Comment by philipkglass

9 hours ago

The only way to ensure that a civil uranium enrichment program remains strictly civil is via transparency and monitoring. A country that has mastered uranium enrichment technology for fueling civil power reactors could use the same technology to produce bomb-grade uranium. It actually takes more work to enrich natural uranium into fuel for power reactors than it takes to further enrich power reactor fuel into bomb material:

https://scipython.com/blog/uranium-enrichment-and-the-separa...

This is scary. so the extra effort to move from, say, 20% to 85% is relatively small compared with the effort to get up to 20% in the first place. Might as well build a feature into the reactor so that it only works with <=20%

  • > Might as well build a feature into the reactor so that it only works with <=20%

    How would this help? Nuclear power plant and enrichment facility are separate entities.