--- Terry Blanton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Something I do not understand . . . sources say Iran > is producing heavy water. As I understand it, HW is > used in the production of plutonium in a HW reactor. > Sources also say that Iran is enriching Uranium. > So, which is it? Are they building BOTH types of > bombs?
Well probably so - that is exactly the route we took intitially. The difference between the two processes is in timing and cost. If one is not in a rush, then plutonium from a breeder reactor is MUCH cheaper and far easier to produce than 235U. Being a different element and w/o the hexa-valency of U, it can be purified far cheaper, once you get a decent enrichment of Pu BUT it takes a long time to convert enough of the 238U in order to start off the process -several years to get to the ppk (parts per thousand) level. If you are going for lowest cost, you continually swap and age your fuel in your civilian reactor (to minimize the 240Pu) during which time you have no bomb, but you do have a lot of power for other uses. The Pu is a valuable by-product and after 6-10 years you have quite a bit. Actually at first, the US was in such a hurry that we did not even use the power produced nor wait for decent enrichment levels (this was the graphite reactor Y-12). Instead we did a much more costly separation of miniscule Pu enrichment. Time was of the essence then. Anyway, the Iranians are probably copying and improving slightly what we did in the early '40s - which is "do both." BTW all of this public knowledge and interesting reading from Rhodes' fine books. Jones
