Nuclear proliferation – Helian Unbound

Polyanna Pinker’s Power Profundities

Recently Steven Pinker, public intellectual and author of a “history” of the Blank Slate debacle that was largely a fairy tale but at least drew attention to the fact that it happened, has been dabbling in something entirely different. Inspired by the latest UN Jeremiad against climate change, he has embraced nuclear power. In a series of tweets, he has endorsed articles advocating expanded reliance on nuclear power, such as one that recently turned up at Huffpo cleverly entitled “If We’re Going To Save the Planet, We’ve Got To Use the Nuclear Option.” As things now stand, that would be a dangerous, wasteful, and generally ill-advised idea.

I say “as things now stand.” I’m certainly not opposed to nuclear power. I’m just opposed to the way it would be implemented if we suddenly decided to build a bevy of new nukes given current economic realities. The new reactors would probably look like the AP1000 models recently abandoned in South Carolina. Such reactors would use only a fraction of the available energy in their nuclear fuel, and would produce far larger amounts of long-lived radioactive waste than necessary. They are, however, cheaper than alternatives that could avoid both problems using proven technologies. Given the small number of players capable of coming up with the capital necessary to build even these inferior reactors, there is little chance that more rational alternatives will be chosen until alternative sources of energy become a great deal more expensive, or government steps in to subsidize them. Until that happens, we are better off doing without new nuclear reactors.

As noted above, the reasons for this have to do with the efficient utilization of nuclear fuel, and the generation of radioactive waste. In nature there is only one potential nuclear fuel – Uranium 235, or U235. U235 is “fissile,” meaning it may fission if it encounters a neutron no matter how slow that neutron happens to be traveling. As a result, it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction, which is the source of nuclear energy. Unfortunately, natural uranium consists of only 0.7 percent U235. The rest is a heavier isotope – U238. U238 is “fissionable.” In other words, it will fission, but only if it is struck by a very energetic neutron. It cannot sustain a fission chain reaction by itself. However, if U238 absorbs a neutron, it becomes the isotope U239, which quickly decays to neptunium 239, which, in turn, quickly decays to plutonium 239. Plutonium 239 is fissile. It follows that if all the U238 in natural uranium could be converted to Pu239 in this way, it could release vastly more energy than the tiny amount of U235 alone. This is not possible in conventional reactors such as the AP1000 mentioned above. A certain amount of plutonium is produced and burned in the fuel elements of such reactors, but the amount is very small compared to the amount of available U238. In addition, other transuranic elements, such as americium and curium, which are produced in such reactors, along with various isotopes of plutonium, would remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.

These problems could be avoided by building fast breeder reactors. In conventional reactors, neutrons are “thermalized” to low energies, where the probability that they will react with a fuel nucleus are greatly increased. The neutron spectrum in “fast” reactors is significantly hotter but, as a result, more neutrons are produced, on average, in each encounter. More neutrons means that more Pu239 can be produced without quenching the fission chain reaction. It also means that the dangerous transuranic elements referred to above, as well as long lived fission products that are the source of the most long-lived and dangerous radioactive isotopes in nuclear waste, could be destroyed via fission or transmutation. As a result, the residual radioactivity resulting from running such a nuclear reactor for, say 30 years, would drop below that released into the environment by a coal plant of comparable size in 300 to 500 years, as opposed to the thousands of years it would take for conventional reactors. And, yes, radioactivity is released by coal plants, because coal contains several parts per million each of radioactive uranium and thorium. Meanwhile, a far higher percentage of the U238 in natural uranium would be converted to Pu239, resulting in a far more efficient utilization of the fuel material.

An even better alternative might be molten salt reactors. In such reactors, the critical mass would be in liquid form, and would include thorium 232 (Th232) in addition to a fissile isotope. When Th232 absorbs a neutron, it decays into U233, another fissile material. Such reactors could run at a lower neutron “temperature” than plutonium breeders, and would be easier to control as a result. The liquid core would also greatly reduce the danger of a nuclear accident. If it became too hot, it could simply be decanted into a holding pan where it would immediately become subcritical. Thorium is more abundant than uranium in nature, so the “fuel” material would be cheaper.

Consider the above in the context of the present. Instead of extracting the vast amounts of energy locked up in U238, or “depleted” uranium, we use it for tank armor and armor piercing munitions. In addition to this incredibly stupid waste of potentially vast energy resources, we dispose of huge amounts of it as “radioactive waste.” Instead of treasuring our huge stores of plutonium as sources of carbon-free energy, we busy ourselves thinking up clever ways to render them “safe” for burial in waste dumps. It won’t work. Plutonium can never be made “safe” in this way. Pu239 has a half-live of about 25,000 years. It will always be possible to extract it chemically from whatever material we choose to mix it with. Even if it is “reactor grade,” including other isotopes of plutonium such as Pu240, it will still be extremely dangerous – difficult to make into a bomb, to be sure, but easy to assemble into a critical mass that could potentially result in radioactive contamination of large areas. Carefully monitored breeder reactors are the only way of avoiding these problems.

According to the Huffpo article referenced above,

Doesn’t nuclear power contribute to nuclear weapons proliferation? No. Weapons programs do not depend on civilian nuclear power, which operates under stringent international safeguards.

Really? Will the “stringent international safeguards” last for the 25,000 years it takes for even half the plutonium waste produced by conventional reactors to decay? I would advise anyone who thinks it is impossible to fabricate this waste into a bomb, no matter what combination of isotopes it contains, to take an elementary course in nuclear engineering. The only way to avoid this problem is to burn all the plutonium in breeder reactors. Predictably, the article doesn’t even mention the incredible wastefulness of current reactors, or the existence of breeder technology.

It’s nice that a few leftist “progressives” have finally noticed that their narrative on nuclear power has been controlled by imbeciles for the last half a century. I heartily concur that nuclear energy is a potent tool for reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. I simply suggest that, if we decide to return to nuclear, we either provide the subsidies necessary to implement rational nuclear technologies now, or wait until it becomes economically feasible to implement them.

No, We Don’t Need to Resume Nuclear Testing

According to an article entitled In Alarming New Study, Nuclear Lab Scientists Question U.S. Weapons’ Performance that recently appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, a couple of Los Alamos scientists have released a report questioning the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and calling for a resumption of nuclear testing. It would be a bad idea. Let me explain why.

The two scientists claim that the reliability of the aging weapons in our arsenal will become increasingly questionable as the number of years since their “best if used by” date increases. They base their argument largely on uncertainties about whether computer codes will be able to accurately predict the performance of these aging weapons. It’s true that computer codes have not always been perfectly accurate in predicting the outcome of complex physical processes. However, the significance of that fact must be weighed in the context of how it affects all the nuclear powers, not just the United States. In the absence of nuclear testing, we all have the same problem. The relevant question, then, is not whether the problem exists, but how severely it impacts us compared to the other nuclear states. We have conducted more nuclear tests than any other country, and therefore have a much larger database than our competitors with which to compare code predictions. When it comes to computer codes, that gives us a very significant advantage as long as the moratorium on testing continues. That advantage will become a great deal less significant if testing is resumed.

