Memo to Fox News: Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy Are Not The Same

[PamW]

12. 100% WRONG as ALWAYS

kristopher states
The idea of using breeder reactors (IFR, thorium or otherwise) just makes the problem worse.

LIE LIE LIE LIE that all you can do on this issue.

The head of the IFR project at Argonne National Lab, nuclear physicist, Dr. Charles Till gave the following interview about 15 years ago to PBS Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

in which he states:
Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.

It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

About 20 years ago, Congress asked one of the USA's nuclear weapons laboratories about whether it was or was not possible to make a nuclear weapon with material from an IFR. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did that study which is referred to in the following response to the New York Times by Senators Simon(D) and Kempthorne(R):

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/05/opinion/l-new-reactor-solves-plutonium-problem-586307.html

You are mistaken in suggesting that the reactor produces bomb-grade plutonium: it never separates plutonium; the fuel goes into the reactor in a metal alloy form that contains highly radioactive actinides. A recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant than spent commercial fuel, which also contains plutonium.

By what "pedigree" can you make these continuous WRONG claims about making nuclear weapons from reactor waste? Are you a nuclear physicist? Are you a nuclear weapons physicist? Are any of the sources you quote nuclear weapons physicists?

Although some very general knowledge about nuclear weapons has been released; the design details of what really can and can NOT be done in the field of nuclear weapons is not generally available information. Those details are only located at, and can really be discussed at, the two US nuclear weapons design laboratories; Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore in California.

However, the US Congress can ask those labs for their assessments, and the Labs have to answer truthfully to Congress - after all, it is Congress that employs those labs; the work FOR Congress.

Congress posed the question about the IFR to Lawrence Livermore, and the nuclear weapons designers at Lawrence Livermore said that the IFR can NOT be used to make nuclear weapons as Dr. Till states.

Do you have any experts that know more about nuclear weapons than the scientists at Lawrence Livermore? Certainly those pseudo-scientists at Union of Concerned Scientists don't know more about nuclear weapons than the people who designed the US stockpile. UCS "pseudo-scientists" don't even have the security clearance ( Q clearance ) needed to access the information.

So the nuclear weapons experts that I quote say you can't. You have what??

It's as if the question at hand were a medical question, and I had the world expert medical doctors from the Mayo Clinic in my corner, and you keep reciting what some old "witch doctor" from the Australian outback.

How come you never listen to scientists, except when you politically agree with them? If you don't like what the scientist say; you ignore them and go on believing and touting the opposite.

Isn't that what "climate deniers" are doing. Don't we ridicule "climate deniers" and call them stupid idiots because they don't listen to the scientists? We expect them to accept what scientists tell them when it isn't what they want to hear. So shouldn't those on this side of the "climate deniers" also follow what we want the "climate deniers" to do? Or is it just rank hypocrisy.

The "climate deniers" are stupid for not listening to the scientists. However, if the scientists tell us something that we don't want to hear; then it's OK for us to ignore the scientists.

Is that HYPOCRISY what you think should rule the day?

So why don't we discuss this and let SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS educate us as to what scientific truth is.

PamW