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If Fusion Is the Answer, We Need To Do It Quickly
Lasrick writes: Yale's Jason Parisi makes a compelling case for fusion power, and explains why fusion is cleaner, safer, and doesn't provide opportunities for nuclear smuggling and proliferation. The only downside will be the transition period, when there are both fission and fusion plants available and the small amount of "booster" elements (tritium and deuterium) found in fusion power could provide would-be proliferators what they need to boost the yield of fission bombs: "The period during which both fission and fusion plants coexist could be dangerous, however. Just a few grams of deuterium and tritium are needed to increase the yield of a fission bomb, in a process known as 'boosting.'" Details about current research into fusion power and an exploration of relative costs make fusion power seem like the answer to a civilization trying to get away from fossil fuels.
Fusion confusion
With facial hair cruisin'.
Fission frission
Bears smooth-faced derision.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
As it always has, and likely always will be.
Did I miss the part where the human race had a miraculous breakthrough in fusion technology? Even setting aside the expected issues with neutron radiation (sorry, no Mr. Fusion Home Energy Kit) there isn't any fusion technology today that is even close to breakeven on an experimental basis. As for commercial operations...
Transfusion, transfusion
My red corpsuckles are in mass confusion
Never, never, never gonna speed again...
Pass the crimson to me, Jimson!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Fusion would break the stranglehold of petro-exporting countries in the Middle East as well as belligerent exporters like Russia and Iran.
Then? The Banking vampire elite will need to generate new, ethnically-rationalized hate-conflict to keep us all at each other's throats - instead of removing their boot from our collective face.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The answer is magnets. Lots and lots of magnets.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Fusion power is roughly 20 years away from being viable...and has been for the last 40 years LOL.
Seriously, I'll start worrying about proliferation risks when a commercially viable fusion reactor DESIGN is created. Building one -- assuming it's ever viable to begin with -- would take years, which is plenty of time to address proliferation concerns before it came online.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fusion reactors capable of producing net power are big, or seem to be being as we haven't actually built one yet.
However, if you just want to produce tritium for a boosted fission bomb, you don't need to generate net power. A farnsworth fusor will do and they are small and inconspicuous.
As for deuterium: Deuterium is produced for industrial, scientific and military purposes, by starting with ordinary water—a small fraction of which is naturally-occurring heavy water—and then separating out the heavy water by the Girdler sulfide process, distillation, or other methods.
So, no point in securing your fusion reactor because the bad guys don't have any real motivation to break in. At least, not to steal anything.
Although there is some lip service to seeking "aneutronic" fusion the truth is that fusion is so hard to achieve that we don't have the luxury of being picky about the reactions we aim for, and all the practical ones generate a metric fuckton of neutrons, enough to be lethal even on the other side of thick shielding, enough to induce dangerous secondary radioactivity in many elements, and enough to knock enough atoms out of their place in metal crystalline lattices to seroiusly weaken structures made from elements that dont' become radioactive too. It's a serious enough problem that the first and most important clue that Pons and Fleischmann had not achieved cold fusion was that they were still alive.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Yeah, I'm always excited about garage experimenters running a 500 MW neutron source away from the heavy hand of the government.
Fusion would break the stranglehold of petro-exporting countries in the Middle East as well as belligerent exporters like Russia and Iran.
You're assuming said fusion plants would be radically cheaper to construct and operate than existing fission plants...something the anti-nuclear activists would probably complicate despite the obvious benefits of fusion over fission. Never underestimate the public fear of the word "nuclear" even if the processes involved are ridiculously different.
I can hear the rallying cry now: "They want to build a plant that works the same way as a thermonuclear bomb! Do you want a nuclear bomb IN YOUR BACKYARD???"
People are still terrified of fluoride in their water. Can you imagine their reponse to the above?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Other interesting and scientifically sound approaches are limping along on pitiful drips of venture money e.g. General Fusion.
And while some public money goes into Polywell research, it's produced on a dime when compared to ITER.
Don't mean to knock the work that's done to advance the Tokamak design, but it shouldn't be the only game in town.
Why would they need to create a new hate conflict? There's plenty of that to go around as is. Arab vs. Jew, black vs. white, East vs. West...it's not like conflict wasn't around before banking cartels, you know.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Step 1: Collect hydrogen
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit!
Magic pixie hair. As everyone knows, magic pixie hair, if harvested correctly, could supply all the energy needs of an exponentially growing global economy for centuries, nay, millenia. Engineers just need to figure out how to find the pixes, and harvest their hair. I'm a compelling idea man.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
I'd really appreciate if somebody with deeper fusion knowledge could take a look at this paper: http://www.aneutronicfusion.or...
