ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[bananas]

37. No, PamW; Richard Garwin, John Holdren, and President Obama all know you're wrong.

Richard Garwin addressed all the issues you raised back in 1998,
he also pointed out that John Holdren understands this.

Obama knows because Holdren is his Science Advisor,
and because Garwin has been advising presidents on these issues forever.

For example, you falsely claim:

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.

Garwin points out:

The nations signing the NPT, and the nuclear power industry
worldwide, would be delighted if plutonium produced by
nuclear reactors that operate to generate electrical energy
were not usable to make nuclear weapons, but the facts are
otherwise, as explained in the previous paragraphs.

Nevertheless, some interpret their own wishes as the facts;
and beyond those who are confused in this fashion there are
advocates and publicists (either without the ability to form
their own judgment or who do not recognize the
responsibility to do so) who repeat arguments that -- if
true -- would cut one possible link between nuclear power and
nuclear weapons.

<snip>

even pure Pu-240 has a critical mass of 40 kg -- smaller than pure U-235 -- for use in a nuclear weapon.

<snip>

http://www.fas.org/rlg/980826-pu.htm

Here's another reference (not Garwin):

For obvious reasons the reprocessing lobby has a few myths of its own concerning plutonium bombs, which have been repeated over and over again. As usual, their statements contain some truth and some suggestive half-truth, which together are to persuade you to draw the "right" conclusions. It is very interesting to examine the facts first and discover how such myths can be made up afterwards. Once you have developed some feeling for their methods, the nuke lobby propaganda becomes quite transparent, if not predictable.

<snip>

The difference in reactivity between the so-called "fissile" uneven numbered isotopes and the "non-fissile" even numbered ones is not extremely big for fast neutrons, contrary to the reactivity for thermal neutrons in a LWR. In a bomb, every plutonium isotope is fissile.

http://www.ricin.com/nuke/bg/bomb.html

Here's a table of critical mass for various isotopes: http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/criticalmass.htm

As anyone can see, it lists Pu-238 through 241 as "fissile" in "fast" systems.

This lists Pu-242 as "fissile" with fast neutrons:

http://www.aaas.org/cstsp/files/selden.pdf