However, computer codes are not the only means we have of assessing the reliability of the weapons in our arsenal. The U.S. also has an unmatched advantage in terms of experimental facilities that are able to access physical conditions relevant to those that occur in nuclear weapons. For example, these include the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories, which is capable of producing a far more powerful burst of x-rays in the laboratory than any competitor, and the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which can dump a huge amount of energy in a tiny target in a very short time. Such facilities can access extreme material densities and temperatures, enabling a host of experiments in weapon physics and weapon effects that are currently beyond the capabilities of any other country. If we resume testing we will be throwing this advantage out the window as well. In short, we may have our problems when it comes to assessing the reliability of the weapons in our arsenal, but the problems faced by our potential competitors are even worse. Under the circumstances, it makes little sense to do something as destabilizing as rocking the nuclear boat.

If we are really worried about the reliability of our arsenal, we should seriously consider adding another experimental facility to go along with Z, NIF, and the rest. I refer to what is known as an Advanced Hydrodynamic Facility, or AHF. We seriously considered building such a facility back in the late 90’s, but have pretty much forgotten about it since then. Basically, the AHF would be a very powerful particle accelerator, capable of delivering beams of energy so penetrating that they could image the critical, high-explosive driven implosion process in nuclear weapons in its entirety in three dimensions. Obviously, it would be necessary to replace the nuclear materials used in real weapons with suitable surrogates, but this would introduce very little uncertainly in the experimental results. An AHF would not only add to our existing advantage over other nuclear states as long as the test moratorium continues, but would effectively lay to rest any remaining uncertainties not resolved by the computer codes and experimental facilities we already have.

I can understand the eagerness of weapon scientists to resume nuclear testing. It would make their lives a lot more interesting. However, it would hardly be to the advantage of the rest of us. I suggest that, instead of unilaterally taking such a foolhardy step, we maintain and expand the advantage we already have and will continue to enjoy as long as the test moratorium continues.

Fisking a Fusion Fata Morgana

Why is it that popular science articles about fusion energy are always so cringe-worthy? Is scientific illiteracy a prerequisite for writing them? Take the latest one to hit the streets, for example. Entitled Lockheed Martin Now Has a Patent For Its Potentially World Changing Fusion Reactor, it had all the familiar “unlimited energy is just around the corner” hubris we’ve come to expect in articles about fusion. When I finished reading it I wondered whether the author imagined all that nonsense on his own, or some devilish plasma physicist put him up to it as a practical joke. The fun starts in the first paragraph, where we are assured that,

If this project has been progressing on schedule, the company could debut a prototype system that size of shipping container, but capable of powering a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or 80,000 homes, sometime in the next year or so.

Trust me, dear reader, barring divine intervention no such prototype system, capable of both generating electric energy and fitting within a volume anywhere near that of a shipping container, will debut in the next year, or the next five years, or the next ten years. Reading on, we learn that,

Unlike in nuclear fission, where atoms hit each other release energy, a fusion reaction involves heating up a gaseous fuel to the point where its atomic structure gets disrupted from the pressure and some of the particles fuse into a heavier nucleus.

Well, not really. Fission is caused by free neutrons, not by “atoms hitting each other.” It would actually be more accurate to say that fusion takes place when “atoms hit each other,” although it’s really the atomic nuclei that “hit” each other. Fusion doesn’t involve “atomic structure getting disrupted from pressure.” Rather, it happens when atoms acquire enough energy to overcome the Coulomb repulsion between two positively charged atomic nuclei (remember, like charges repel), and come within a sufficiently short distance of each other for the much greater strong nuclear force of attraction to take over. According to the author,

But to do this you need to be able to hold the gas, which is eventually in a highly energized plasma state, for a protracted period of time at a temperature of hundreds of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

This is like claiming that a solid can be in a liquid state. A plasma is not a gas. It is a fourth state of matter quite unlike the three (solid, liquid, gas) that most of us are familiar with. Shortly thereafter we are assured that,

Running on approximately 25 pounds of fuel – a mixture of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium – Lockheed Martin estimated the notional reactor would be able to run for an entire year without stopping. The device would be able to generate a constant 100 megawatts of power during that period.

25 pounds of fuel would include about 15 pounds of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen with a half-life of just over 12 years. In other words, its atoms decay about 2000 times faster than those of the plutonium 239 found in nuclear weapons. It’s true that the beta particle (electron) emitted in tritium decay is quite low energy by nuclear standards but, as noted in Wiki, “Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, which allows it to readily bind to hydroxyl radicals, forming tritiated water (HTO), and to carbon atoms. Since tritium is a low energy beta emitter, it is not dangerous externally (its beta particles are unable to penetrate the skin), but it can be a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food or water, or absorbed through the skin.” Obviously, water and many carbon compounds can be easily inhaled or ingested. Tritium is anything but benign if released into the environment. Here we will charitably assume that the author didn’t mean to say that 25 pounds of fuel would be available all at once, but would be bred gradually and then consumed as fuel in the reactor during operation. The amount present at any given time would more appropriately be measured in grams than in pounds. The article continues with rosy scenarios that might have been lifted from a “Back to the Future” movie:

Those same benefits could apply to vehicles on land, ships at sea, or craft in space, providing nearly unlimited power in compact form allowing for operations across large areas, effectively eliminating the tyranny of distance in many cases. Again, for military applications, unmanned ground vehicles or ships could patrol indefinitely far removed from traditional logistics chains and satellites could conduct long-term, resource intensive activities without the need for large and potentially dangerous fission reactors.

Great shades of “Dr. Fusion!” Let’s just say that “vehicles on land” is a bit of a stretch. I can only hope that no Lockheed engineer was mean-spirited enough to feed the author such nonsense. Moving right along, we read,

Therein lies perhaps the biggest potential benefits of nuclear fusion over fission. It’s produces no emissions dangerous to the ozone layer and if the system fails it doesn’t pose nearly the same threat of a large scale radiological incident. Both deuterium and tritium are commonly found in a number of regular commercial applications and are relatively harmless in low doses.

I have no idea what “emission” of the fission process the author thinks is “dangerous to the ozone layer.” Again, as noted above, tritium is anything but “relatively harmless” if ingested. Next we find perhaps the worst piece of disinformation of all:

And since a fusion reactor doesn’t need refined fissile material, its much harder for it to serve as a starting place for a nuclear weapons program.

Good grief, the highly energetic neutrons produced in a fusion reactor are not only capable of breeding tritium, but plutonium 239 and uranium 233 from naturally occurring uranium and thorium as well. Both are superb explosive fuels for nuclear weapons. And tritium? It is used in a process known as “boosting” to improve the performance of nuclear weapons. Finally, we run into what might be called the Achilles heel of all tritium-based fusion reactor designs:

Fuel would also be abundant and relatively easy to source, since sea water provides a nearly unlimited source of deuterium, while there are ready sources of lithium to provide the starting place for scientists to “breed” tritium.

I think not. Breeding tritium will be anything but a piece of cake. The process will involve capturing the neutrons produced by the fusion reactions in a lithium blanket surrounding the reactor, doing so efficiently enough to generate more tritium from the resulting reactions than the reactor consumes as fuel, and then extracting the tritium and recycling it into the reactor without releasing any of the slippery stuff into the environment. Do you think the same caliber of engineers who brought us Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island will be able to pull that rabbit out of their hats without a hitch? If so, you’re more optimistic than I am.

