Interview with Charles Ferguson, Fellow for Science and Technology – Council on Foreign Relations. Warning – this is a long episode that ranges from topic to topic!
Charles Ferguson, Fellow for Science and Technology – Council on Foreign Relations paid a visit to The Atomic Show. We engaged in a wide ranging discussion. We started with some of Charles’s impressions of the views of Indian colleagues following his recent visit to the world’s largest democracy. Other topics included Japan’s Monju reactor, highly enriched uranium, using special nuclear material for small reactors, long term protection of distributed reactors, commerce in HEU and plutonium, South African views on HEU, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Plowshares and probably a lot more.
Hope you enjoy.
Here are some links that you might find useful after listening to the show:
Plowshare Project video from Atomic Energy Commission
Executive Summary: Plowshare Program
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You talked about the desirability of using high enriched uranium in some reactor designs, which is difficult because of restrictions due to concerns over diversion to weapons use.
In the website http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/ & the connected discussion forum, it has been mentioned that it is very difficult to breed U233 from thorium without also getting small amounts of U232. Also those small amounts of U232 make the U233 useless for bombs because of the gamma rays from U232 daughter products.
Perhaps U233 with traces of U232 could be used in all these small reactor designs,that need high enrichment, without creating a danger of diversion for weapons use.