Letter: A good use for plutonium?

Geoffrey Lean's report on mixed-oxide fuel in nuclear reactors is not balanced (15 June).

MOX provides a real option for utilising plutonium, from thermal reactors and dismantled nuclear weapons, also keeping it out of reach of third parties.

He says that fast reactors produce "plutonium, the stuff of nuclear bombs". Reactor-grade plu- tonium is unsuitable for nuclear weapons and while it could be used in a crude device, it is difficult to think of a terrorist organisation that could do so. He says fast reactors are more dangerous than normal ones. Britain's was shut down for economic reasons. And Japan's suffered a sodium leak from a thermocouple pocket - hardly a massive accident.

D Erskine

Knutsford, Cheshire