Hey, I like to be as optimistic about fusion as it’s reasonable to be. I think it’s certainly possible that some startup company with a bright idea will find the magic bullet that makes fusion reactors feasible, preferably involving fusion reactions that don’t involve tritium. It’s also quite possible that the guys at Lockheed will achieve breakeven, although getting a high enough gain of energy in versus energy out to enable efficient generation of electric power is another matter. There’s a difference between optimism and scientifically illiterate hubris, though. Is it too much to ask that people who write articles about fusion at least run them by somebody who actually knows something about the subject to see if they pass the “ho, ho” test before publishing? What’s that you say? What about me? Please read the story about the Little Red Hen.

Whither Nuclear Power? A Few Comments on Thorium and the End of the “Nuclear Renaissance”

About a decade ago there was much talk of a “nuclear renaissance” amid concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and the increasing cost of fossil fuel alternatives. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission received applications to build no less than 31 new nuclear plants as the price of crude oil spiked to over $140 per barrel. Now, however, with last month’s decision by SCANA Corp. to abandon the V. C. Summer project, a pair of nukes that had been under construction in South Carolina, nuclear’s future prospects look dim, at least in the United States. Two plants remain under construction in Georgia but, like the ones abandoned in South Carolina, they are to be AP1000s, designed by Westinghouse. Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March. Delays and massive cost overruns similar to those that led to the demise of V. C. Summer also afflict the Georgia project, and its future seems doubtful at best.

In short, the dream of a nuclear renaissance has evaporated. For the time being, at least, nuclear in the U.S. is no match for more agile competitors like wind, solar, and natural gas. However, there may be a silver lining to this cloud. Plants like Westinghouse’s AP1000 waste most of the energy in their nuclear fuel, creating massive amounts of avoidable radioactive waste in the process. To the extent that it makes sense to build nuclear plants at all, these are not the kind we should be building. To understand why this is true it is first necessary to acquire some elementary knowledge about nuclear physics.

The source of the energy produced in the core of nuclear reactors is a nuclear fission chain reaction. Only one material that exists in significant quantities in nature can sustain such a chain reaction – uranium 235, or U235. U235 is an isotope of uranium. Isotopes of a given element consist of atoms with the same number of positively charged protons in their central core, or nucleus. Like all other isotopes of uranium, U235 has 92. There are also 143 neutrally charged neutrons, making a total of 235 “nucleons.” Natural uranium consists of only about 0.7 percent U235. Almost all the rest is a different isotope, U238, with a nucleus containing 146 neutrons instead of 143.

When we say that U235 can sustain a nuclear chain reaction, we mean that if a free neutron happens to come within a very short distance of its nucleus, it may be captured, releasing enough energy in the process to cause the nucleus to split into two fragments. When this happens, more free neutrons are released, that can then be captured by other uranium nuclei, which, in turn, fission, releasing yet more neutrons, and so on. As noted above, U235 is the only naturally occurring isotope that can sustain such a nuclear chain reaction. However, other isotopes can be created artificially that can do so as well. The most important of these are U233 and plutonium 239, or Pu239. They are important because it is possible to “breed” them in properly designed nuclear reactors, potentially producing more usable fuel than the reactor consumes. U233 is produced by the reactions following absorption of a neutron by thorium 232, or Th232, and Pu239 by those following the absorption of a neutron by U238. In other words, we know of three practical types of nuclear fuel; U235, U233 and Pu239. The first occurs naturally, and the other two can be readily “bred” artificially in nuclear reactors.

Let’s consider what this means in the case of conventional nuclear reactors like the Westinghouse AP1000. These are powered by fuel elements that typically are enriched in U235 from the naturally occurring 0.7 percent to from three to five percent. The remaining 95 to 97 percent of the uranium in these fuel elements is U238. When the fission process starts, some of the neutrons released are captured by the U238, eventually resulting in the production of Pu239. Some of this plutonium fissions along with the U235, contributing to the total energy produced by the fuel elements. However, only a small fraction of the U238 is converted to Pu239 in this way before the fuel is consumed and it becomes necessary to replace the old fuel elements with fresh ones. In addition to a great deal of U238, these spent fuel elements contain a significant amount of plutonium, as well as other transuranic elements such as americium and curium, which can remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. The “waste” plutonium might even be used to produce a nuclear weapon.

Obviously, if possible it would be better to extract all the energy locked up in natural uranium rather than just a small fraction of it. In fact, it is possible, or very nearly so. Breeder reactors are feasible that could burn nearly all the U238 in natural uranium as well as the U235 by converting it into Pu239. In the process they could destroy much of the transuranic waste that is the main source of radioactive danger from spent fuel. In as little as 500 years the residual radioactivity from running a nuclear plant for 30 years could potentially be less than that of the original naturally occurring uranium. Unfortunately, while all this is scientifically feasible, it is not economically feasible. It won’t happen without massive government subsidies. Perhaps such subsidies are warranted in view of the threat of climate change and perhaps not, but, regardless, breeder reactors won’t be built without them. Since they are really the only types of reactors it makes sense to build, we would probably be better off, at least for the time being, building no reactors at all. That’s the “silver lining” I referred to above. Perhaps a time will come when the world runs out of expendable sources of base load electrical power, such as oil, coal and natural gas, and no way has been found to take up the slack with renewables. In that case, it may once again make economic sense to build breeder reactors. Until that time, the United States would do well to build up a healthy stockpile of uranium, and put a stop to the stupid, wasteful, and counterproductive use of depleted uranium that could potentially become a source of vast amounts of energy to produce munitions and armor.

But wait, there’s more! What about thorium? Thorium by itself can’t sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It can, however, be converted into U233 by neutron absorption, and that is an ideal reactor fuel. Among other things, it generates more neutrons per fission at lower neutron “temperatures” than either Pu239 or U235. That means that extra neutrons are available to “breed” fuel at those lower temperatures where nuclear reactors are easier to control. By “temperature” here, we’re referring to the average speed of the neutrons. The slower they are, the more likely they are to be absorbed by a nucleus and cause fission reactions. Neutrons are slowed in “moderators,” which can be any number of light types of atoms. The most common is plain water, consisting of the elements hydrogen and oxygen. Think of a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball head on. It comes to a complete stop, transferring its energy to the other ball. The same thing can happen with neutrons and the proton nucleus of hydrogen atoms, which are of approximately equal mass. To breed plutonium effectively, reactors must be run at significantly higher neutron temperatures.

There’s more good news about thorium. It can be dissolved in various exotic mixtures and breed U233 in a reactor with a liquid instead of a solid core. This would have a number of advantages. In the first place, a “meltdown” would be impossible in a core that’s already “melted.” If the core became too “hot” it could simply be drained into a holding pan to form a subcritical mass that would quickly cool. It would also be possible to extract waste fission products and introduce fresh fuel, etc., into the core “on the fly.” As a result the reactor would be able to stay in operation longer between shutdowns for maintenance and refueling. The necessary technology has already been demonstrated at places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Recently, a Dutch team finally began experiments with molten salt technology intended to take up where these earlier experiments left off after a hiatus of more than 40 years.

