a new nuclear option?

[kowalskil@alpha.montclair.edu]

I AM SUNDING THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE IT DID NOT BOUNCE BACK TO ME. IT WAS 
PROBABLY LOST SOMEWHERE; SORRY IF YOU SEE IT TWICE. 
 
On 12/12/96 David Dockstader wrote:

> .... typical Pu from a power plant is only 60% Pu-239. This means that to 
> produce weapons grade material one must use some kind of enrichment process 
> like gasseous diffusion or centrifuge similar to the enrichment of uranium.  

The isotopic composition of Pu from a power plant (after 1 year of burning)
reflects the long exposure to thermal neutrons. If I had to invent a method
of producing very pure Pu239 I would design a reactor from which Pu is 
constantly removed (chemistry only). This would prevent the accomulation of 
the undesirable Pu240 from the Pu239+n reaction, etc. I suppose something 
of that kind was used to produce bomb-grade material. Yes, the diffusion 
or centriguge methods should be possible. I never heard about plutonium 
enrichment. But I did see a reference to a description on how to construct 
a bomb using only "dirty" Pu extracted from spent fuel of a civilian reactor.

                                    Ludwik Kowalski
P.S.
Should the adjective "dirty" be used for "nearly pure" P239 material?
Everything is perverted in this field. Burning is not burning, mining
is not mining and pure is not pure. What a century! Becquerel discovered 
radioactivity in 1896.
P.S.
The prolifiration issues are addressed by the designers of hybrid machines.
Refined methods are proposed to frustrate attempts to devert fissile material 
(in this case U233 produced from Th232). The amount of Pu in the spent U233 
fuel is much smaller than in what is left after burning U235. A Th232-loaded 
hybrid machine must be prompted somehow (brought to a condition in which the 
rate of burning U233 is the same as the rate of breeding it from Thorium). 
The unwanted P239 and U235 materials can be used for this purpose. Prompting 
can also be accomplished with U233 from another machine or by running the
accelerator as long as necessary (using more energy than is produced during
the initial phase of operation).