It's possible that it's wrong, but if true, it would mean that tokamak fusion is fundamentally impossible (which would suck for ITER). The paper is by a bunch of alternative fusion research approach guys, so it's possible they're not objective here (not cold fusion, that's bunk).
If it were only just getting a few grams of tritium, it isn't that hard to do. On the scale of a few grams you can just get something like this baby and hide it in a commercial seawater desalinization plant to get a few grams after a bit of time (and energy)...
Of course that isn't the most economical way to do it. I think a common military-industrial method today is to put lithium control rods into an experimental-sized fission reactor and collect the tritium gas that comes off... Still no fusion necessary...
The government does 10's of thousands of project a year. ON time, within budget with little waste.
the ITER is using extremely cutting edge experimental reactor. Of course there are unknowns.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nevertheless, fusion would make for an awesome ship engine. It's probably worth studying just for that.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Look at ITER: $20B and rising, it will only make 500 MW(th) -- six times less thermal energy than a 1 GW(e) fission reactor -- and it doesn't even include the advanced materials needed to withstand commercial reactor levels of integrated neutron flux.
Well, that's ITER's point now isn't it? We know what is required to make fusion work, we just don't know how long we can sustain a reaction because we do not understand how the large neutron flux will affect the materials in the container and we still have difficulties maintaining the containment. It's an engineering problem now, not something that is clearly impossible.
IMHO, investments in such experiments should be expanded, by both government and industry. Just like getting a man on the moon, We need a JFK'esk commitment to making this work.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We either pass it or we pass away, so yeah better get the sucker working ASAP.
It would also destroy the value of the dollar, which is boosted by OPEC.
Why would they need to create a new hate conflict? There's plenty of that to go around as is. Arab vs. Jew, black vs. white, East vs. West...it's not like conflict wasn't around before banking cartels, you know.
Sure, banking cartels just turned it into business practice.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
the small amount of "booster" elements (tritium and deuterium) found in fusion power could provide would-be proliferators what they need to boost the yield of fission bombs
The primary issue of proliferation is getting the bomb grade uranium in the first place. Fission power by itself doesn't lead to weapons proliferation so long as enrichment processes are restricted to producing only 'reactor grade' fuel. Given a source of weapons grade material, the availability of deuterium/tritium boosters aren't going to make a damned bit of difference to rogue states trying to build bombs. Crappy, low yield bombs will suit their purposes just fine.
Have gnu, will travel.
That has to be one of the most misguided ideas I've ever seen...
Worry about using deuterium and tritium being used to boost the output of a fission weapon is like worrying about whether a heavily armed maniac's getaway car can do 120mph rather than 115mph. The basic problem isn't the speed of the get away car. If a proliferator can get their hands on sufficient U235 or Pu in the first place, they're 99.99996% of the way towards their goal - the extra .00003 provided by the availability of deuterium and tritium is all but meaningless because when it comes to proliferators it's the mere fact that they have a weapon in the first place that's the problem. That they can now build two or more, or increase the yield of a single weapon simply doesn't count for much when even a low kiloton range weapon is sufficient for their needs. (Which is deterrence generally, or failing that attacks against non military area targets. They aren't trying to crack open Cheyenne Mountain.)
Sure, there will be nuts, by never underestimate the power of cheap.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Can you imagine their reponse to the above?
So why are you putting the FUD out there? Sure people are ignorant, but It's not as if people can't know the difference between addition and division.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Look at ITER: $20B and rising, it will only make 500 MW(th) -- six times less thermal energy than a 1 GW(e) fission reactor -- and it doesn't even include the advanced materials needed to withstand commercial reactor levels of integrated neutron flux.
International Thermonuclear *Experimental* Reactor
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yes. Thorium. Should have been done long ago.
That's the kind of thinking that led navies across the world to build dreadnaughts. which could be sunk by a couple of airplanes dropping torpedoes.
Fusion in it's current configuration, and our current state of knowledge, sure it's a joke.
But, going with the airplane example; you're looking at the Wright Brother's first plane, and saying "nope, will never be useful, look at it, it can only fly 3 feet off the ground for a couple hundred yards". Solar panels 30-40 years ago were laughable as well mind you.
Knowledge has a way of building on itself in an exponential fashion. Once the first working (energy positive) reactor is built, you can bet it will be only a matter of months before that design gets improved upon by a thousand different scientists.
