Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!panix!.POSTED.panix2.panix.com!panix2.panix.com!not-for-mail From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: Whoops! The Atlantic Makes Trump Look EPIC In Cover Intended as a Smear Date: 21 Sep 2024 14:28:28 -0000 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <20240913a@crcomp.net> <6k8qejppvlaov3hrqv91bjd12k6tm52dco@4ax.com> <743tej9862rv7rjqqfh3gat27ti2eho3ve@4ax.com> Injection-Info: reader1.panix.com; posting-host="panix2.panix.com:166.84.1.2"; logging-data="25545"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@panix.com" Bytes: 2172 Mad Hamish wrote: >Australia has a single 20MW open pool nuclear reactor which is useful >for research and creating medical isotopes Don't you still have one of the Westinghouse research reactors? They were reliable and safe and pretty much free from issues of misuse to create plutonium. The US shipped a lot of them around the world.... even the Congo got one and Australia got a couple. They are getting long in the tooth and political issues are getting a lot of them shut down, though. The one at Georgia Tech got shut down in the mid-nineties, and the one in Pittsburgh got shut down at about the same time. I was told by a Westinghouse engineer that they "were intrinsically safe-- so safe even Italians can run them." >So while it's true that we have a nuclear reactor we don't have >anything that would be useful to create nuclear weapons The problem is that it's hard to purify uranium to make bombs because that is a difficult physical process that involves separating out isotopes by very small atomic mass differences, while purifying plutonium is a comparatively easy chemical process. So reactions that make plutonium as a byproduct are frowned on by the UN crew, while reactions whose decay products are anything other than plutonium are considered okay. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."