Comment by ben_w

> So theoretically, Russia could begin converting their nuclear warheads to heat-generation units that could be used for all sorts of purposes.

They already did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

A little too well, in fact, undercutting other suppliers; to quote from the page:

   The program was credited for being one of the most successful disarmament programs in history, but its low set price for nuclear fuel caused Western companies to not invest in uranium refining capacity, resulting by 2022 in Russia's government-owned Rosatom becoming the supplier of about 50% of the world's enriched uranium, and 25% of the nuclear fuel used in the US.

> What kind of safeguards would be required?

Mostly the classified security measures kind of safeguard: Make sure nobody can come in and steal the hard-to-make enriched weapons grade stuff before it gets blended down.

For material handling, everything I've heard about uranium as a metal is fairly mundane. Just:

• don't ingest it, lick it, or sniff it, it's an alpha emitter and a heavy metal

• don't grind it while you work on it, not only do you not want to breathe in a dusty alpha emitter, the dust is pyrophoric, i.e. catches fire in air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophoricity#Pyrophoric_mater...

• and make sure the weapons-grade chunks are not ever under any circumstances near each other while working on them, for which the main big surprise is "do not work them into cylinders, because cylinders can roll towards each other and end up touching".