But yes, short-sighted people like yourself are what drive the issues in the US. If it doesn't go from drawing board to mature product instantaneously it's clearly a waste of time, effort, and money.
Aren't uranium (as opposed to plutonium) bombs pretty bulky?
Not really. The critical mass for U235 is 50 kg or so, while for PU240 it's about 40 kg. Moreover, a U235 bomb is way easier to make, because it doesn't have a predetonation problem like plutonium. Just take two hunks of U235 and drive one into the other with an explosive charge. Bang. City gone. This was the way Little Boy worked. It was so simple they didn't even bother to test it before dropping it on Hiroshima. You can't do that with PU240: the neutrons get so thick as it nears criticality that it blows the charge apart in a sub-critical burst. This is why you have to use very sophisticated shaped charges to assure a perfectly spherical implosion.
PU240 is easier to produce. U235 is easier to build a bomb with. It has proved very fortunate for the world that these two things are true.
Solar panels 30-40 years ago were laughable as well mind you.
They were not laughable. There just wasn't enough of economical and environmental incentives back then to push for their mass production. Now there is.
Ezekiel 23:20
Those 'petro-exporting countries' are all protege's of the US of A. Talk about belligerent.
Maybe try to look in the mirror more, confused one?
Fusion isn't developed to the point where it's viable yet. It's currently short-duration and net-energy negative at the moment.
Second, trying to get to fusion with existing fossil fuel plants will just kill the planet that much faster. DUMB!
There ARE relatively clean and safe options for fission power. And in the long run, we're better off transitioning base load power to fission plants, eliminating coal, oil and NG now, then chasing fusion while not poisoning the planet.
Is there a possibility of something like the original article describes?
Sure.
But there's also a possibility of a rogue black hole eating the system too. Do we crouch here, wet ourselves and just wait for it to happen?
It's called "risk management" for a reason.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Nonsense, value of dollar can be set in a world powered by any energy source adequate to produce needed goods and services. If fusion is sufficient, dollar is fine.
Look at ITER: $20B and rising, it will only make 500 MW(th) -- six times less thermal energy than a 1 GW(e) fission reactor -- and it doesn't even include the advanced materials needed to withstand commercial reactor levels of integrated neutron flux.
Well, that's ITER's point now isn't it? We know what is required to make fusion work, we just don't know how long we can sustain a reaction because we do not understand how the large neutron flux will affect the materials in the container and we still have difficulties maintaining the containment. It's an engineering problem now, not something that is clearly impossible.
IMHO, investments in such experiments should be expanded, by both government and industry. Just like getting a man on the moon, We need a JFK'esk commitment to making this work.
ITER is also heavily instrumented and represents the design prototype for power generation. It's successor - DEMO - is expected to be bigger, but cheaper, because the design will be known, the manufacturing for the parts will be understood, and it won't include the scientific instrumentation since it'll be a power generating reactor, not an experiment.
My big worry with fusion is that it'll be shown possible, but the cost per MW of capacity will be so high that you can't pay the interest on the cost of capital by charging competitive rates for electricity. Thus rendering fusion forever uneconomical compared to alternatives.
Nuclear fission seemingly has this problem right now, though much of the expense is due to implacable unreasonable opposition.
--PM
On other methods that don't fall into the bigger hotter heavier paradigm...
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
The value of the US dollar is dependent on being the reserve currency of the world. If they lose that the dollar will devalue to peso levels. Oil is just one part of that, not the whole thing.
We'll run out of oil long before they ever get fusion working.
Sent from my PDP-11
Pu-240 isn't used for nuclear weapons, though. The isotope for bombs is Pu-239, with a critical mass of ~10 kg. The spontaneous fission rate for Pu-240 is much higher than for Pu-239 (about 30000 times as high), and it's also more highly radioactive, leading to additional problems with keeping the bomb cool before detonation.
The critical mass isn't that important in "normal" bomb designs. For example, Little Boy and Fat Man weighed about 4500 kg (the former being a couple hundred kg lighter), so a difference of a few tens of kg in the critical mass is negligible when compared to the total bomb mass. However, if you are aiming at the smallest possible physical bomb size, plutonium has a big advantage. Compare two actual weapons with ~1 kt yields, W33 and W54. The former is a gun-type uranium device, weighing something like 110-120 kg, based on the estimates I've seen, and it's an artillery shell with a base diameter of 20 cm and length of roughly 70 cm. The latter is a miniature plutonium implosion device with a weight of 23 kg and a diameter 27 cm.
