ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[PamW]

61. A clear example of how he was being SLOPPY!!!

kristopher,

The statement that you quote of Selden in 2009 is a CLEAR example of how SLOPPY he was being.

Suppose the "any type of Plutonium" in Selden's statement is Pu-238.

Can you make a nuclear weapon if all you have is Pu-238?

NOPE

Here's a blurb from NASA about Pu-238:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/rps/docs/APP%20RPS%20Pu-238%20FS%2012-10-12.pdf

At the bottom of the 2nd column on the first page:

Pu-238 would not work well as the fuel in a nuclear reactor and is NOT the type of plutonium used for nuclear weapons.

Or take a look at the fission cross-section ( which is the propensity for fission ) for both Pu-238 and Pu-239 courtesy of the Nuclear Data Center at Brookhaven National Lab:

http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/sigma/index.jsp?as=238&lib=endfb7.1&nsub=10

Click on "238" to the left of the green box to select Pu-238; and then click on "Plot" after the &quot n, total fission)" line in the green box.

You will get a logarithmic plot of the fission cross-section of Pu-238. Note that the maximum value at left is about 1.0e+3 which is 1,000.

Now click on "239" to the left of the green box to select Pu-239; and as before click on "Plot" after the &quot n, total fission)" line in the green box

Again you will get a logarithmic plot; but the maximum value at left is about 1.0e+4 which is 10,000!

The propensity of Pu-238 to have a fission is TEN TIMES LOWER than Pu-239

An order of magnitude drop in fission cross-section for Pu-238 relative to Pu-239 EFFECTIVELY KILLS its usefulness as a bomb fuel.

For all the good credentials Selden has; modulo the fact that I only have your "cherry picked" references to what he was saying; we have no context; but if you are protraying Selden's comments accurately; then one can come to no other conclusion except that he was being SLOPPY.

He may have been speaking to scientists who would know not to take the statement too literally. However, as I've said; the non-scientists are taking the statement quite literally as if it had been handed down on stone tablets from the Almighty.

This is NOT the case. kristopher is using a SLOPPY statement from a scientist to portray something that is just plain NOT TRUE

PamW