Harry
The BBC showed some footage of the nuclear facilities. What interested
me the most, is the line that was producing heavy water. A heavy water
reactor is a plutonium 239 generator,
You are making an incorrect jump in logic here which leads to the direct
*opposite* conclusion.
All uranium fueled reactors -ALL- as in 100%, are plutonium generators,
and the heavy water makes zero difference in that regard. Heavy water is
actually indicative of a civilian program, unless or even if there is
concurrent thorium breeding.
You can trust the BBC on most things, more so than the US Networks -
unless the story involves so-called "state secrets" as this does. The
Beeeb are masters of disinformation in that regard. That is partly
because we tend to trust them more on other details. Do you think the
Blair regime is disinterested in public opinion here?
The reason that heavy water is used elsewhere is that - in intelligent
civilian programs it makes for the most efficient reactor, and cheapest
power output by far, even accounting for the high cost of D2O... IOW you
get from 10-20 times more kWhr per pound of mined Uranium (assuming a 5%
burn before refueling in either case).
Enrichment (and this is our dirty little secret) leaves so-called
"depleted" U which still contains 40% to nearly half of the original
fissile content. This is something the DoD has tried to hide for years.
... ergo - the advantage for civilian use is that D2O allows the burning
of natural U reactor fuel, which cannot be done in the GE design - which
must use enriched fuel (and wastes 200-400 pounds of mined U for every
pound burned, instead of about 20 pounds wasted for the 5% burn in
CANDU). Are you following me on that critical detail? - up to 400 pounds
of wasted U for every pound actually burned in a GE reactor!
Enriched fuel is extremely costly, wasteful of resources and inefficient
to burn and toxic tailings are ennormous - not only at the power plant
after refueling - but at the enrichment plant ... and it only makes
sense when you have a weapons program to share the overhead - and even
then, the US has shut down Hanford and most of Oak Ridge because we -
{and the Iranians} can buy reactor fuel from many sources. With OSHA
fully involved we might say that making it is impossible in the USA
anymore so we buy it from our former enemies.
The USA is the stupid party here, in that we decided against heavy water
early on- "because of" the weapons program and the greed of the General
Electric Company. They may be a bigger "enemy" to Joe-Public than Iran.
The effect of this was to put cheap nuclear energy out of reach of most
utilities (using standard accounting practices) and to enrich GE and
Westinghouse by hundreds of billions, since they controlled everything
early on. Gigantic tactical blunder for the average consumer. But great
for the "Generals" ... including the ones in 5-sided buildings.
As far as Iran goes, they could get Pu from any and all civilian
reactors, and all you need to look for - as the smoking gun - is a
reprocessing facility, but these can be hidden underground. Yes they
could get it cheaper using D2O but that is an accounting issue only.
...in fact the best weapons fuel is NOT Plutonium anyway - but is 233U
which is bred from thorium. For this you do benefit greatly by having
D2O but there is no evidence that they are breeding thorium.
BTW this is what the Indians have done - as they have lots of thorium
and hopefully they will be able to develop this civilian energy program
fully, instead of buring more coal and peat.
Jones
- [Vo]: Re: Oil field crises in Saudi Arabia and Iran Jones Beene
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