U+F8FF
It's an engineering problem now, not something that is clearly impossible.
While entirely true, I was visiting the Princeton Plasma Physics lab in 1990 and heard just that. The sad part was I'd have to wait until 2012 for the first commercial fusion reactor to be viable! It was sweet to stand in the control room while they fused a few atoms in the tokamak. And the flywheels they had were the stuff of a steampunk's wet dream!
To be fair, funding did decrease over the same time period and J.H.F.C., if the money spent on screwing up Iraq even more than it was had been spent on fusion research instead, Iraq would be much less relevant today in so many ways.
IMHO, investments in such experiments should be expanded, by both government and industry. Just like getting a man on the moon, We need a JFK'esk commitment to making this work.
We just need "JFK" to get out of the way and stop squashing every attempt commercialize technologies that actually put a huge dent into the carbon energy industry. Big oil plus big taxes on it is the stuff of _DC_ wet dreams.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Boosting a fission bomb entails injecting tritium-deuterium gas into the center of a plutonium core implosion design before detonation. It boost the yield 2x to 2.5x. If an entity can build a reactor to create plutonium then it can create hydrogen isotopes. It would be easier for a clandestine terrorist group to figure out how to steal enough enriched uranium and build a gun bomb then steal enough plutonium to make an implosion bomb. Enriched uranium is safe to handle and figuring out a gun design easier to do. Little Boy was a gun design and didn't need a live test before being dropped on Hiroshima. As everybody has pointed out, if this world ever gets to the point where tritium-deuterium gas are produced in large enough amounts where theft is a worry so much time will have gone past that the world will be a very different place.
This comment is just to undo incorrect moderation.
Hold my beer and watch this!
We have a unlimited supply of energy which will last millions of years. Yet, we cant be bothered to pull our fingers out of our arse and make it really happen.
Fusion is a great bit of fun years down the line if it works, but we need to think of now.
Fix now, make solar plants on our planet or in space, then let the scientists play with other methods.
Either way, energy companies really dont care about the future. All they care for is profits and now. We are going to be stuck in this era for a very long time, unless someone outside of the corrupt energy group can step in and start the ball rolling.
Pu-240 isn't used for nuclear weapons, though.
Oh, shit. You're quite correct. Please consider me appropriately chastised.
Not really. The critical mass for U235 is 50 kg or so, while for PU240 it's about 40 kg.
As the other poster pointed out, it's Pu 239 with a critical mass of 10Kg. The Fat Man pit weighed only 6Kg however. You can enhance criticality by compressing the pit (the implosion stage) and reflecting the neutrons back, to increase the per-neutron fission yield.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
> There would no longer be shortages of energy because fuel is ubiquitous
LOLZ. Have you ever seen what you need to do to get D out of [H|D]2O? It's an enormous, massively expensive industrial plant that is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. The only major plant in north america, in Kinkardine, had to be shut down. They still refuse to allow anyone to use the land:
http://www.kincardinenews.com/2013/12/23/opg-seeks-final-approvals-to-clear-former-heavy-water-plant-site-for-reuse
But it doesn't make bombs easily like the other reactors designs.
That's why they didn't choose Thorium for fuel.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
> Fusion don't suffer from safety related issues that fission plants suffer from
Bologna, you clearly don't know what you're talking about.
Tritium production, and to a lesser extend materials protection, requires massive amounts of lithium metal. This is normally in the form of a liquid "blanket" sandwiched between two metal container walls. Some modern designs use lithium trapped in a porous solid matrix, but this requires more lithium and eliminates online processing. Anyway, there's about a 1 meter width of this stuff, which adds up to hundreds of tonnes and billions of dollars, which is why no one is going to build one of these things.
So here's the thing, lithium is highly flammable. Just ask Tesla. And in the case of a fusion reactor, its filled with tritium. Tritium is extremely dangerous, it mimics hydrogen, so if its in a fire it combines with oxygen in the air to form T2O, which goes up into the air and falls back down as radioactive rain.
Now what could cause such a problem? Well, for one, the reactor volume is surrounded by extremely powerful magnets under ridiculous amounts of stress. If one were to fail it would effectively explode with the same sort of results as a compressor blade failure. If a chunk goes THAT way instead of THIS way, it cuts the reactor core in half and out goes all the lithium. Solid systems would definitely improve safely under this failure mode, but, as I said, only at the cost of serious capacity factor effects and the inability to perform online processing.
Yes yes, I'm perfectly aware of aneutronic solutions, but very basically, they don't work.