Perhaps thorium’s biggest problem is the tendency of its proponents to over-hype its promise. It even has a founding myth based on bogus claims that thorium technology isn’t dominant in the energy industry today because “it’s much harder to weaponize.” For example, according to the article about the Dutch experiments linked above, entitled, ‘Safer’ thorium reactor trials could salvage nuclear power,

But, if it’s so safe and reliable why hasn’t thorium been used all along? Because (unlike uranium) it’s much harder to weaponize. As a result, it’s historically been sidelined by nations in search of both energy and a potential source of weapons-grade plutonium.

This yarn about a benign source of energy that might have benefited all mankind being torpedoed by evil weaponeers might sound good, but it’s complete nonsense. Thorium itself can’t be weaponized, because it can’t sustain a nuclear chain reaction on its own. The sole reason there’s any interest in it at all as a source of nuclear power is the possibility of transmuting it to U233. Of course, it can’t be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. However, there is no better material for making nuclear bombs than U233. As is the case with Pu239, four kilograms is sufficient to make a nuclear weapon, compared to the 25 kilograms that is a sufficient quantity of U235. It’s main drawback as a weapons material is the fact that small amounts of U232 are produced along with it in thorium-based reactors, and U232 decays into radioactive daughters that are deadly sources of powerful gamma rays. However, the amount of U232 produced can be reduced dramatically by cooling the neutron spectrum to a low “temperature.” In short, thorium could definitely be used to make weapons. The reason it isn’t the dominant technology for that purpose is the same as the reason it isn’t the dominant technology for producing electric power; it would be significantly more complex and expensive than using natural or slightly enriched uranium as a fuel. That reason is as valid now as it was in the days of Little Boy and Fat Man. The “dominant technology” would be the same as it is today whether nuclear weapons had ever been produced or not.

When it comes to the technology itself, thorium proponents also tend to be coy about mentioning problems that don’t afflict other reactor types. For example, the materials needed for practical molten salt reactors are extremely corrosive. There has been progress towards finding a metal that can hold them, but no ideal alloy has yet been found. This isn’t necessarily a show stopper, but it’s not an insignificant problem, either. Such material issues have been largely solved for conventional reactors. If, as would seem to be the case, these are no longer economically competitive with their rivals, then molten salt is pretty much out of the question, at least for the time being. It’s important to point out that, if breeder reactors ever do become economically feasible again, it will always be necessary to insure that they are secure, and that the materials they produce can’t be diverted for making weapons. That concern applies to both plutonium and thorium breeders.

Meanwhile, it might behoove our political leaders to consider the question of why it was once possible to build more than 50 experimental reactors at what is now Idaho National Laboratory alone in a relatively short period of time for a small fraction of what similar reactors would cost today. Merely negotiating the regulatory hurdles for building a power reactor based on anything as novel as the thorium fuel cycle would take the better part of a decade. All these hurdles have been put in place in the name of “safety.” That begs the question of how “safe” we will be if we lack reliable sources of electric energy. There is a point beyond which excessive regulation itself becomes unsafe.

The Bomb and the Nuclear Posture Review

A Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is a legislatively mandated review, typically conducted every five to ten years. It assesses such things as the role, safety and reliability of the weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile, the status of facilities in the nuclear weapons complex, and nuclear weapons policy in areas such as nonproliferation and arms control. The last one was conducted in 2010. The Trump Administration directed that another one be conducted this year, and the review is already in its initial stages. It should be finished by the end of the year. There is reason for concern about what the final product might look like.

Trump has made statements to the effect that the U.S. should “expand its nuclear capability,” and that, “We have nuclear arsenals that are in very terrible shape. They don’t even know if they work.” Such statements have typically been qualified by his aides. It’s hard to tell whether they reflect serious policy commitments, or just vague impressions based on a few minutes of conversation with some Pentagon wonk. In fact, there are deep differences of opinion about these matters within the nuclear establishment. That’s why the eventual content of the NPR might be problematic. There have always been people within the nuclear establishment, whether at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency within the Department of Energy responsible for maintaining the stockpile, or in the military, who are champing at the bit to resume nuclear testing. Occasionally they will bluntly question the reliability of the weapons in our stockpile, even though by that very act they diminish the credibility of our nuclear deterrent. If Trump’s comments are to be taken seriously, the next NPR may reflect the fact that they have gained the upper hand. That would be unfortunate.

Is it really true that the weapons in our arsenal are “in very terrible shape,” and we “don’t even know if they work?” I doubt it. In the first place, the law requires that both the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense sign off on an annual assessment that certifies the safety and reliability of the stockpile. They have never failed to submit that certification. Beyond that, the weapons in our stockpile are the final product of more than 1000 nuclear tests. They are both safe and robust. Any credible challenge to their safety and reliability must cite some plausible reason why they might fail. I know of no such reason.

For the sake of argument, let’s consider what might go wrong. Modern weapons typically consist of a primary and a secondary. The primary consists of a hollow “pit” of highly enriched uranium or plutonium surrounded by high explosive. Often it is filled with a “boost” gas consisting of a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two heavy isotopes of hydrogen. When the weapon is used, the high explosive implodes the pit, causing it to form a dense mass that is highly supercritical. At the same time, nuclear fusion takes place in the boost gas, producing highly energetic neutrons that enhance the yield of the primary. At the right moment an “initiator” sends a burst of neutrons into the imploded pit, setting off a chain reaction that results in a nuclear explosion. Some of the tremendous energy released in this explosion in the form of x-rays then implodes the secondary, causing it, too, to explode, adding to the yield of the weapon.

What could go wrong? Of course, explosives are volatile. Those used to implode the primary might deteriorate over time. However, these explosives are carefully monitored to detect any such deterioration. Other than that, the tritium in the boost gas is radioactive, and has a half life of only a little over 12 years. It will gradually decay into helium, reducing the effectiveness of boosting. This, too, however is a well understood process, and one which is carefully monitored and compensated for by timely replacement of the tritium. Corrosion of key parts might occur, but this too, is carefully checked, and the potential sources are well understood. All these potential sources of uncertainty affect the primary. However, much of the uncertainty about their effects can be eliminated experimentally. Of course, the experiments can’t include actual nuclear explosions, but surrogate materials can be substituted for the uranium and plutonium in the pit with similar properties. The implosion process can then be observed using powerful x-ray or proton beams. Unfortunately, our experimental capabilities in this area are limited. We cannot observe the implosion process all the way from the initial explosion to the point at which maximum density is achieved in three dimensions taking “snapshots” at optimally short intervals. To do that, we would need what has been referred to as an Advanced Hydrodynamic Facility, or AHF.

We currently have an unmatched suite of above ground experimental facilities for studying the effects of aging on the weapons in our stockpile, including the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratories, and the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility (DARHT) at Los Alamos. These give us a very significant leg up on the international competition when it comes to maintaining our stockpile. That is a major reason why it would be foolish for us to resume nuclear testing. We would be throwing away this advantage. Unfortunately, while we once seriously considered building an AHF, basically an extremely powerful accelerator, we never got around to doing so. It was a serious mistake. If we had such a facility, it would effectively pull the rug out from under the feet of those who want to resume testing. It would render all arguments to the effect that “we don’t even know if they work” moot. We could demonstrate with a very high level of confidence that they will indeed work.

