Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
planning reactors and making choices about their fuel
supply that will determine the risk of proliferation for
the next generation. The countries that traditionally set
the tune for nuclear-power policies have waning in
uence
on who goes nuclear, but they may be able to affect how
they do it, and thus reduce the risk of weapons prolifer-
ation. The key is rethinking the
the process
by which nuclear fuel is supplied to reactors, recycled, and
disposed of.
The design principles of nuclear weapons are known.
While the technology required to make one is neither
small-scale nor simple, it can be mastered by almost any
nation. Examples of proliferators span a wide range of
technological sophistication and include the very sophis-
ticated (India, Israel), and the relatively unsophisticated
(North Korea, Pakistan). The main obstacle to building a
bomb is getting the
“
fuel cycle,
”
fissionable material required.
The routes to obtaining the materials for uranium
bombs and plutonium bombs are different. Enriched
uranium comes from what is called the front end of the
fuel cycle where raw uranium is enriched in the
fission-
able uranium-
. For a power reactor the enrichment
target is about
% (low enriched uranium or LEU)
while for a weapon it is
%to
% (highly enriched uranium or
HEU). The same process that produces the
% material
can be continued to produce the
% material. This is
what is behind the concern over Iran
'
is plans to do its own
enrichment.
Plutonium slowly builds up in the non-
ssionable
uranium-
in the fuel whenever a nuclear reactor is
operating. Weapons-grade plutonium comes from fresh
fuel that has only been in a reactor for a few months and is