... for 4 billion years. Why switch now?
> The watts per square meter are still very low, the panels very expensive, the land and installation requirements still onerous
All-in, including land, clearing it, levelling it, installing equipment, trenching lines, all CAPEX and REG, every single penny from one end to the other, costs $1.79 a Watt.
In comparison, fission plants are currently going in for at least $5 a Watt, but have overrun their budgets almost every time.
Fusion reactors would be fantastically more complex and expensive than fission. To put that in perspective, the start-up load of lithium-6 will cost about $1.80 a watt. The concrete in the floor will be another 15 cents. So just for the floor and one ingredient, you're already more expensive than a complete spinning-the-meter PV system.
> Face it, the only people buying solar
... is everyone on the planet. PV is the second fastest growing power source in history. Wind is the fastest. Numbers:
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/18/37-gw-solar-capacity-installed-worldwide-2013/
http://www.mercomcapital.com/global-solar-installations-to-reach-approximately-43-gw-in-2014
http://www.epia.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Publications/GMO_2013_-_Final_PDF.pdf
As a result of this activity, PV alone has gone from nowhere to a real bump on the graphs:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/02/100-gw-of-solar-pv-now-installed-in-the-world-today
100 GW of PV compared to about 370 GW of fission, before many of them were turned off. It took about 40 years to get to that point with fission, so PV is on track to surpass it quite rapidly.
People are still terrified of fluoride in their water.
The main benefit for fluoridated water is to improve the tooth health of children. That's a worthy goal, but it doesn't justify putting it in the public water supply given the other effects of fluoride on adults. Fluoride for children can be quite easily administered at public schools with the same effects. I know, because that's how they did it here in Portland when I was growing up. With the development of Fluoride toothpastes in the 1970s the benefits are of water fluoridation are significantly reduced and the case for it no longer as clear cut as it was in the first half of the 20th century.
> Actually, it was shut down because Canada had a surplus of heavy water
Which says a lot about the industry as it currently stands. In spite of numerous technical advantages, actually selling a D2O reactor seemed beyond the capabilities of the country.
> Canada developed a new technology for enriching deuterium from water, based on catalyzed exchange
Currently small-scale system suitable for lab production and make-up supplies for the existing reactors, based on semi-enriched feedstock. That feedstock comes from LPCE.
Could you read that again, please? How is there an average in there? Also, he mixed up density, temperature and energy density without blinking.
I'm not impressed.
Mostly random stuff.
Let's not forget about the increase in terrorism and drug smuggling that's sure to follow the invention of star trek transporters. We really should be thinking and planning for this problem while there's still time.
Play Command HQ online
Right, currently small scale because there is no demand for large amounts of heavy water. They tore down the old Girdler Sulfide plant because if such demand ever does materialize, they will want to build a new CECE/CIRCE plant instead.
Yes, an actual working commercial reactor will be even more expensive, since it will include things not present in ITER (like tritium breeding blankets, exotic materials that can withstand the neutron load, robotic systems for changing out damaged reactor segements when they reach their neutron exposure limits, and a turbine/generator set.) But even if $20B were too much, understand that a fusion reactor making 500 MW(th) would be uncompetitive even if it cost $2 B, an order of magnitude less. And ITER does not have $18 B of instrumentation in it.
doubt what, that there is sufficient energy to power a civilization that will have a peak number of humans around 2075 or so? And resources don't disappear either, metals and minerals and such are still around, even if in landfills or in some form it would take energy to reclaim.
Yes, an actual working commercial reactor will be even more expensive
I think that once the process is identified to achieve the orders of magnitude required to scale up fusion to commercial quantities that there will be a period of very expensive reactors that will perfect the required industrial processes to bring the cost down.
I know it's a long way off and the issues you point out are similar to the neutron embrittlement of fission reactor cores, however I also think it is reasonable to presume that there will be some advances in materials technology that are more likely to have a greater impact on society than the fusion reactor. The fusion process will just be one of a number of benefactors.
