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To: walden
It reads to me like it was written by someone who wanted to write about this topic, didn't know anything about nuclear processes, went out on the internet, and crammed.

For example, he says that there are two ways of making Pu-239: neutron bombardment and in a reactor where it is made as a byproduct. What happens in a reactor? Neutron bombardment.

He contends that unlike uranium enrichment, plutonium purification is a difficult and more expensive process. That is not true. It is more expensive and difficult to fashion the purified plutonium into a functioning fissile device, but the purification process (which for plutonium is not, as he calls it, an enrichment process) is easier than uranium enrichment-- you don't have to do any isotope separation. So why is it more expensive to make Pu-239 than U-238? Because you make Pu-239 from U-238; you have to purify the uranium and then separate it into its different isotopes just to get to your 'starting point'. If Saddam wanted to make some nukes, it wouldn't be a matter of choosing between Pu based weapons or U based weapons on the matter of the cost- in order to make Pu he would need all the processes to make enriched uranium as part of the deal.

I don't see anything completely wrong in a way that matters other than the idea that no one getting sick yet means only alpha emitters are present. Just a bunch of things that are somewhat wrong and show the author doesn't really know of what he writes.

71 posted on 04/11/2003 3:39:52 AM PDT by William McKinley (You're so vain, you probably think this tagline's about you)
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To: William McKinley
Thank you!
72 posted on 04/11/2003 5:26:48 AM PDT by walden
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To: William McKinley
You sound knowledgable about this so I can ask you this question:

In a bomb U-235 or Plutonium fissions because the nucleus gets hit with a neutron, right? Then it emits more neutrons, which hit other nuclei, etc.

How come sometimes the neutron changes the Uranium to Plutonium and sometimes it causes fission?
74 posted on 04/11/2003 5:50:59 AM PDT by ko_kyi
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