But that’s water under the bridge. We must hope that cooler heads prevail, and the NPR doesn’t turn out to be a polemic challenging the credibility of the stockpile and advising a resumption of testing. We’re likely to find out one way or the other before the end of the year. Keep your fingers crossed.

3+2: More Tinkering with the Nuclear Arsenal

It really seems as if the weapon designers at the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia, never really believed that nuclear testing would ever end. If so, they were singularly blind to the consequences. Instead of taking the approach apparently adopted by the Russians of designing and testing robust warheads that could simply be scrapped and replaced with newly manufactured ones at the end of their service life, they decided to depend on a constant process of refurbishing old warheads, eliminating the ability to make new ones in the process. When our weapons got too old, they would be repeatedly patched up in so-called Life Extension Programs, or LEPs. Apparently it began to occur to an increasing number of people in the weapons community that maintaining the safety and reliability of the stockpile indefinitely using that approach might be a bit problematic.

The first “solution” to the problem proposed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for maintaining the nuclear stockpile, was the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). It was to be robust, easy to manufacture, and easy to maintain. It was also a new, untested design. As such, it would have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Article VI of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). If it had been built, it would also very likely have forced violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the U.S. has signed, but never ratified. It was claimed that the RRW could be built and certified without testing. This was very probably nonsense. There have always been more or less influential voices within NNSA, the Department of Defense (DoD), and the weapons labs, in favor of a return to nuclear testing. That would not have been a good thing then, and I doubt that it will be a good thing at any foreseeable time in the future. In general, I think we should do our best to keep the nuclear genie bottled up as long as possible. Fortunately, Congress agreed and killed the RRW Program.

That didn’t stop the weaponeers. They just tried a new gambit. It’s called the “3+2 Strategy.” There are currently four types of ballistic missile warheads, two bombs, and a cruise missile warhead in the U.S. arsenal. The basic idea of 3+2 would be to reduce this to three “interoperable” ballistic missile warheads and two air delivered weapons (a bomb and a cruise missile), explaining the “3+2.” In the process, the conventional chemical explosives that drive the implosion of the “atomic bomb” stage of the weapons would be replaced by insensitive high explosives (IHE). The result would supposedly be a safer, more secure stockpile that would be easier to maintain. The price tag, in round numbers, would be $60 billion.

I can only hope Congress will be as quick to deep six 3+2 as it was with the RRW. The 3+2 will require tinkering not only with the bits surrounding the nuclear explosive package (NEP), but with the NEP itself. In other words, its just as much a violation of the spirit of Article VI of the NPT as was the RRW. The predictable result of any such changes will be the “sudden realization” by the weapons labs somewhere down the line that they can’t certify the new designs without a return to nuclear testing. There’s a better and, in the long run, probably cheaper way to maintain the stockpile.

In the first place, we need to stop relying on LEPs, and return to manufacturing replacement weapons. The common argument against this is that we have lost the ability to manufacture critical parts of our weapons since the end of testing, and in some cases the facilities and companies that supplied the parts no longer exist. Nonsense! The idea that a country responsible for a quarter of the entire world’s GDP has lost the ability to reproduce the weapons it was once able to design, build and test in a few years is ridiculous. We are told that subtle changes in materials might somehow severely degrade the performance of remanufactured weapons. I doubt it. Regardless, DOE has always known there was a solution to that problem. It’s called the Advanced Hydrodynamic Facility, or AHF.

Basically, the AHF would be a giant accelerator facility capable of producing beams that would be able to image an imploding nuclear weapon pit in three dimensions and at several times during the implosion. Serious studies of such a facility were done as long ago as the mid-90’s, and there is no doubt that it is feasible. In actual experiments, of course, highly enriched uranium and plutonium would be replaced by surrogate materials such as tungsten, but they would still determine with a high degree of confidence whether a given remanufactured primary would work or not. The primary, or “atomic bomb” part of a weapon supplies the energy that sets off the secondary, or thermonuclear part. If the primary, of a weapon works, then there can be little doubt that the secondary will work as well. The AHF would be expensive, which is probably the reason it still hasn’t been built. Given the $60 billion cost of 3+2, that decision may well prove to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

The whole point of having a nuclear arsenal is its ability to deter enemies from attacking us. Every time people who are supposed to be the experts about such things question the reliability of our stockpile, they detract from its ability to deter. I think a remanufacturing capability along with the AHF is the best way to shut them up, preventing a very bad decision to resume nuclear testing in the process. I suggest we get on with it.

Nuclear Update: Molten Salt, Rugby Balls, and the Advanced Hydrodynamic Facility

I hear at 7th or 8th hand that the folks at DOE have been seriously scratching their heads about the possibility of building a demonstration molten salt reactor. They come in various flavors, but the “default” version is a breeder, capable of extracting far more energy from a given quantity of fuel material than current reactors by converting thorium into fissile uranium 233. As they would have a liquid core, the possibility of a meltdown would be eliminated. The copious production of neutrons in such reactors would make it possible to destroy the transuranic actinides, such as americium and curium, and, potentially, also some of the most long-lived radioactive products produced in fission reactions. As a result, the residual radioactivity from running such a reactor for, say, 30 years, would potentially be less than that of the ore from which the fuel was originally extracted in under 500 years, a far cry from the millions commonly cited by anti-nuke alarmists. Such reactors would be particularly attractive for the United States, because we have the largest proven reserves of thorium on the planet. Disadvantages include the fact that uranium 233 is a potential bomb material, and therefore a proliferation concern, and the highly corrosive nature of the fluoride and/or chloride “salts” in the reactor core. More detailed discussions of the advantages and disadvantages may be found here and here.

The chances that the U.S. government will actually provide the funding necessary to build a molten salt or any other kind of advanced reactor are, unfortunately, slim and none. We could do such things in the 50’s and 60’s with alacrity, but those days are long gone, and the country seems to have fallen victim to a form of technological palsy. That’s too bad, because private industry won’t take up the slack. To the extent they’re interested in nuclear at all, the profit motive rules. At the moment, the most profitable way to generate nuclear energy is with reactors that simply burn naturally occurring uranium, wasting the lion’s share of the potential energy content, and generating copious amounts of long-lived radioactive waste for which no rational long term storage solution has yet been devised. In theory, DOE’s national laboratories should be stepping in to take up the slack, doing the things that industry can’t or won’t do. In reality what they do is generate massive stacks of paper studies and reports on advanced systems that have no chance of being built. Enough must have accumulated since the last research reactor was actually built at any of the national labs to stretch back and forth to the moon several times. Oh, well, we can take comfort in the knowledge that at least some people at DOE are thinking about the possibilities.

Moving right along, as most of my readers are aware, the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, did not live up to its name. It failed to achieve inertial confinement fusion (ICF) ignition in the most recent round of experiments, missing that elusive goal by nearly two orders of magnitude. The NIF is a giant, 192 beam laser system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) that focuses all of its 1.8 megajoules of laser energy on a tiny target containing deuterium and tritium, two heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Instead of generating energy by splitting or “fissioning” heavy atoms, the goal is to get these light elements to “fuse,” releasing massive amounts of energy.

