Comment by jabl
17 hours ago
> 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.
> 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.
Well, let's put it this way. If you want to create HEU you can either start from natural uranium, which is significantly easier to come by and isn't horribly radioactive. Or then you start from spent fuel, which is under IAEA safeguards (for other reasons), is very radioactive and thus very cumbersome, expensive and slow to deal with. Now which is more likely?
Not saying creating HEU from spent fuel is impossible, it's just a stupid way of going about it, and spent fuel already being covered by IAEA safeguards for other reasons so it's probably also going to be easier to detect such a hypothetical clandestine nuclear program.
> I think if you want to announce that reactors are useless for building bombs you need to provide a cite.
If you read my original response I explicitly mentioned that you need a reactor if you want to create a U233 or Pu based bomb. So I have no idea where you get such a notion from.
> Certainly nuclear non-proliferation work by real professionals does include the existence of a domestic nuclear industry.
True, but again not a point I have argued against.