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3eb7988a1663 4 hours ago

I am not a physicist but perhaps your question was leading more than you expected? I would take the question to pre-suppose I have an abundance of the stated material, ignoring practical realities of refinement. If I did have fully pure Pu-241, would that be a better fuel than U-235?

Or stated another way, "If you could run a generator on gasoline or jet fuel, which one would you choose and why?" I would answer jet fuel owing to slightly higher energy density and purity of the material - likely leading to a cleaner burn. Which would ignore that jet fuel is going to be a multiple of the gasoline price.

onion2k 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If I did have fully pure Pu-241, would that be a better fuel than U-235?

Also not a physicist, but I assume from the fact that the OP is asking the LLM this question to trip it up, the point is that U-235 is better even if you have an abundance of both. It's scarcity of Pu-241 leads to the lack of data in training, not that it's actually better.

3eb7988a1663 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Again, really speaking out of my depth, but if there is a lack of plutonium training data, I would assume the answer would be the far more commonly described U-235. To respond otherwise means there is some existing association with Pu-241 being better.