ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[PamW]

12. Actualy; the above is NOT true.

Last edited Sat Nov 30, 2013, 04:19 PM - Edit history (1)

There are different isotopes of Plutonium; Plutonium-238, Plutonium-239, Plutonium-240, Plutonium-240...

The ONLY isotope that is "fissile" and thereby connotes "bomb fuel" is Pu-239.

If I give you an isotopic mix of Plutonium that contains Pu-238, Pu-240, Pu-242, and NO Pu-239; can you make a weapon out of it?

NOPE; because the only fissile isotope; the only isotope that is bomb fuel; Pu-239; is MISSING.

So you can NOT make a weapon out of it.

So much for the "any mixture" can be used to make a nuclear weapon.

That's a SIMPLIFICATION.

The IFR is a particularly good "actinide burner" in that it burns Pu-239 particularly well; so that there is little Pu-239 in the IFR waste stream.

Do you know why the scientists of the Manhattan Project came up with TWO nuclear weapons designs; "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"? The slender "Little Boy" bomb that destroyed Hiroshima is a "gun-assembled" type and used highly enriched U-235 as bomb fuel.

The "Fat Man" is short and bulbous; it is an "implosion assembled" device that used Plutonium as bomb fuel.

Since it is so difficult to make highly enriched uranium; the Manhattan enrichment effort lasted about 3 years and came up with enough U-235 for only ONE bomb, the "Little Boy" bomb. The reactors at Hanford could make Plutonium at a rate much faster than the enrichment plants at Oak Ridge. So the Manhattan Project pursued BOTH bomb fuels; U-235 and Pu-239.

The Manhattan Project scientists originally planned to use a "gun-assembled" method for the Pu-239 bomb. However, the Hanford reactors first started operation in September 1944, and the first chemical processing to recover Plutonium began Dec 26, 1944 ( see Richard Rhodes book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" ). Los Alamos got their first samples of Hanford-made weapons-grade Plutonium in early 1945.

However, they discovered that Plutonium, even weapons-grade Plutonium WON'T WORK in a gun-assembled device because of the effects of Pu-240:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_design

The implosion method can use either uranium or plutonium as fuel. The gun method only uses uranium. Plutonium is considered impractical for the gun method because of early triggering due to Pu-240 contamination and due to its time constant for prompt critical fission being much shorter than that of U-235

Even weapons-grade Plutonium from Hanford contained too much Pu-240 for a gun assembly method to work.

However, Los Alamos had another assembly method courtesy of a scientist by the name of Seth Neddermeyer. Seth Neddermeyer reasoned that a gun only assembled in ONE dimension; along the gun barrel. Neddermeyer questioned whether one could assemble the bomb in THREE dimensions; an implosion. In essence, an implosion method is "THREE TIMES" faster than a gun method. The implosion method developed by Neddermeyer is fast enough to assemble a bomb with weapons grade Plutonium.

But what if the amount of Pu-240 is greater than in weapons-grade? Just as the amount of Pu-240 in weapons-grade plutonium is too much to allow use of a gun assembly; could an even greater amount of Pu-240 prevent the use of the implosion method?

The answer to that question is YES. The IFR produces Plutonium that is so "contaminated" with Pu-240 that not even Neddermeyer's implosion method can be used.

You can cite GENERALIZATIONS from DOE all you want.

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab weapons scientists stated that in PARTICULAR; that IFR-produced plutonium can NOT be made into nuclear weapons.

That is a scientific TRUTH.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW