The article is misleading where it says "a type of planned plutonium-powered reactor that did not work out." The LFTR SMR was cancelled in Nixon's time for NOT being good at making bomb-grade fissiles. Its fissile fuel is U-233 from thorium Th-232. It tends to be "contaminated" for the purposes of catastrophic chain reaction, by U-232. The IFR, after an admirably successful 30-year demonstration including a successful test of its meltdown-proof design, just BEFORE Chernobyl in April 1986, was canceled by the Clinton administration. It was a Small Modular Reactor, and its descendants are also. It is possible that the liquid fuel is superior to the metal fuel and liquid metal coolant of the IFR, but IMHO the IFR was almost certainly more ready for deployment than the LFTR.Technically it was a complete success, and had proven itself superior to the fast breeder designs of Britain and France.It was canceled because, although it was designed to be, and was, as useless for bomb-making as the LFTR, its fissile fuel included plutonium.The hypocrisy and stupidity of this decision is borne out by the fact that, in spite of the vastly reduced risk of attack from Russia or China, the DoE still makes tritium for the DoD's thermonuclear weapons. Tritium is radioactive with quite a short half life, and therefore needs to be replenished if it's not being used. The TVA uses a small modification to the customary LWR design, toirradiate lithium with neutrons. I presume that modification could as easily irradiate U-238 and get Pu-239, on the short time cycle needed for NOT conatminating it with Pu240.Why does the USA need a stockpile of hydrogen bombs in instant readiness?
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