Comment by jabl
1 day ago
If you're going for the enriched uranium route to a bomb, nobody is going to start with used nuclear fuel, because dealing with the highly radioactive spent fuel is such a huge PITA.
If you're going for the U233 (from Th) or Pu route, yes then you need a reactor and spent fuel reprocessing. But not enrichment of spent fuel.
That "nobody" is misapplied. Certainly it applies to existing nuclear powers, but that's not the demographic in question.
Not everyone has a U mine or pre-existing bomb industry. The question is whether or not having a reactor makes producing bombs easier or not, and clearly the answer is "yes", bomb-making is easier (yet, sure, still a "PITA") if you have a reactor core handy to start with.
> That "nobody" is misapplied. Certainly it applies to existing nuclear powers, but that's not the demographic in question.
Oh, interesting! If so, can you provide an example of anyone producing HEU starting from spent fuel?
That's... not the way the burden of proof works here. You don't do non-proliferation analysis by only worrying about it after someone has proliferated. I think if you want to announce that reactors are useless for building bombs you need to provide a cite. Certainly nuclear non-proliferation work by real professionals does include the existence of a domestic nuclear industry.
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