Actually, the beams don’t hit the target itself. Instead they’re focused through two holes in the ends of a tiny cylinder, known as a hohlraum, that holds a “capsule” of fuel material mounted in its center. It’s what’s known as the indirect drive approach to ICF, as opposed to direct drive, in which the beams are focused directly on a target containing the fuel material. When the beams hit the inside walls of the cylinder they generate a burst of x-rays. These are what actually illuminate the target, causing it to implode to extremely high densities. At just the right moment a “hot spot” is created in the very center of this dense, imploded fuel material, where fusion ignition begins. The fusion reactions create alpha particles, helium nuclei containing two neutrons and two protons, which then smash into the surrounding “cold” fuel material, causing it to ignite as well, resulting in a “burn wave,” which spreads outward, igniting the rest of the fuel. For this to happen, everything has to be just right. The most important thing is that the implosion be almost perfectly symmetric, so that the capsule isn’t squished into a “pancake,” or squashed into a “sausage,” but is very nearly spherical at the point of highest density.

Obviously, everything wasn’t just right in the recently concluded ignition experiments. There are many potential reasons for this. Material blowing off the hohlraum walls could expand into the interior in unforeseen ways, intercepting some of the laser light and/or x-rays, resulting in asymmetric illumination of the capsule. So-called laser/plasma interactions with abstruse names like stimulated Raman scattering, stimulated Brillouin scattering, and two plasmon decay, could be more significant than expected, absorbing laser light so as to prevent symmetric illumination and at the same time generating hot electrons that could potentially preheat the fuel, making it much more difficult to implode and ignite. There are several other potential failure mechanisms, all of which are extremely difficult to model on even the most powerful computers, especially in all three dimensions.

LLNL isn’t throwing in the towel, though. In fact, there are several promising alternatives to indirect drive with cylindrical hohlraums. One that recently showed promise in experiments on the much smaller OMEGA laser system at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) is substitution of “rugby ball” shaped targets in place of the “traditional” cylinders. According to the paper cited in the link, these “exhibit advantages over cylinders, in terms of temperature and of symmetry control of the capsule implosion.” LLNL could also try hitting the targets with “green” laser light instead of the current “blue.” The laser light is initially “red,” but is currently doubled and then tripled in frequency by passing it through slabs of a special crystal material, shortening its wavelength to the shorter “blue” wavelength, which is absorbed more efficiently. However, each time the wavelength is shortened, energy is lost. If “green” light were used, as much as 4 megajoules of energy could be focused on the target instead of the current maximum of around 1.8. If “green” is absorbed well enough and doesn’t set off excessive laser/plasma interactions, the additional energy just might be enough to do the trick. Other possible approaches include direct drive, hitting the fuel containing target directly with the laser beams, and “fast ignitor,” in which a separate laser beam is used to ignite a hot spot on the outside of the “cold,” imploded fuel material instead of relying on the complicated central hot spot approach.

Regardless of whether ignition is achieved on the NIF or not, it will remain an extremely valuable experimental facility. The reason? Even without ignition it can generate extreme material conditions that are relevant to those that exist in exploding nuclear weapons. As a result, it gives us a significant leg up over other nuclear weapons states in an era of no nuclear testing by enabling us to field experiments relevant to the effects of aging on the weapons in our stockpile, and suggesting ways to insure they remain safe and reliable. Which brings us to the final topic of this post, the Advanced Hydrodynamic Facility, or AHF.

The possibility of building such a beast was actively discussed and studied back in the 90’s, but Google it now and you’ll turn up very little. It would behoove us to start thinking seriously about it again. In modern nuclear weapons, conventional explosives are used to implode a “pit” of fissile material to supercritical conditions. The implosion must be highly symmetric or the pit will “fizzle,” failing to produce enough energy to set off the thermonuclear “secondary” of the weapon that produces most of the yield. The biggest uncertainty we face in maintaining the safety and reliability of our stockpile is the degree to which the possible deterioration of explosives, fusing systems, etc., will impair the implosion of the pit. Basically, an AHF would be a system of massive particle accelerators capable of generating bursts of hard x-rays, or, alternatively, protons, powerful enough to image the implosion of the fission “pit” of a nuclear weapon at multiple points in time and in three dimensions. Currently we have facilities such as the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility (DARHT) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), but it only enables us study the implosion of small samples of surrogate pit material. An AHF would be able to image the implosion of actual pits, with physically similar surrogate materials replacing the fissile material.

Obviously, such experiments could not be conducted in a conventional laboratory. Ideally, the facility would be built at a place like the Nevada Test Site (NTS) north of Las Vegas. Experiments would be fielded underground in the same way that actual nuclear tests were once conducted there. That would have the advantage of keeping us prepared to conduct actual nuclear tests within a reasonably short time if we should ever be forced to do so, for example, by the resumption of testing by other nuclear powers. With an AHF we could be virtually certain that the pits of the weapons in our arsenal will work for an indefinite time into the future. If the pit works, we will also be virtually certain that the secondary will work as well, and the reliability of the weapons in our stockpile will be assured.

Isn’t the AHF just a weaponeer’s wet dream? Why is it really necessary? Mainly because it would remove once and for all any credible argument for the resumption of nuclear testing. Resumption of testing would certainly increase the nuclear danger to mankind, and, IMHO, is to be avoided at all costs. Not everyone in the military and weapons communities agrees. Some are champing at the bit for a resumption of testing. They argue that our stockpile cannot be a reliable deterrent if we are not even sure if our weapons will still work. With an AHF, we can be sure. It’s high time for us to dust off those old studies and give some serious thought to building it.

Do We Really Need New Nukes?

If an article that just appeared in the LA Times is any indication, the agitation for jump-starting the nuclear weapons program at the Department of Energy (DOE) and the three nuclear weapons laboratories (Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories) continues unabated. Entitled “New nuclear weapons needed, many experts say, pointing to aged arsenal,” it cites all the usual talking points of the weaponeers. For example,

Warheads in the nation’s stockpile are an average of 27 years old, which raises serious concerns about their reliability, they say. Provocative nuclear threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin have added to the pressure to not only design new weapons but conduct underground tests for the first time since 1992.

“It seems like common sense to me if you’re trying to keep an aging machine alive that’s well past its design life, then you’re treading on thin ice,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman-elect of the House Armed Services Committee. “Not to mention, we’re spending more and more to keep these things going.”

Thornbury also offered support for renewed testing, saying, “You don’t know how a car performs unless you turn the key over. Why would we accept anything less from a weapon that provides the foundation for which all our national security is based on?”

Such comments are entirely typical. They would make a lot of sense if the U.S. nuclear weapons program existed in a vacuum. However, it doesn’t. It exists in a world with several other major nuclear powers, and they all have the same problems. Under the circumstances, the fact that such problems exist and are shared by all the nuclear powers is less significant than the question of which nuclear power is best equipped to deal with them. The question of who will benefit by the building of new weapons and a resumption of nuclear testing depends on the answer to that question. If one country has a significant advantage over its rivals in dealing with a common problem as long as the status quo is maintained, then it would be very ill-advised to initiate a change to the status quo that would allow them to catch up. At the moment, the United States is the country with an advantage. As noted in the article,

The U.S. has by far the greatest archive of test data, having conducted 1,032 nuclear tests. Russia conducted 715 and China only 45.

