Who Killed the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR)?

[PamW]

97. NO - because I KNOW better

Did it ever occur to you that the US commercial nuclear fuel cycle was developed to produce bombs
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NO - because I KNOW better.

Every OUNCE of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium that are in US nuclear weapons came from US Government facilities; BY LAW. The Plutonium was made at either Hanford or Savannah River. The Uranium came from the Government facilities at Oak Ridge, either the K-25 plant or the Y-12 plant.

The same plant that enriches Uranium to very high levels >90% enrichment can be used to enrich to lower levels 3% - 4%; you just tap off the cascade earlier. So in essence, the nuclear weapon program provides material to the commercial program; NOT the other way around.

NONE of the Plutonium in US nuclear weapons came from the commercial power reactors. Commercial power reactors make "reactor grade" plutonium which is not suitable for nuclear weapons. The speaker in the video in the OP makes this point just before the 24 minute mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bbyr7jZOllI

Besides, the Government has all the much more desirable "weapons grade" Plutonium from the Hanford and Savannah River facilities; in fact they have a lot in storage that are not in weapons; they have no need for the inferior "reactor grade" Plutonium.

Two of the companies that design reactors, GE and Westinghouse; also were the contractors for the naval reactor design facilities at Knolls Atomic Power Lab and Bettis Atomic Power Lab. However, this was basically the Navy tapping into the expertise of the commercial sector. It's actually no different than the Air Force buying fighters and bombers from Boeing when Boeing is the company that designs and builds airliners for the commercial airline industry. Do we somehow consider that we are supporting the military when we buy a ticket on United or American airlines just because United and American bought their airliners from the same entity that makes fighters and bombers for the military; namely Boeing?

Besides, the GE boiling water reactor is totally unsuitable for use in a naval vessel. The GE boiling water reactor has a "free surface" that is a boundary between liquid water and steam. In a naval vessel, with the pitching and rolling; this surface would slosh around and you would not have a stable power distribution. On land, that is no problem.

You are in ERROR in saying that North Korea produced plutonium from a power reactor. It was NOT a power reactor, but a specially built graphite-moderated "production reactor" that looks more like the graphite-moderated production reactors the USA has at Hanford ( which produced our weapons material ) than any resemblance to a commercial power reactor.

You are in ERROR on the Pakistan program. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are Uranium bombs. The ONLY thing you need for that is an enrichment program. You don't use reactors when you make Uranium bombs.

Likewise for Iran. The facilities at Natanz, which is an enrichment plant, is the true nuclear weapons facility for the Iranians. The Iranians are working on a Uranium bomb, for which they do NOT need a reactor in the development thereof.

The Iranians, with the help of Russia, are building a power reactor at Bushehr. However, the Bushehr reactor is NOT a component of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. They are just using Bushehr for political cover to say that the Natanz facility is making fuel for Bushehr rather than making fuel for the Iranian nuclear weapons.

So - NO; the US commercial reactor program does NOTING to aid in the making of nuclear weapons. In fact, it is the other way around; the facilities for the weapons program are used to make fuel for reactors.

But the US nuclear weapons complex of design labs and production facilities is self-sufficient and not dependent on the commercial program. In fact, it is that way, BY LAW. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 provides for that.