ERRORS in rebuttal to "Pandora's Promise"

[PamW]

71. Evidently bananas does NOT understand...

bananas states
it is technically possible, with difficulty, to make an explosive with plutonium of almost any isotopic composition


The operative word in the above that bananas evidently didn't pick up on is almost.

ALMOST any isotopic composition; but the composition of IFR spent fuel is the EXCEPTION.

Evidently, bananas also does NOT UNDERSTAND how classified information is "restricted" or "compartmentalized", as it is called:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_%28information_security%29

Only a select few are permitted under classification laws in knowing a given subject area. The determination of who is given access, is determined, as specified above, by the concept of "need to know". For example, for the group that is given access to how nuclear weapons work, under classification law, NOT EVEN President Obama is given access, due to "need to know". The President is the person that can authorize the use of nuclear weapons, but why would the President need to know how they work? The fact is, he DOESN'T. All the President needs to know is that they WILL work. The President makes the decision "I want to obliterate Country Orange, because they attacked us!". The President doesn't even have to know the yields of the weapons; all he has to know is that enough firepower will be used to do what he desires; obliterate Country Orange. The military knows the yields of the weapons; so they can figure out how many and what type to use. However, the military doesn't need to know how the devices work, just that they will deliver the specified yield.

Classified information can be accessed ONLY by the people in the "compartment", and those people have the list of all the other people in the compartment with them so they know who they can and can not talk to about that information. Garwin and Holden are NOT nuclear weapons designers, and therefore have NO "need to know", and they are NOT in the compartment.

An good illustration of how this works was available on last night's ( Dec 15 ) episode of CBS New's "60 Minutes" "60 Minutes" visited the NSA - the National Security Agency. At one point, the NSA guide for the CBS reporters said the the "Holy of Holies", the most sensitive information in the NSA are the files on which codes the NSA has cracked. The NSA guide showed the CBS reporters a locked "Kardex" brand file repository, and stated that only a handful of NSA employees had the keys to the locked "Kardex". The NSA has THOUSANDS of cleared employees at Fort Meade, but only a very few are given access to this most secret of information.

So if someone says, "You have been proved wrong that NSA has cracked the Russian "Zephyr" ( made up name ) code. World renown mathematicians and winners of many awards, Professors Smith and Jones of XYZ University say that the Zephyr code is too complicated to crack." Such a statement is TOTALLY BOGUS!!!

Smith and Jones are NOT one of the very few that have access to the NSA Kardex; in fact, they don't even work for the NSA at all, let alone being one of the chosen few. They work at XYZ University.

Smith and Jones may have an opinion that the Zephyr code is too hard to crack, but they do NOT KNOW.

On the "60 Minutes" program, the Deputy Director of NSA was interviewed and said that NSA hires bright students during the summer, and it is quite common for one of those smart students to devise some clever tact that nobody at NSA had thought of in the years before. So some clever summer student may have thought of something that Professors Smith and Jones didn't think of, and that led to the cracking of the Zephyr code.

So when dealing with classified information, it is FOOLISH to cite as "authorities", people who do NOT have access to the information.

Likewise, Garwin and Holden do NOT know what clever tricks the scientists at Argonne used to develop a reactor that is essentially "proliferation proof". The Argonne clever tricks are something that Garwin and Holden did NOT think of.

In addition, it really doesn't have to be "proof". There's an old joke that goes: "You and I are being chased by a hungry Grizzly Bear, that wants to make lunch out of one of us. You say, 'Do you really think we can out run the bear?' I say, 'No - but I don't have to out run the bear. I only have to out run YOU!'"

The IFR, as designed by Argonne, produces Plutonium that can NOT be used for nuclear weapons.

However, what if someone MODIFIED it. Heck, you could disassemble it, melt the metal down, and recast it into parts for a reactor of ANY design.

So you can't really make something that can never be modified into a production reactor.

However, as in the case of the joke; you don't need to. You just have to make it more difficult than starting from scratch.

A country bent on building nuclear weapons always has the opportunity to design / build production reactors from scratch. As long as the effort it takes to modify an IFR is greater than designing / building a production reactor from scratch, then a country won't acquire and modify an IFR. They'll just design / build a production reactor from scratch.

So much for the IMPLAUSIBLE claim that some of the forum's members who are NOT TRAINED in the sciences, and have demonstrated that they do NOT know science even at the high school level; have somehow "proven wrong", a PhD level Physicist in her own field.

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

PamW