By the way, it might interest you to know that
an old college dorm-mate of mine is a deputy
group leader at Los Alamos. His group's mission
includes accelerator-driven transmutation of
helium, to restock the nation's supply of tritium,
which is necessary in order to maintain the
the national supply of thermonuclear weapons.
Tritium, unlike plutonium, has a very short
half-life, to you need to keep producing more.
They were doing this, anyway, but they had
to stop the accelerator production of tritium
for a while, because it is expensive and because
there were safety issues. They were looking
to restart the program, however. I don't know
the current status.
However, Los Alamos may have come up with
a better, cheaper way of producing tritium,
involving palladium rods. Unfortunately, very foolishly,
our government approved the sale of a company
called Stillwater Mining to the Russians, which
owns title to the only significant sources of
palladium on the continent, and one of only
a few in the world. I knew a fellow involved
in this sale.
Palladium is also important because of its
use in fuel cells (not to mention, the
catalytic converters of cars and in general
for electronics).
Not to mention, that it comes up frequently
in cold fusion experiments, which by the
official position does not exist at all, but
I assure you that the official position is
propaganda, but let's not go there.
Tom Keske
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