Reply To: Competition from the Thorium reactor

[Axil]

Tulse wrote:

If a reactor and/or its fuel is not self protected and its can be subject to proliferation, it must be guarded against any credible threat.

Unless this IAEA security requirement (aka security plan) is met, the NRC will not license the reactor.

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In order for the FF reactor to be licensed by the NRC, if the FF reactor is not buried underground, a security force will be required to repel any credible threat 24/7/365. Most probably, the size of that force will be the same as the guard force that protects the current fleet of light water reactors.

Proliferation of what? Decaborane? The reason the NRC and IAEA worry about fission reactors is that their fuel can be used for bombs, and is highly radioactive. FF devices have extremely low levels of radioactivity, and their fuel isn’t useful for making weapons. I doubt the IAEA would even see a FF device as falling within its mandate (at least no more so than a hospital cyclotron), and similarly the NRC is going to care much less about a FF device than a nuclear battery filled with uranium.

There are plenty of devices in the world that produce X-rays and ion beams and neutrons. Many of those are used for industrial and medical purposes. FF isn’t really doing anything new, and is not a proliferation threat.

Hi Tulse thanks for the reply.

… similarly the NRC is going to care much less about a FF device than a nuclear battery filled with uranium.

It goes deeper than that. There is an economic war underway between nuclear and gas/renewables right now and the greens are winning. The greens are doing their best to undercut nuclear as a replacement for coal. To do this, the greens are well funded by the gas industry.

Recently, I even saw a windmill ad on the TV paid for by the gas industry.

Small fusion is not on the greens target screen yet. But, if small fusion shows promise, it will receive a first class slander campaign equal to its threat to the gas industry.

If FF is as powerful as you say, it will come down to a life and death struggle. You will look back fondly on this time of anonymity.

Facts won’t matter. The NRC will respond to any doubt real or perceived in small fusion, it has always reacted so and this is not likely to change.

Along the same lines, I have always wondered why federal money has always been directed to every big fusion debacle like ITER and LIFE instead of polywell and FF.

It very well might be that a huge monstrosity of a fusion reactor is hard to steal or divert to unapproved and uncontrolled purposes; whereas, a small fusion reactor can be loaded into a pickup and fail below the horizon of authorized control. Control is of upmost importance.

Also, there is a desire for a pure fusion bomb to enable the elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals and the elimination of all current designs of nuclear weapons by treaty. A small fusion trigger feed by a chemical/electric power source could provide the first stage of a multistage fusion bomb instead of a small fission device trigger.

For example as follows:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/darpas-handheld-nuclear-fusion-reactor/

“ …the Chip-Scale High Energy Atomic Beams project had a budget of just $3 million, and rather shorter timescales; the plans for fiscal year 2009 include: “Develop 0.5 MeV [mega electron-volt] proton beams and collide onto microscale B-11 target with a fusion Q (energy ratio) > 20, possibly leading to self-sustained fusion”

I think this project has turned BLACK.

If the Chip-Scale High Energy Atomic Beams project does not work out, FF could also turn black.