Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by retrac | Hacker News Reader

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Nuclear reactors produce plutonium. A world without any nuclear reactors or uranium enrichment facilities, is a world without nuclear weapons.

It's perhaps particularly relevant with Japan; they are the nation probably most often used as an example of a country that could develop nuclear weapons almost overnight, should the political will materialize. They have the know-how, industry, missiles, and because of the nuclear power program, both stockpiles of, and the ability to produce, both enriched uranium and plutonium.

Edit: Did I hit a nerve or something folks?

For the record I personally strongly support nuclear power. Parent asked a question. It's obvious to me why anti-nuclear activists link weapons and power reactors. It's not (necessarily) lack of scientific understanding -- power reactors produce the material for nuclear bombs. Some people think that is unacceptable as a proliferation risk. Don't shoot the messenger? Was just trying to contribute to the discussion positively.

... and so? The death toll due to to nuclear weapons is a small fraction of people killed since them by either small arms or fossil fuel pollution.

If one attributes the U.S. stepping back from nuclear power to the anti-proliferation scare of the mid-1970s (good heavens, brown people are making plutonium!) you might then consider the alternate path where the U.S. had stayed the course, built the 500 reactors it had planned to build by 2000, and we'd be talking about some other crisis than the "climate crisis."

The constant drumbeat about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is part of a larger syndrome where Japan never reconciled with its neighbors after WWII the way Germany did and now is stuck with a pacifist constitution that seems more of a problem than a solution year after year as that part of the word becomes increasingly dangerous.

> we'd be talking about some other crisis than the "climate crisis."

I doubt that. Perhaps it'd be slightly less acute, that's all.

While nuclear power came before nuclear weapons, nuclear power was developed with the express purpose of producing weapons (Manhattan Project). Only in the 50s did nuclear power find civilian (i.e. non-violent) application.

While nuclear power and weapons use similar technology, their purpose is diametrically opposed.

> Only in the 50s did nuclear power find civilian (i.e. non-violent) application.

Many of the early designs like Magnox and RBMK were for producing plutonium first, and power second. Nuclear power was a public relations project more than anything else, at least initially. The UK and Russia continue dual use with their power reactors today.

> their purpose is diametrically opposed

The purpose is decided by those who control the reactors. For example, the power reactors used in Canada produce plutonium, from natural uranium. Canada built a small heavy water research reactor in India; the material for their first nuclear bomb was made in that reactor. This was expressly not the intent of Canada.

The thrust of my argument, just to make it explicit, is that I think it is unwise to jettison nuclear power as an abundant source of energy because of the nuclear weapon connection. Alas, these days this view is rather in the minority.

>A world without any nuclear reactors or uranium enrichment facilities, is a world without nuclear weapons.

But this is a plain naive argument to make. At this point saying "destroying all nuclear bombs means no more nuclear bombs" is also technically correct, but even if, let's say, civil nuclear energy was impossible to manage, there would still be uranium enrichment facilities designed with the sole purpose of creating nuclear weapons, because they give such a significant strategic advantage to superpowers; they just wouldn't allow not to have it when others can.

So even without nuclear power plants you would still have nuclear weapons, I really never understood the argument of causation civilian and military nuclear energy, on can exist without the other.

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