[ExI] Written for another list

[John Clark]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012  PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> There are plenty of technical report on operation experience, or, rather,
> absence,


Well, the last LFTR was shut down in 1969 so I admit there are not a lot of
people with experience at operating one, although many more than have
experience operating a power satellite.

> CANDU


CANDU is a solid fuel Uranium reactor. A LFTR is a liquid fuel Thorium
reactor. Big difference

> proliferation risk of U-233,


Proliferation is a vastly smaller problem with a LFTR and its U-233 than
with a conventional reactor and its Plutonium for a number of reasons:

1) Theoretically you can do it but it's hard to make a bomb with U-233,
much harder than with Plutonium,  and in fact nobody has ever made a pure
U-233 bomb; the closest was a Plutonium/ U-233 hybrid and the explosive
yield was much less than expected, almost a fizzle.

2) In a LFTR U-233 will always be contaminated with U232 which gives off
such intense Gamma rays it would screw up the bomb electronics, be easy to
detect, and probably killed the terrorist long before he was half finished
making it.

3) The U233 is completely burned up inside the reactor where its hard to
steal, unlike existing reactors where used fuel rods are shipped to
reprocessing  plants to extract the Plutonium. In one case the potential
bomb making material needs to be shipped across the country, with a LFTR it
never leaves the reactor building.

4) A regular reactor produces lots of neutrons but a LFTR makes less of
them, so it needs all that U233 to keep the chain reaction going, if you
try stealing some the reactor will simply stop operating making the theft
obvious.

> if you think corn prices doubling to tripling won't do a thing to Mexico
> and South America... they will.
>

And one reason corn is so expensive is that idiotic renewable energy
resource Bio-fuel; turning food into fuel is just not a good idea.

  John K Clark
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