Short answer #
History has shown that there is no correlation between the number of countries with nuclear power and the number of countries with nuclear weapons. The reason is that the production of nuclear weapons will always be a political decision that does not depend on whether the country has nuclear power or not.
Any country in the world can acquire the capabilities to produce nuclear weapons if they wanted to. Even a country like North Korea has managed it. The “recipe” for nuclear weapons does not disappear, even if nuclear power was eliminated as an energy source. Quite a few countries are, however, interested in getting nuclear weapons, as you risk enormous consequences from the international community, for example harsh sanctions or military intervention.
Furthermore, a nuclear power plant is not suitable for making weapons material. If you want to make a nuclear weapon, you have to use a specially designed military production reactor. Technically, it would not be impossible to carry out conversions of a nuclear power plant so that it can be used to make weapons material, but this will be more difficult and expensive than “simply” building a military production reactor.
If a country does choose to misuse its civilian nuclear power program for military purposes, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has several safeguards to ensure that it will be detected.
Lots of technologies can be used both for weapons production and for peaceful purposes. The world would be a far worse place if we allowed that kind of fear to dominate what technologies we will allow.
No connection between Civilian nuclear energy and the spread of Nuclear Weapons #
A historical analysis of the relationship between the proliferation of civilian nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world from 1954 to 2000 shows that there is no correlation between the use of nuclear power and the development of nuclear weapons [1].
As the figure below shows, there are far more countries with civilian nuclear power that do not have nuclear weapons than countries with nuclear weapons. A good example of the lack of coherence is that North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and still does not have civilian nuclear power [2], while South Korea, on the contrary, has civilian nuclear power and has never produced nuclear weapons.
The difference in the materials in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons #
Both a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb work by splitting atoms in a chain reaction. In a nuclear bomb, it is important to maximize the chain reaction to create a large explosion of energy, while in a nuclear power plant, conversely, the chain reaction is controlled to keep the temperature calm and the energy production stable.
Depending on whether you want to maximize or control the chain reaction, you need to use fissile material of different quality; respectively weapon grade and reactor grade.
There are two types of material with which nuclear weapons can be made; uranium and plutonium.
Uranium bomb #
The uranium that is in nature contains only approx. 1% of the type of uranium (the isotope uranium-235) which can be split in a chain reaction either in a nuclear power plant or in a nuclear bomb. To make a uranium bomb, a very high proportion of over 90% of this type of uranium is required in the material. For comparison, uranium used in a reactor has a share of 5% [3].
When increasing the proportion of the above-mentioned type of uranium, the same type of facility, a so-called enrichment facility, must be used, regardless of whether the material is to be used for a reactor or for a weapon. The difference is how long you continue the enrichment process. Since there is a very large difference in the degree of enrichment, depending on whether the material is to be used in a reactor or in a weapon, it is easy for the international control authorities to keep an eye on the fact that an enrichment plant is not misused.
Plutonium bomb #
Almost all nuclear weapons are produced with plutonium and not uranium. Unlike uranium, plutonium is not found in nature, but is generated in a reactor, both in a military production reactor and in a power reactor. As with uranium, however, there are different types of plutonium, and only one of them can be used for a chain reaction in an atomic bomb (the isotope Plutonium-239).
As mentioned, plutonium is produced when operating a nuclear power plant, of which about 50% is of the type used for nuclear weapons [4]. However, you cannot use plutonium from the spent fuel (waste) for several reasons.
The concentration of Pu-239 in the spent fuel is very low. This makes it difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of pure Pu-239 for effective weapons production.
The proportion of another type of plutonium (plutonium-240) is far too high [5]. The proportion of plutonium-240 must be quite low for a nuclear bomb to work (below 7% and preferably less [6]). The reason is that this often splits spontaneously and can initiate the chain process before the optimal time. This creates a so-called fuser [7].
Therefore, in principle, you cannot use commercial nuclear reactors to make material for nuclear weapons, as is clear from the figure below.
Can nuclear power plants be converted to produce weapons-grade plutonium? #
It is technically possible, but it would not be easy. A conventional reactor is complicated to refill and this is only done in relatively rare cases, typically after a year and a half of operation. A refueling requires time for the reactor to be shut down and cooled, for the pressure to be relieved, for the reactor lid to be opened and the fuel replaced, and for the lid to be replaced. Such an operation can take more than a week of intense work.
In military production reactors that must make weapons-grade plutonium, the fuel is changed after as little as a month, which can be done here continuously and without shutting down production. If you were to do it in the same time horizon in a conventional reactor, i.e. shut down after a month, the reactor would be shut down almost as much as it would run. That would dramatically compromise its energy-producing capacity and thus the power plant’s economics.
If such an operation were to be carried out, it would also be easily traceable due to the reactor’s lack of power supply in frequent periods, which could be seen in the capacity factors (Nuclear power often runs at very high: 80-90%) [8], and it would also require very expensive modifications of the reactor [9].
A country that wants to produce plutonium-based nuclear weapons would be better off by building specially designed military production reactors for the purpose.
International non-proliferation control #
Even though nuclear power plants are an insignificant source of nuclear proliferation, that does not mean that extensive precautions should not be taken to ensure that no one attempts one. There are very strong and effective international systems in place to ensure that countries do not develop nuclear weapons under the guise of peaceful nuclear energy programmes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) routinely, but unannounced, inspects nuclear facilities around the world to ensure that only peaceful work is carried out. They also have cameras running 24/7 in the places of both enrichment facilities and nuclear power plants where it is most important to keep an eye [10].
With such measures, it would be very difficult for a nation to make material for nuclear weapons without the rest of the world knowing about it long before the material could be turned into bombs. You are far from ready with a nuclear weapon, even if you were to succeed in obtaining weapon-quality material. In fact, the above is the easy part of the process of making a nuclear weapon.
Military vs. peaceful purposes #
If one is to follow the logic of the argument of banning the peaceful part of nuclear technology because the technology is related to nuclear weapons, then there are many other vital technologies that we should also ban.
Fertilizer factories ensure that we can feed millions of people in the world, but can potentially be used to make bombs. Chemical factories of all kinds ensure that chemistry is produced for e.g. medicine, but can also be designed to produce chemical weapons.
Electricity has many fantastic uses, but can also be used in horrible ways to kill people in the ‘electric chair’.
The world would be a far worse place if we allowed that kind of fear to dominate what technologies we will allow. Most importantly, the decision to produce weapons does not depend on whether to use the technologies for peaceful purposes, although the barriers to start producing weapons may be lower.
References #
- https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/ISEC_a_00293?casa_token=fezIaFcAZ34AAAAA%3A7ccXA-78_IQS8ymhqoXyn7go6UlIkBir2CcbpVPZMlPf-BXyl2748ooHp_8hgf_kD8DwxmICGY2pR9E
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
- https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/uranium-enrichment.aspx
- https://web.archive.org/web/20111110194458/http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/O_9705.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-240
- https://web.archive.org/web/20130722014859/http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/plutonium.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_fission
- http://web.archive.org/web/20211219111529/http://www.ifpa.org/publications/MDRequirements2010/chapter4.php
- https://web.archive.org/web/20150617234454/http://depletedcranium.com/why-you-cant-build-a-bomb-from-spent-fuel/?cp=4
- https://www.iaea.org/publications/factsheets/iaea-safeguards-overview
