ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[FBaggins]

54. Nope.

You need to pay attention to where Pam is agreeing and disagreeing with Selden... and you further need to understand the games that Selden is playing when he claims that you can make a nuclear bomb with a given material.

The key difference is on the definition of "fissile"... and that's beyond dispute. Pu-240 is not fissile by the currnet scientific definition. There was a time decades ago when "fissile" and "fissionable" were used as synonyms... and the distinction would be made by which types of neutrons were involved. You've no doubt noted that the only quotes from Selden refering to Pu-240 as fissile are from the mid-70s? That's because he knows very well that you can't say "fissile with fast neutrons but not slow neutrons" any longer without being self-contradictory. Coincidentally, the current usage of the term began right around that same year (1975 or 1976 - when the "post-heritage period" began).


On the second point, note the quote: "He said that all plutonium isotopes, including those in spent fuel, can be used directly in nuclear explosives. He dismissed as fallacious the concept that plutonium from spent fuel could somehow be "denatured" so it cannot be used in a weapon."

He's playing a strawman game here... because the question (as outlined multiple times above) is not whether or not you can "use" it in a nuclear bomb. The relevant question is whether or not access to that element gets a rogue nation or terrorist group any closer to building a nuclear bomb. The fact is that it simply doesn't (any more than other fissionable, but non-fissile elements more commonly available do). Selden knows this... but he's intentionally dancing around the subject without addressing it. He knows that bomb designers consider Pu-240 to be a contaminant that makes bomb design harder... they go out of their way to reduce the amount in their devices.

Can you make a bomb that has "too much" 240 in it? Sure... and the more you use, the smaller the explosion (and greater the chance of total failure) until, while technically "nuclear", the yield isn't much greater than a high-explosive bomb of comparable weight.

The thing to understand is that if you were given a ton of pure Pu-240... you would be no nearer to making a nulcear bomb than before you received it.