well in a light water reactor some of thr fuel can be Pu, but you really can't go beyond 30%. With that said, if you build a reactor that doesn't need to moderate the neutrons and slow them down you could use nothing but plutonium as a fuel. But why bother, LEU is just fine and you cant make a bomb with it. Whereas plutonium is a proliferation hazard and much more expensive.
They do. Decommissioned HEU is downblended to LEU levels for use in power reactors. You dont need that level of enrichment for a power reactor. About 5% enrichment is all commericals reactors use. The program has been in place since the 1990s and is running to this day. It's called Megatons to Megawatts.
I understand you don't trust the NSA, but the viability of what it takes to make a bomb is just basic well understood physics. There's no conspiracy there. You either have enough mass, at a higher enough level of enrichment and you can force them to go critical or you can't. For Uranium you need over 100lbs to build a basic gun type bomd, what's terrifying is how little Plutonium you need. The Fat Man bomb needed just over 6 kg of Pu. So a little less than 14 pounds, and that was with 1940s grade material. The USSR got pretty good at making good quality Pu.
The trick to keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of someone is the security of the material, its hard to enrich. Its not hard to build the bomb. Enrichment is really really really hard. And its currently impossible to hide that your enriching. So you basically secure the material, and look out for people trying to make it. Thats how all non-proliferation works.
Nothings hard about the know how, everything you need to know is in the public domain. And dont forget, pure fission bomds are 1940s tech.
It's not a big secret how to build a simple gun type bomb. You don't need much precision for that. You get enough HEU, and it's game on. You get the right shaped Pu and a few other items, and you have an even higher yield bomb than that of the HEU bomb. Again, 1940s technology is all you need.
Fusion bombs, yes much harder. But who needs that when you can build a Nagasaki yield bomb?
That is correct. i work in nuclear material security and safeguards. For what I can say, which isn't much, it's the security of the material (HEU and Pu) that makes it hard to make a bomb. Its hard to enrich, and furthermore you need HEU or Pu. LEU won't get you a big boom. Without enough enrichment, no Bomb.
Theft and diversion is a big deal with Pu and HEU for this very reason. Which is why access to either has a two man rule. And because you can safely handle Pu and HEU,(its just an alpha and criticality hazard so unless you inhale or eat them, or you have bad geometry it's no big deal), that makes it vital that you carefully account for all of it. It won't kill the thief, and you don't need much Pu for a bomb.
