Who Killed the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)?

[PamW]

12. BALONEY!!!

So early on, the industry was steered away from other designs, no matter their advantages. Thorium reactors are near-useless for making weapons. From DOD's POV, not practical enough.
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Evidently you are manifestly ignorant of how much of the plutonium and other special nuclear materials came from commercial reactors in the USA. The answer is precisely NONE!!!.

ALL - 100% of the nuclear material in US nuclear weapon came from US Government-owned "production" reactors at Hanford, Washington and Savannah River, South Carolina.

The DOD had ZERO interest in the production capability of commercial reactors because it is the policy of the USA to separate the military and commercial facilities. Besides, the production reactors at Hanford and Savannah River supplied all the Plutonium and special nuclear material that the US weapons program could use. In fact, the USA has stockpiled more Plutonium and special nuclear material than it can use. The USA hasn't made fissile material for weapons in years, and shutdown both Hanford and Savannah River decades ago.

The only exception to this separation of military and commercial applications involves tritium production. The USA shutdown the last tritium production reactor at Savannah River in 1988. However, tritium is radioactive with a 12-year half-life; so it goes away on its own if you don't make more. The USA either had to build a new tritium production reactor, or find another way to make tritium. That decision was made by the Clinton Administration. Rather than building a new tritium production reactor, President Clinton decided that the USA would use a Government owned power reactor, owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to produce tritium. That reactor is Watts-Bar Unit I.

Other than the production of tritium, starting just a few year ago at Watts-Bar, the production of weapons materials, and the commercial power sector have been kept completely separate.

PamW