Beyond that, we have the ability to conduct tests with conventional explosives that mimic what goes on in the initial stages of a nuclear explosion, and superb diagnostics to extract a maximum of data from those tests. Perhaps more importantly, we have an unrivaled above ground experimental, or AGEX, capability. I refer to machines like Z at Sandia National Laboratories, or the NIF at Livermore, which are far more capable and powerful than similar facilities anywhere else in the world. Those who say they can’t access physical conditions relevant to those that occur in exploding nuclear weapons, or that they are useless for weapon effects or weapon physics experiments, either don’t know what they’re talking about or are attempting to deceive.

As far as the NIF is concerned, it is quite true that it has so far failed to achieve its fusion ignition milestone, but that by no means rules out the possibility that it ever will. More importantly, the NIF will remain a highly useful AGEX facility whether it achieves ignition or not. Indeed, before it was built, many of the weapons designers showed little interest in ignition. It would merely “muddy the waters,” making it more difficult for the diagnostics to precisely record the results of an experiment. The NIF could access weapons-relevant conditions without it. In fact, in spite of its failure to achieve ignition to date, the NIF has been a spectacular success as far as achieving its specifications are concerned. It is more than an order of magnitude more powerful than any previously existing laser system, its 192 laser beams are highly accurate, and its diagnostic suite is superb.

Another problem with the resumption of testing is that it will lead to the development of weapons that are much more likely to be used. Once the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, it will likely prove very difficult to put it back in. For example, again quoting the article,

John S. Foster Jr., former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and chief of Pentagon research during the Cold War, said the labs should design, develop and build prototype weapons that may be needed by the military in the future, including a very low-yield nuclear weapon that could be used with precision delivery systems, an electromagnetic pulse weapon that could destroy an enemy’s communications systems and a penetrating weapon to destroy deeply buried targets.

The commonly heard narrative at DOE goes something like this: “We need to develop small, precise, penetrating nuclear weapons because they will be a much better deterrent than the existing ones. Potential enemies are unlikely to believe that we would ever use one of the high yield weapons that are all that remain in the current arsenal. They would be far more likely to believe that we might use a small bunker buster that would minimize the possibility of significant collateral damage.” The problem with that narrative is that it’s true. We would be far more likely to use such a weapon than the ones in the current arsenal, and there would be no lack of voices within DOE and DoD calling for its use if an appropriate opportunity ever arose.

I can understand the agitation for a resumption of testing. It’s a lot sexier to make things that go boom than to serve as custodians for an aging pile of existing nukes. Unfortunately, the latter course is the wiser one. By resuming nuclear testing we would really be unilaterally surrendering a huge advantage, playing into the hands of our enemies and destabilizing the nuclear landscape at the same time.

Comments on Some Comments on the National Ignition Facility

We live in a dauntingly complex world. Progress in the world of science is relevant to all of us, yet it is extremely difficult, although certainly not impossible, for the intelligent layperson to gain a useful understanding of what is actually going on. I say “not impossible” because I believe it’s possible for non-experts to gain enough knowledge to usefully contribute to the conversation about the technological and social relevance of a given scientific specialty, if not of its abstruse details, assuming they are willing to put in the effort. Indeed, when it comes to social relevance it’s not out of the question for them to become more knowledgeable than the scientists themselves, narrowly focused as they often are on a particular specialty.

To illustrate my point, I invite my readers to take a look at a post that recently appeared on the blog LLNL – The True Story. LLNL, or Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is one of the nation’s three major nuclear weapons research laboratories. It is also home of the National Ignition Facility, which, as its name implies, was designed to achieve fusion “ignition” by focusing a giant assembly of 192 powerful laser beams on tiny targets containing a mixture of deuterium and tritium fuel. The process itself is called inertial confinement fusion, or ICF. Ignition is variously defined, but as far as the NIF is concerned LLNL officially accepted the definition as fusion energy out equal to total laser energy in, in the presence of members of a National Academy of Sciences oversight committee. This is a definition that puts it on a level playing field with the competing magnetic confinement approach to fusion.

According to the blurb that appears on the home page of LLNL – The True Story, its purpose is “for LLNL present and past employees, friends of LLNL and anyone impacted by the privatization of the Lab to express their opinions and expose the waste, wrongdoing and any kind of injustice against employees and taxpayers by LLNS/DOE/NNSA.” The post in question is entitled ICF Program is now Officially Owned by WCI (Weapons and Concepts Integration). It’s certainly harmless enough as it stands, consisting only of the line,

ICF program is now officially owned by WCI. A step forward or an attempt to bury it out of sight?

This is followed by an apparently broken link to the story referred to. This gist can probably be found here. Presumably the author suspects LLNL might want to “bury it out of sight” because the first attempt to achieve ignition, known as the National Ignition Campaign, or NIC, failed to achieve its goal. What’s really of interest is not the post itself, but the comments following it. The commenters are all listed as “anonymous,” but given the nature of the blog we can probably assume that most of them are scientists of one tribe or another. Let’s take a look at what they have to say. According to the first “anonymous,”

If (takeover of NIF by WCI) is an attempt to keep funding flowing by switching milestones from energy independence to weapons research. “Contingency Plan B”.

Another “anonymous” writes in a similar vein:

Reading between the lines it is clear that the new energy source mission of the NIF is over and now it’s time to justify the unjustifiable costs by claiming it’s a great too for weapons research.

Perhaps the second commenter would have done better to read the lines as they stand rather than between them. In that case he would have noticed that energy independence was never an official NIF milestone, not to mention its “mission.” NIF was funded for the purpose of weapons research from the start. This fact was never in any way a deep, dark secret, and has long been obvious to anyone willing to take the trouble to consult the relevant publicly accessible documents. The Inertial Confinement Fusion Advisory Committee, a Federal Advisory Committee that met intermittently in the early to mid-90’s, and whose member included a bevy of heavyweights in plasma physics and related specialties, was certainly aware of the fact, and recommended funding of the facility with the single dissenting vote of Tim Coffey, then Director of the Naval Research Laboratory, based on that awareness.

Be that as it may, the claim that the technology could also end our dependence on fossil fuel, often made by the NIF’s defenders, is credible. By “credible” I mean that many highly capable scientists have long held and continue to hold that opinion. As it happens, I don’t. Assuming we find a way to achieve ignition and high gain in the laboratory, it will certainly become scientifically feasible to generate energy with ICF power plants. However, IMHO it will never be economically feasible, for reasons I have outline in earlier posts. Regardless, from a public relations standpoint, it was obviously preferable to evoke the potential of the NIF as a clean source of energy rather than a weapons project designed to maintain the safety and reliability of our nuclear arsenal, as essential as that capability may actually be. In spite of my own personal opinion on the subject, these claims were neither disingenuous nor mere “hype.”

Another “anonymous” writes,

What’s this user facility bullshit about? Only Livermore uses the facility. Cost recovery demands that a university would have to pay $1 million for a shot. How can it be a user facility if it’s run by the weapons program? This isn’t exactly SLAC we’re talking about.

