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[–] KyJoCaThe2nd ago  (edited ago)

  1. To a degree, but even the number of U/Pu reactors being built was tapering off before Chernobyl and fell off sharply after a small return after Fukushima.

  2. Not really, and this was the crux of the Iranian nuclear talks for several years. You can achieve useful power generation with extremely low levels of enrichment, but once that fuel hits end-of-life, the amounts of useful uranium aren't present to make meaningful heat, let alone catastrophic detonation. What would be present is a great deal of Plutonium, but due to all of the fission products, handling spent fuel isn't viable for weapons-grade fuel when we can use specially designed reactors to breed Plutonium and special processes to enrich to very high levels of U-235.

Now, just because it's weapons-grade, doesn't mean that it possesses the ability to detonate like Little Boy. Certain geometry and a few other concerns are needed. You can make a power plant using >80% enriched uranium, but because the fuel will be laid out in a different way with neutron absorbents and active coolant, the core won't detonate. It can still go prompt critical*, have a massive power excursion, vaporize all the water in the core, then rupture like an over-sized pressure cooker, but that's a different beast.

* This is the only time the word "critical" means something bad in nuclear physics, and it needs the word "prompt" to mean that. A critical reactor is one that is exactly self-sustaining. If power is going up, it's supercritical. If power is going down, it's subcritical.