Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

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B11+P does not produce significant quantities of neutrons needed to breed Pu239 from U238. But a D+D or T+D dense plasma focus reactor would produce intense amounts of neutrons, Though neutratic fusion produces fast neutrons which would need to be moderated to thermal neutron energies to transmute U238 instead of fissioning it. A moderate sub-critical reactor using one or more dense plasma focus D+D/T cores as neutrons sources could provide an excellent means of breeding plutonium: providing much higher breeding ratios than conventional breeder reactors. Ideally sub-critical reactors would not be built with moderators or constant fuel recovery and processing and would simply burn radiactive waste (actinides and lighter element radioisotopes) into a mix of short term radioisotopes which would be unproductive in producing fissile fuels for atomic bombs, let alone difficult to separate out the desired Pu239 from Pu240 and all the other isotopes. International regulatory groups could monitor the construction and use of such “waste disposal reactors” to make sure moderators are not being used or the product processing is not extracting plutonium, Likewise such reactors would probably only be built in a handful of numbers in trust worthy countries (like France) who already have a large nuclear industry and need of waste disposal.

Now I always figured an irradiation weapon could be built out of a D+T dense plasma focus reactor, Its small enough it could be fitted into an unmanned plane or tow glider and flown low over an area to irradiate its occupants with ideally lethal doses of radiation. It would not be the sort of weapon that could be hidden though or made and operate with little money and resoruces, “The human crop dusters” would have to be complex machines with cooling and high power sources to power the DPF neutron generator, I figure it would have to be tugged in a glider 1km behind say a Hercules C-130 and would weight several tons and require at least a megawatt of power, After use it would be so radioactive and damaged from neutron activation it would have to be discarded. But of course the people might quickly figure out what it is doing and shot it down, being a low flying slow speed weapon, this would be rather easy. Most of all the weapon would be wrong on so many levels that only the nazis would consider it worth while if that is they are around in the future, let alone the present. At least that would sum up the opinions express on the last thread I raised that idea on. I still think it would be a pretty “cool” weapon in a horrific cutting-edge sense.