Here, again, the commenter is simply wrong. Livermore is not the only user of NIF, and it is, in fact, a user facility. Users to date include a team from MIT headed by Prof. Richard Petrasso. I’m not sure how the users are currently funded, but in the past funds for experiments on similar facilities were allocated through a proposal process, similar to that used to fund other government-funded academic research. The commenter continues,

By the way, let’s assume NIF wants to be a “user facility” for stockpile stewardship. Since ignition is impossible, the EOS (Equation of State, relevant to the physics of nuclear weapons, ed.) work is garbage, and the temperatures are not relevant to anything that goes bang, what use is this machine?

NIF does not “want to be a user facility for stockpile stewardship.” Stress has always been on high energy density physics (HEDP), which has many other potential applications besides stockpile stewardship. I was not surprised that NIF did not achieve ignition immediately. In fact I predicted as much in a post on this blog two years before the facility became operational. However, many highly competent scientists disagreed with me, and for credible scientific reasons. The idea that ignition is “impossible” just because it wasn’t achieved in the first ignition campaign using the indirect drive approach is nonsense. Several other credible approaches have not yet even been tried, including polar direct drive, fast ignitor, and hitting the targets with green (frequency doubled) rather than blue (frequency tripled) light. The latter approach would enable a substantial increase in the available laser energy on target. The EOS work is not garbage, as any competent weapons designer will confirm as long as they are not determined to force the resumption of nuclear testing by hook or by crook, and some of the best scientists at Livermore confirmed long ago that the temperatures achievable on the NIF are indeed relevant to things that go bang, whether it achieves ignition or not. In fact, the facility allows us to access physical conditions that can be approached in the laboratory nowhere else on earth, giving us a significant leg up over the international competition in maintaining a safe and reliable arsenal, as long as testing is not resumed.

Anonymous number 4 chimes in,

I love this quote (apparently from the linked article, ed.):

“the demonstration of laboratory ignition and its use to support the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) is a major goal for this program”

Hey guys, this has already failed. Why are we still spending money on this? A lot of other laboratories could use the $$. You’re done.

The quote this “anonymous” loves is a simple statement of fact. For the reasons already cited, the idea that ignition on the NIF is hopeless is nonsense. The (very good) reason we’re still spending money on the project is that NIF is and will continue into the foreseeable future to be one of the most capable and effective above ground experimental (AGEX) facilities in the world. It can access physical conditions relevant to nuclear weapons regardless of whether it achieves ignition or not. For that reason it is an invaluable tool for maintaining our arsenal unless one’s agenda happens to be the resumption of nuclear testing. Hint: The idea that no one in DOE, NNSA, or the national weapons laboratories wants to resume testing belongs in the realm of fantasy. Consider, for example, what the next “anonymous” is actually suggesting:

Attempting to get funding for NIF and computations’s big machines was made easier by claiming dual purposes but I always felt that the real down and dirty main purpose was weapons research. If you want to get support from the anti-weapon Feinstein/Boxer/Pelosi contingent you need to put the “energy” lipstick on the pig. Or we could go back to testing. Our cessation of testing doesn’t seem to have deterred North Korea and Iran that much.

Yes, Virginia, even scientists occasionally do have agendas of their own. What can I say? To begin, I suppose, that one should never be intimidated by the pontifications of scientists. The specimens on display here clearly don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Any non-technical observer of middling intelligence could become more knowledgeable than they are on the topics they’re discussing by devoting a few hours to researching them on the web. As to how the non-technical observer is to acquire enough knowledge to actually know that he knows more than the scientific specialists, I can offer no advice, other than to head to your local university and acquire a Ph.D. I am, BTW, neither employed by nor connected in any other way with LLNL.

The United States’ Nuclear Future

There are lots of great ideas out there for improving the way we do nuclear power. For instance, Transatomic Power recently proposed a novel type of molten salt reactor (MSR). The Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) Industry Alliance, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, has chosen a high temperature gas reactor (HTGR) as its reactor of the future candidate. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are all the rage, and a plethora of designs have been proposed. Unlike the others, Terrapower’s traveling wave reactor (TWR), which is backed by Bill Gates, actually has a fighting chance to be built in the foreseeable future – in China. With the possible exception of SMR’s, which have strong military support, the chances of any of them being built in the United States in the foreseeable future are slim. Government, the courts, and a nightmarish regulatory process stand in the way as an almost insuperable barrier.

It wasn’t always this way. A lot of today’s “novel” concepts are based on ideas that were proposed many decades ago. We know they work, because demonstration reactors were built to try them out. More than a dozen were built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. No less than 53 were built at Idaho National Laboratory! Virtually all of them were completed more than half a century ago. There are few historical precedents that can match the sudden collapse from the vitality of those early years to the lethargy and malaise prevailing in the nuclear industry today. It’s sad, really, because the nuclear plants that actually are on line and/or under construction are artifacts of a grossly wasteful, potentially dangerous, and obsolete technology.

The light water reactors (LWRs) currently producing energy in this country use only a tiny fraction of the energy available in their uranium fuel, producing dangerous transuranic actinides that can remain highly radioactive for millennia in the process. Many of the new designs are capable of extracting dozens of times more energy from a given quantity of fuel than LWRs. Molten salt reactors would operate far more efficiently, could not melt down, and would consume dangerous actinides in the process, leaving such a small quantity of waste after several decades of operation that it would be less radioactive than the original ore used to fuel the reactor after a few hundred years rather than many millennia. Besides also being immune to meltdown, HTGRs, because of their much higher operating temperatures, could enable such things as highly efficient electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen fuel and greatly improved extraction techniques for oil and natural gas from shale and sand. Why, then, aren’t we building these improved designs?

It’s highly unlikely that the necessary initiative will come from industry. Why would they care? They’re in the business to make a profit, and LWRs can be built and operated more cheaply than the alternatives. Why should they worry about efficiency? There’s plenty of cheap uranium around, and it’s unlikely there will be major shortages for decades to come. Ask any industry spokesman, and he’ll assure you that transuranic radioactive waste and the potential proliferation issues due to the plutonium content of spent LWR fuel are mere red herrings. I’m not so sure.

In other words, strong government leadership would be needed to turn things around. Unfortunately, that commodity is in short supply. The current reality is that government is a highly effective deterrent to new reactor technology. Take the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for example. Read Kafka’s The Trial and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how it operates. So you want to license a new reactor design, do you? Well, most of the current regulations apply specifically to LWRs, so you’ll have to give them time to come up with new ones. Then you’ll need to spend at least a decade and millions of dollars explaining your new technology to the NRC bureaucrats. Then you can expect an endless stream of requests for additional information, analysis of all the threat and failure scenarios they can dream up, etc., which will likely take a good number of additional years. After all, they have to justify their existence, don’t they? If you ever manage to get past the NRC, the court system will take things up where they left off.

What to do? I don’t know. It really doesn’t upset me when reactors built with legacy technology are pulled off line, and replaced with fossil fueled plants. They just waste most of their fuel, throwing away energy that future generations might sorely miss once they’ve finally burned through all the coal and oil on the planet. Maybe the best thing to do would be to just buy up all the available uranium around and wait. We might also stop the incredibly block-headed practice of converting all of our “depleted” uranium into ammunition. The Lone Ranger’s silver bullets were cheap by comparison. Future generations are likely to wonder what on earth we were thinking.

Things were a lot better in the “apathetic” 50’s, but the novelist Thomas Wolfe had it right. You can’t go home again.