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To: Seeker of Truth who wrote (53693)	9/26/2004 6:21:02 AM
From: energyplay	Respond to of 74559

I think if more effort were put into conventional fission, making it work much better, that could ease a very large part of the energy equation. My guess is that the effort expended on power fission since the middle 1960s has been a small fraction of that expended on silicon. Not sure how we would measure this.... One of the problems with advancing knowledge of nuclear physics is that the knowledge will make it much easier and cheaper to build weapons, with much less testing. It will also make it much easier to make weapons more effective. The 30-50 kiloton devices the Pakistanis have could be easily boosted to 200-300 kiloton. South Africa developed 5-6 small nukes in a period of about 7 years for roughly 50 million USD. They had delivery capabilty with F-4 Phantoms, which would put most of Souther Africa within range. Lowering the threshold means that Dear Leader and the rest of the fruitcakes might get weapons. Gaddafi tried. Imagine Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Syria, Romania, Egypt, even Texas with the bomb. The knowledge needed for economical fission is likely to have simmilar consequencies.