4 ms·
The nice thing about fusion reactors is that they don’t blow up but just don’t work anymore.
by bhaak 1y ago
The nice thing about fusion reactors is that they don’t blow up but just don’t work anymore.
- soperj 1y agothey have fission reactors that have done that since the 60s (CANDU Reactor). They just don't help you produce nuclear bombs...
- greesil 1y agoI dunno dude, if you fuse tritium and deuterium it does make neutrons.
- philipkglass 1y agoCANDU has low intrinsic nuclear proliferation resistance. It can run on natural uranium, so it's easier to fuel than light water reactors which need enriched uranium, and its online fuel-swapping design means that it's easy to switch to low-burnup operation for generating weapons grade plutonium. Current CANDU power reactors have extensive monitoring to confirm that they are used peacefully, but if e.g. South Korea had a security crisis and decided to pursue a crash nuclear weapons program, world opinion be damned, its CANDU based reactors at Wolseong could be quickly reconfigured for weapons purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolseong_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolseong_Nuclear_Power_Plant
- perihelions 1y agoIt's topical that India's nuclear weapons program was started up with a Canadian-supplied heavy water reactor (though not CANDU; a not-power-generating type). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIRUS_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIRUS_reactor > "Canada stipulated, and the U.S. supply contract for the heavy water explicitly specified, that it only be used for peaceful purposes. Nonetheless, CIRUS produced some of India's initial weapons-grade plutonium stockpile,[6] as well as the plutonium for India's 1974 Pokhran-I (Codename Smiling Buddha) nuclear test, the country's first nuclear test.[7]"