[ Ссылка ] Early nuclear pioneers like Enrico Fermi and Eugene Wigner saw the future quite a bit differently.
Fermi believed that we should really focus our efforts on the fast-breeder reactor.
Eugene Wigner on the other hand, reached a different conclusion which was that thorium was a superior fuel.
And this opened up a number of possibilities with coolants and reactor configurations.
They by-in-large said: We're going to go the plutonium route.
And one of the reasons why, was they developed a great deal of understanding about plutonium from the weapons program.
They had made the stuff. They had worked with its chemistry. They'd made fuel out of it. They go-
We get this. Thorium? We haven't really messed with thorium. You know, it would be like starting over.
So that propensity there was to go and do what you already knew how to do.
And the plutonium was so much better developed than the thorium.
