Power production grade nuclear materials are not weapons
grade nuclear materials. The most recent numbers I've seen
suggest that the U.S. has 100 tons and Russia has 130 tons
of plutonium (presumably weapons grade) on hand. Wouldn't
it be safer to deweaponize this material and use it for
productive purposes?
Conventional thinking insists that radioactive materials are only weapons if you can make them explode into big fireballs. Unconventional thinking realizes that a pound of low grade radioactive material could be merely pulverized, and put into the atmosphere or water supplies to be a terrible weapon. Presume that the radioactive material is such low grade quality that it only kills 1% of those it comes in contact with. So what? Mass panic and public paranoia will kill off an additional 5-10%, not to mention the enormous costs of a clean-up, resettlement of populations, economic shocks, and so forth.
> Is this economically viable? I think not.
The production of that much plutonium is already a sunk
cost for both nations. Lets derive some benefit from it.
> Getting to Europa in two weeks with a series
> of athomic bombs, is not only extremelly dangerous and
> controversing, but its useless if the main antenna that will
> boradcast science data back will fail to unfold. I think we
> are somehow no focusing on the real needs, and the realistic
> developement of our technology.
Conventional thinking insists that you have to fold up your instruments into nice little packages, that hopefully unfold from their compartments in time to get the job done.
Unconventional thinking realizes that with the amount of raw materials (iron, carbon, silica, etc) already floating around up there, you could simply manufacture an immense antenna. Why bother with a 10 meter folding antenna, when you can make a crude antenna 100 meters long?
Key point: it ain't pretty, but it gets the job done.
-- JH Byrne
