Can a H-11B Focus Fusion Reactor be used to Build a Nuclear Weapon?

[belbear42]

Reading all about it, it looks like a silly question, and I hate to spoil the sweet dreams (including my own) of clean and cheap power But I want to know your much more educated opinions about this:

Suppose LPP labs succeeds in building a working FF power reactor and bring it into the mainstream energy market, what are the implications if you consider that there REALLY are evil-minded people wandering around this planet?

-An out-of-the-box p-11B reactor, operated per instruction manual, does not emit any kind of useful radioactivity.
BUT, if one starts to abuse the machine, by for instance admitting deuterium gas in the vessel, other, neutronic side reactions like D-D will occur.

-These neutrons are fast neutrons, like the ones used in a fast breeder reactor to breed plutonium.

-So, IF you would abuse a focus fusion reactor by turning it into a source of fast neutrons, AND apply a mantle of natural uranium around it, how fast can you breed plutonium, and how long would it take to have enough of it for building a nuke?

-Under these conditions, the machine can still be used as an energy source, using p-B11 as its main, net energy producing fuel, and hiding the fact that this secretly modified machine is a plutonium breeder because, for the international community, it will still have its reputation of an absolutely clean and safe power source.

-So, even when focus fusion is a working, cheap and clean alternative to all known energy sources that can make fission reactors obsolete (and forbidden to build and operate under the cover of energy production), can we really afford to sell focus fusion reactors to questionable regimes like Iran?

Please prove me wrong…

[Lerner]

We’ve discussed this before on the forum (I don’t remember exactly where.) Key point is that with FF, no one needs uranium for anything. Uranium supplies can be tightly controlled, and the fission reactor industry shut down, ending any proliferation of nuclear weapons. In my opinion this should be linked to eliminating nuclear weapons inthe countries that have them, but that’s another matter.

[belbear42]

Lerner wrote: We’ve discussed this before on the forum (I don’t remember exactly where.) Key point is that with FF, no one needs uranium for anything. Uranium supplies can be tightly controlled, and the fission reactor industry shut down, ending any proliferation of nuclear weapons. In my opinion this should be linked to eliminating nuclear weapons inthe countries that have them, but that’s another matter.

I agree that the fission industry can be shut down if cheap fusion is available, but even in that case a lot of in that case useless uranium will be lingering around (including “depleted” U238). And controlling uranium supplies is tricky business, especially with so much natural uranium deposits available in countries with questionable regimes (that tend to deal with each other, disregarding proliferation laws).
And after all, laws and regulations are there to be broken. The only laws we cannot break are the laws of physics.

I just wanted to know how if FF reactor abuse for plutonium breeding is physically possible for someone really determined to do this, or is the answer something like “okay, MAYBE in a 10000 year run you would have enough plutonium for a bomb”. In that case we may discard this threat as very unlikely.

For the fight against proliferation, it’s useless to ban the current hard-to-get technology for making plutonium, only to replace it with a new easy-to-get tool to achieve the same goal.

[Lerner]

While I am not an expert on this, I know that breeding plutonium still requires separation processes to get the plutonium out from the U-238 and the fission products that will be produced by bombarding u-238 and plutonium with neutrons. If you have that level of technology, it is probably just as easy to build a conventional reactor, as the North Koreans did. The main problem is getting hold of the uranium, whihc is in fact fairly tightly controlled and could be much more so in a post-iffsion society, and the separation technology(more than one Pu isotope is produced as well.). So again, controlling those things, which will be uneeded for peaceful purposes becomes much easier with FF.

[Tasmodevil44]

I agree with Lerner that while anything is possible, it seems very unlikely due to the very problematic nature of trying to utilize the FF for this purpose. With the complexity and high cost involved, a regular nuclear fission plant would probably suffice just as well or better than this circuitous route.

[Transmute]

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.

[Tasmodevil44]

But then again, the opinion expressed by lerner and myself may be wrong. When considering the diabolical immagination and ingenuity of rogue terror regimes and dictatorships these days, you could probably even figure out how to eventually make a deadly terror weapon out of a tube of aquafresh toothpaste, a pencil eraser, just about anything ! ! ! As long as we have so many nutcase dictatorships and radical fanatics screaming ” allah akbar ! ! ! ” even the most safe things may not be safe ! ! !

[Author]

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