Plutonium is the stuff out of which atomic bombs are made. And the amount of plutonium in the world is increasing year by year as nuclear power spreads. Within the next ten years nuclear power plants will be producing around 100 tons of plutonium a year enough for 10,000 atomic bombs, each with the same power as the one that destroyed Nagasaki.
The time required to convert plutonium in spent fuel into a weapon would be one to three months, compared to seven to ten days for metallic plutonium. U-233 is virtually non-existent in nature, but, like plutonium, it can be created in a nuclear reactor. It is the main ingredient to make a nuclear weapon.
Why do Iran want to start now with nuclear power when it has been proven to be cost efficient? Most of the countries even the United States stopped building nuclear power plants. Not one utility or energy-generation company in the United States has been willing to order and construct a new nuclear plant in more than 30 years. Reason that no energy company has constructed one since 1973 is not public opposition, licensing
uncertainties or lack of a repository for spent fuel disposal but rather that new commercial nuclear power plants are uneconomical because of their higher construction costs.
Nuclear costs 7.0 Cents/kW-hr
Coal 4.4 Cents/kW-hr
Gas between 4.1 and 5.3 Cents/kW-hr
It takes about 30 years before the left over waste can be put into the ground. Before that it needs to be cooled and looked after for ages where you spent millions of maintaining it so it wont melt down.
Nuclear power has higher overall lifetime costs compared to natural gas with combined cycle turbine technology (CCGT) and coal. Today, nuclear power is not an economically competitive choice. Unlike other energy technologies, nuclear power requires significant government involvement because of safety, proliferation, and waste concerns.
Gas centrifuge plants for producing low-enriched uranium can fairly easily be turned into plants for producing highly enriched uranium and that is the concern.
Why do a country want to make use of a technology that is not economical nor safe so desperately and then claims it is for cheap power? When you have labs for R&D concerns to enrichment then it can only point to malicious purposes. Making bombs. Why do you want to R & D a technology already invented?
The only thing in the world where they can proof that they are not making nuclear weapons or making weapon grade plutonium are to provide samples from the Uranium Conversion facilities where it has to be cooled for over 10 years. But they refused to give it to the inspectors. So tell me why do they not want to give samples of nuclear junk basically which has no further use other to be cooled and to put into the ground at some stage?
That could have proven beyond doubt they are not doing anything else with it. Iran refusing means they did something they were not suppose to.
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