A new scientific solution for preventing the misuse of reactor-grade plutonium as nuclear explosive Original Research Article

Yield analyses of nuclear explosions and thermal analyses of hypothetical nuclear explosive devices (HNEDs) based on reactor-grade plutonium are examined in a common approach. Three different levels of HNED technology are defined by criteria of geometric dimensions and thermodynamic characteristics of the chemical high-explosive implosion lenses. The results show the content of Pu-238 and the heat it generates in reactor-grade plutonium to be the key parameter. Low-technology HNEDs based on reactor-grade plutonium from spent low-enriched uranium (LEU) or MOX LWR fuel with burnups of 30 GWd/t or more are technically unfeasible. For medium technology, this limit rises to approximately 55 GWd/t burnup. Special cooling applied to such HNEDs would increase these burnup limits still further. Higher Pu-238 contents in reactor-grade plutonium are required to make such HNEDs technically unfeasible. Only for high-technology HNEDs, which could only be built by Nuclear Weapon States (NWSs), the limit to the Pu-238 content of reactor-grade plutonium would rise to approximately 9%.