ES Recruitment Drive
Originally Posted by ynvaser View Post
I seem to recall that weapons-grade fissive material is harder to produce than it is to produce fuel for a nuclear reactor.
http://www.ccnr.org/plute.html
If you pay one guy per nuclear reactor to watch out for plutonium "harvest", you can pretty much keep an eye on the whole thing.
"The disadvantage of reactor-grade plutonium is not so much in the effectiveness of the nuclear weapons that can be made from it as in the increased complexity in designing, fabricating, and handling them."
^So "cheap" fissive material requires expertise and constant maintenance to make weapons from. Weapons-grade fissive material is hard to produce, therefore easier to keep track of.

Also from that piece;
"In short, reactor-grade plutonium is weapons-usable, whether by unsophisticated proliferators or by advanced nuclear weapon states. Theft of separated plutonium, whether weapons-grade or reactor-grade, would pose a grave security risk."

The (often off-site) secuirty in charge of securing these materials, also, overwhelmingly, don't realise they've been robbed until after the attack. This reports (link) talks about 22 instances of theft and goes on to say;
"What we do not know, of course, is how many thefts may have occurred that were never detected; it is a sobering fact that nearly all of the stolen HEU and plutonium that has been seized over the years had never been missed before it was seized"

Nuclear non-proliferation, like I said before, is unenforceable. When you're talking about NSAs (non-state actors, not the security agency), it's doubly unenforceable. Everyone agrees that AQ and other groups with the motivation could create a dirty bomb easily. Dirty bombs (which you just hide in the back of a van) render large areas uninhabitable. Nuclear terrorism is very plausible and a major international security concern.
Last edited by Ele; Dec 19, 2014 at 08:46 AM.