I would expect an experimental reactor to have more instrumentation than a full production reactor making it more expensive because it is also exploring concepts and has flexibility built in so that it can be reconfigured. However you are saying that a production fusion reactor won't realise those cost benfits. I'm interested in learning your reasoning as to why the costs of such technology won't come down if it becomes production technology?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
As best I can tell, the only problem with practical fusion power is that it doesn't exist. Other than that, it's prefect.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Actually, all plutonium bombs have a mix of isotopes in them. You can't make Pu-239 without also making some of the higher isotopes. "Weapons grade" Pu is about 6% Pu-240. "Reactor grade" Pu can be as high as 26% Pu-240. The important thing about DT boosting is that it enables weapons to be designed that are immune to fizzles from premature initiation of the chain reaction. Even if the chain reaction starts at the moment of criticality, enough fusion neutrons are generated to produce high yield as the expanding core becomes subcritical. From a proliferation point of view, this means a country with a large reactor-grade Pu stockpile, like Japan, could "break out" and quickly make large numbers of nuclear devices, if they have a tritium supply.
I fail to see any point in your reply:
- All explosives have impurities. A uranium-based nuclear bomb is not 100 % U-235, it's enriched to somewhere around 90 % U-235. A block of TNT is not 100 % trinitrotoluene, there are impurities too. The impurities sometimes contribute to the outcome, but in nuclear weapons, it's the U-235 or Pu-239 that's brought to critical density condition to make the explosion possible.
- Working nuclear weapons have been designed without D-T boosting; in fact, no nuclear weapons program to date has began with such a boosted design. The boosting is a complication from engineering point of view.
- It's access to weapons-grade uranium or plutonium that's the problem from proliferation point of view. If you have working nuclear plants, like Japan does, access to tritium is a trivial addition.
U+F8FF
If you have tritium and can do boosting, there is no need for 'weapons grade' Pu to make weapons. This is the key point!
So-called weapons grade Pu is called that because that's the isotope mix you get when you maximize Pu production in a thermal reactor (leave it in longer and too much Pu gets burned up). It's not because more Pu-240 makes the material unsuitable for weapons.
The Pu used in very early weapons, before they had boosting, had very low Pu-240 content (so-called "super weapons grade"). Once boosting was invented it was no longer necessary to make the Pu so pure.
Pu-240 is more than just an impurity, btw. It fissions too, with a higher cross section (and lower critical mass) than U-235.
Again, you have no point:
- If you can produce plutonium, you can produce tritium (in fact, you'll produce tritium in any water-cooled reactor).
- The relative amounts of Pu-239 and Pu-240 is a function of burn time. If you have a nuclear reactor, you can control the burn time, producing the isotope mix you prefer. Pu-239 doesn't need to be enriched with centrifuges or other methods like U-235.
- If you don't have plutonium production capability, but can get enough plutonium to make a bomb, getting tritium is trivial. Tritium has been widely used, and for example missing exit signs generate a large portion of NRC's "missing radioactive material" alerts.
- Pu-240 was discussed above. Its presence in large concentrations complicate bomb design because of its high spontaneous fission rate and shorter half-life compared to Pu-239.
U+F8FF
I think that once the process is identified to achieve the orders of magnitude required to scale up fusion to commercial quantities that there will be a period of very expensive reactors that will perfect the required industrial processes to bring the cost down.
Your comment there brings up a very important general point about how technology develops.
ALL successful technologies develop by iteration, and this iteration can only happen if the cost of an iteration is sufficiently small. This means benchtop, or garage scale, technologies advance. If a technology starts at a point where an iteration costs $20B, it will go nowhere.
If fusion is to have any chance at all, it will be with technologies that can be investigated for $20M, not $20B. And once an iteration gets sufficiently expensive relative to the size of the market (see, for example, passenger airliners), advancement slows way down or stops.
I worked on NIF for 7 years. I hold a doctorate in engineering, with extensive fusion experience. For 5 years, I have been running a fusion blog: http://thepolywellblog.blogspo.... Got some traffic from here, thought I would say hello!
Fusion is changing and it is much closer than you think. Consider what has happened, just this year:
1. In April, Livermore has failed to get Ignition and cancelled LIFE. 13 BILLION Dollar program Ended.
2. In June, the Navy published new polywell research, showing evidence of cusp confinement.
3. In March, Jamie Edwards became the youngest person to fuse the atom, at 13! He was on The David Letterman Show,
4. In March, General Fusion presented a 55 million dollar device to the TED conference. Jeff Bezos funded them.
5. In May, LPPX raised tens of thousands in an online fund raising campaign for fusion.
6. Last May, High school students won 2nd at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for doing fusion in a garage.
7. This Year, Phenoix Nuclear Labs pushed out new fusion devices, which make 3E11 Nuetrons/Second with IEC fusion.
This is the new, 2014, reality of fusion. It is not BS - but, real and substantial developments. It's not cold fusion. It's not even lasers or tokamaks. Fusion is changing. We will see what happens next. It is very exciting.