RE: Thorium: the wonder fuel that wasn't

Wed, 21 May 2014 00:05:36 -0700 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Quentin Anciaux
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 11:45 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Thorium: the wonder fuel that wasn't

 

 

 

2014-05-20 18:44 GMT+02:00 meekerdb <[email protected]>:

On 5/19/2014 11:48 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

These are valid criticisms that are very much not administrative nature but cut 
right to the core [pun intended] of a world in which a multitude of thorium 
U233 breeder reactors proliferate widely. There is a risk that this 
unintentionally leads to a proliferation of U233 (which can be relatively 
easily be chemically separated out from the thorium fluoride salt mix and 
purified into U233 metal)

 

U233 isn't likely to proliferate because it is always mixed with U232 (which it 
can produce by decay) and U232, through its decay chain, produces intense gamma 
radiation.  So it can only be handled and processed remotely.  Even suicide 
bombers wouldn't last long enough to transport it very far.  And the U232 makes 
it difficult to turn the U233 into a bomb because it's presence tends to make 
the bomb low yield.  When making a U233 bomb they try to refine out all the 
U232.

 

Sure, and granted. U233 is on most scores a poor bomb material. However, it can 
and in fact has been made into a bomb, and that is concerning to me. Sure it is 
a deadly material to handle and anyone handling it would surely be dead. 
Fanatics are willing to make that sacrifice of their CFUs (i.e. cannon fodder 
units). Once assembled a bomb can be encased in lead, making a lot easier to 
handle. The technical ease, in terms of not having to master the difficult 
challenge of building a carefully vectored implosion device, is a considerable 
factor that cannot be ignored.

So what if it low yield… sure from a military standpoint, but I shudder to 
imagine the effects of just one such low yield high fallout bomb on the major 
metro area of your choice. Does it matter, in this scenario, if superior bomb 
materials exist and which are used by all weapons states (declared and 
undeclared)? 

Furthermore the very deadliness of U232, which you correctly say would make 
handling the U233 very difficult is a reason in itself to want to ensure that 
there exist the highest levels of safeguards in order to keep these deadly 
(potentially weaponizable) materials accounted for and secured.

For this reason I am opposed to the proposals for widely scattered small scale 
nuclear batteries (of whatever kind) – it makes it impossible to keep out of 
nefarious hands.

Chris

 

Thanks, but it's Chris which has written your quote... but what you say is what 
I remembered reading about U233 difficult extraction.

 

Quentin

 


Brent

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