ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[PamW]

36. Non-scientist kristopher is 100% WRONG AGAIN

kristopher,

Your MISUNDERSTANDING and ERRONEOUS LOGIC is NOT my error.

Just making the ASSERTION that I'm in error, which is all that you've done; is NOT proof or substantiation.

At least, not in scientific communities; there is no doctrine of PROOF by ASSERTION. No EVIDENCE; no PROOF

It seems incredible that one could say that I've been refuted by MIT. After all, Professor Benoit Forget of the MIT Nuclear Engineering Department published the work that I referenced above:

Proliferation Resistant Fast Breeder Reactor

http://tppserver.mit.edu/TMP_2013/Sess-01/03%20Mohit%20Singh.pdf

Professor Forget and colleagues demonstrate that a Proliferation Resistant Fast Breeder Reactor IS possible; which is what I am claiming; and your claim is that MIT is refuting me.

I would say that MIT and Professor Forget, in particular; already knew that Proliferation Resistant Fast Breeder Reactors were possible before they even begun the study. One doesn't start a study to design something that the Laws of Physics say is impossible.

For example, Professor Forget didn't start a study to determine the ways to design a heat engine that did NOT reject waste heat. Professor Forget certainly knows that a 100% efficient heat engine that doesn't reject waste heat is PRECLUDED by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. So Professor Forget would never start what would be a "fool's errand".

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html#c2

It is impossible to extract an amount of heat QH from a hot reservoir and use it all to do work W . Some amount of heat QC must be exhausted to a cold reservoir. This precludes a perfect heat engine.

The amount of heat QC which must be exhausted to a cold reservoir, as REQUIRED by the 2nd Law, is called "waste heat".

Again, you still fail to understand, even though I've explained it many times; that NNSA is the administrative arm of the DOE nuclear weapons complex. The NNSA in Washington is NOT the place where the SCIENTISTS are. The NNSA in Washington has all the administrators that deal with the budget, make sure the lab operations are in compliance with law, do public relations, deals with Congress... that type of thing. However, when you want a scientific question answered, that is a task for the scientists and the scientists are at the national labs, like Lawrence Livermore. I'm quoting the scientists directly.

I'll try the medical office analogy again, see if it "sticks" this time. I'm asking the DOCTOR directly in the doctor's office about a medical opinion; and you are telling me that the answer I received from the DOCTOR has been refuted by the receptionist. It really is FUNNY / RIDICULOUS.

In addition; I think we have some more examples of what I call; "mushroom logic".

Fact: The Death Cap mushroom is both a mushroom and is toxic.
Fact: The Portabello, Shitake, and Button are also examples of mushrooms.
"Conclusion": Portabellos, Shitakes, and Buttons are also toxic.

BZZZT!! 100% WRONG!!! ERROR ERROR!! FALSE!!! UNINTELLIGENT!!

The conclusion doesn't follow from the facts presented. Just because Portabello, Shitake, and Button are mushrooms does NOT mean they are toxic.

Mushrooms are fungi that are defined by certain properties. However, toxicity is NOT a defining characteristic of the class. We can have mushrooms that are toxic, and we can have mushrooms that are edible. Just because the Death Cap is toxic doesn't mean the other three are not edible.

Just because the MIT / NNSA studies chose "once through" open fuel cycles as being preferred to the closed cycles they studied; I see NO EVIDENCE presented by kristopher that the IFR cycle was one of the closed cycles considered.

kristopher is making an UNWARRANTED GENERALIZATION which is analogous to concluding that all mushrooms are toxic.

Did either the MIT / NNSA studies that he references make the choice of open cycle over the IFR closed cycle; IN PARTICULAR, or is this just kristopher's unwarranted generalization. One can't tell when one doesn't have a reference to the whole paper; just the brief snippets that kristopher has "cherry picked" to support his conclusion. ( If you call that "support" )

Inspite of unwarranted generalizations and cherry-picked data; the scientific facts remain.

Additionally, I seriously doubt that many of the readers here would make the same value choice as did MIT, that the open fuel cycle, which requires disposal of long-lived waste is to be preferred. Usually, when I hear objections to nuclear power, I hear people say, "What about the long-term waste?" That's what people are concerned about. An open "once through" fuel cycle, which is what we have now; leaves one with radioactive material with multi-thousand year lifetimes that must be disposed.

The IFR closed fuel cycle features a recycling / burning of long-lived radioisotopes so that the only waste one has to dispose of is short-lived:

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

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

The IFR closed fuel cycle leaves us with only short-lived waste, of the longevity mentioned by Dr. Till. I think most reader here would prefer the short-lived waste to the long-lived waste that MIT prefers. That's more of a value / preference type of choice; rather than a scientific question.

The IFR fuel cycle was designed SPECIFICALLY to produce a spent fuel that could NOT serve as nuclear weapon bomb fuel; and Argonne achieved that goal. Dr. Till explains it in the Frontline interview:

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

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.

and Dr. Till's contention was CONFIRMED by a report by the true nuclear weapons experts, the scientists that design nuclear weapons for the USA; the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who addressed the proliferation potential of the IFR SPECIFICALLY at the behest of Congress, who were debating the program's fate at the time. The results of that study are cited by US Senators Simon(D) and Kempthorne(R) in a rebuttal to a New York Times editorial:

New Reactor Solves Plutonium Problem

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.

So the studies from MIT and NNSA that kristopher cites, do NOT specifically address the IFR fuel cycle, but non-scientist kristopher makes unwarranted scientific generalizations for his so-called "refutation" and "evidence". I'm citing a study SPECIFIC to the IFR. When US Senators Simon(D) and Kempthorne state that, "..indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant..."; the "this reactor" of which they speak is the IFR. I'm NOT generalizing like kristopher. The study I'm referencing via Senators Simon and Kempthorne is the IFR SPECIFICALLY.

For those with the intellect to understand this issue; it's really settled, and requires no more waste of bandwidth.

Others can wallow in their unsupported and unsubstantiated false assertions all they want. But I'm rather bored.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.
--Neil deGrasse Tyson

PamW