> You don't need breeder technology to produce plutonium. In fact, the US produced enough in 1945 to build and detonate two plutonium-based atomic bombs. You c

> You don't need breeder technology to produce plutonium. In fact, the US produced enough in 1945 to build and detonate two plutonium-based atomic bombs. You can extract plutonium from spent fuel, I agree to that. This is what makes spent fuel processing expensive and this is what was used in 1945 and also turns any fuel waste into a proliferation issue. But converting depleted uranium (U-238) from spent fuel into fissile plutonium or whatever isotope, like GP suggested, is a different thing which would necessarily need some nuclear reaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium