Who Killed the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)?

[Wilms]

24. Hold the mayo...

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A 1951 study undertaken by the AEC concluded that commercial nuclear reactors would not be economically feasible if they were used solely to produce electricity; they would be, however, if they also produced plutonium which could be sold. Utilities themselves were only mildly intrigued with the notion of being able to produce "too cheap to meter electricity," and only so long as someone else took over the responsibility for the waste products, and indemnified them against catastrophic nuclear plant accidents. The 1952 Annual Report for Commonwealth Edison is instructive on the former point:

"In last year's report, we announced that our companies, as one of four non-governmental groups, had entered into an agreement with the Atomic Energy Commission to study the practicability of applying nuclear energy to the production of power. The first year's study has been completed and a report has been completed and a report has been made to the Commission. Included in the report were preliminary designs of two dual-purpose reactor plants. By "dual-purpose" we mean that the plants would be primarily for the production of power but would also would produce plutonium for military purposes as a by-product. In our judgment, these plants...would be justified from an economic standpoint only if a substantial value were assigned to the plutonium produced."7

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In 1954 utilities which were to operate commercial nuclear reactors were given further incentive when Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act so that utilities would received uranium fuel for their reactors from the government in exchange for the plutonium produced in those reactors. The plutonium was to be shipped to Rocky Flats in Colorado, where the federal government made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.

In retrospect it is a simple matter to see that there never was an intention to separate nuclear weapons production from the use of commercial nuclear power. In a document from the Los Alamos National Laboratory dated August, 1981, one finds this statement:

"There is no technical demarcation between the military and civilian reactor and there never was one. What has persisted over the decades is just the misconception that such a linkage does not exist." ("Some Political Issues Related to Future Special Nuclear Fuels Production," LA- 8969-MS, UC-16).4

http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/weapcon.htm