““For some years there's been intense controversy over a pilot-plant "fast breeder" reactor, which was built to transmute the commonly occurring isotope U238 into the fissionable isotope P239 of the element plutonium. The controversy has raged because fast breeder reactors are much trickier and more dangerous than ordinary fission reactors, and because P239 is a suitable material for making atomic bombs as well as for fueling reactors. Critics have attacked fast breeder reactors both for the dangers of their operation and for the risk that in an all-nuclear economy there would be so much P239 being””
