Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

[jamesr]

Dr_Barnowl wrote: I think the comment from the ITER communications chief that you can’t use fusion for proliferation is bunk though – it’s true for these small devices, but part of the planning for tokamak reactors is to generate tritium using a breeder blanket … last time I looked, tritium was a key component of all hydrogen bombs, and for D-T fusion to work as a practical energy source you need to generate unprecedented quantities of the stuff. Which would seem to make it easier to make fusion warheads. Just sayin’.

Not really – H-bombs use Lithium Deuteride as the main fuel. The lithium breeds tritium from the neutrons produced in the fission primary. The only tritium may be in a small trigger, and a little mixed in the outer lay of the lithium deuteride to control the exact timing of the reaction. But tritium is not needed, it just makes the yield better & more predictable.

The Tritium produced at ITER & future D-T fusion reactors would be all used on-site as it’s made and only a few grams would ever be stored at a time.

Here is an old article from 1979 that explains it all: The Progressive

I think some proliferation worries are a bit misguided. Anyone that wants to know how to build a bomb can find out easily enough. The raw materials are fairly easily obtained. The only difficultly is in the technology to refine those materials and the precision manufacturing processes. Of which the most difficult part to hide is the energy intensive separation of the U-235 & Pu-239 to build a conventional fission bomb. And you can’t build an H-bomb without a fission primary. Hence the efforts to restrict the parts & materials needed to build centrifuges.

If you can enrich Uranium from 0.7% U235 to 2-3% for civilian power station then given time you can take it upto the >70% needed for a bomb. Even if a country isn’t allowed/doesn’t have centrifuges and instead is just sold manufactured fuel rods for a civilian plant, it can still make a Pu-239 bomb (& hence an H-bomb) from reprocessing the waste. Hence you need to control that side as well.