  When inhaled, plutonium can also cause lung cancer.    https://www.livescience.com/59042-how-does-plutonium-damage-the-body.html

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3-16-2011

  In the case of the Fukushima reactors, explosions have damaged the reactor buildings, allowing radioactive gases from the spent fuel pool to be released directly into the atmosphere….

  U.S. plants have the same key vulnerability that led to the crisis in Japan.  The basic problem is that the Japanese reactors lost both their normal and back-up power supplies, which are used to cool fuel rods and the reactor core.  The reactors had batteries that could supply power for eight hours until the back-up system or normal power supply was restored.  But officials were unable to fully restore either.  Most U.S. reactors are designed to cope with station power outages (where both primary and back-up power supplies are out) lasting only four hours. Measures that increase the chance of restoring power within that four-hour time period and provide better cooling options if that time runs out would make U.S. reactors less vulnerable….

  There are two leakage problems at the Indian Point nuclear reactor in New York, which some reports have confused.  First there is a small leak from one of the plant’s spent fuel pools.  This leak is not a problem; the plant is adding water to make up for the leaking water.  If there were a loss of power at the plant, this leak would only make things incrementally worse.  The real problem would be the water boiling off the surface of the spent fuel pool….

  The problem of overcrowded spent fuel pools can best be addressed by transferring the spent fuel to dry casks once it has cooled enough (see above).

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/fukushima-faqs