You are right about about nuclear weapons, every large nuclear civilian reactor produces multiple bombs worth of plutonium every year, spread within the spend n

You are right about about nuclear weapons, every large nuclear civilian reactor produces multiple bombs worth of plutonium every year, spread within the spend nuclear nuclear fuel. This reactor-grade plutonium has miserable properties for bomb making, but in theory could be used to make a bomb (U.S. experimented with concept and created few bombs from reactor-grade plutonium). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactor_grade_plutonium This also the reason why every civilian nuclear reactor in non-nuclear weapon states is under constant monitoring of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and all spend nuclear fuel is under constant monitoring. Every gram of special nuclear material is accounted. Any irregularities detected by IAEA are then handled by United Nations Security Council, with possible diplomatic sanctions or military actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAEA_safeguards Outside of few experiments, civilian power reactors are not used for plutonium production for use in weapons, because to get high quality weapon grade plutonium you have to frequently put nuclear fuel into reactor and out of reactor (every few weeks). This increases down-time and makes electric production more expensive. Also civilian nuclear reactor use high temperature and high pressure steam, this makes change of nuclear fuel under power a risky business. Plutonium for weapons is produced in smaller, cheaper production reactors. They run at much lower thermal power and are optimized for frequent cycling of nuclear fuel and easy handling of spend nuclear fuel. Because any spend nuclear fuel could be in theory be used to make a nuclear bomb, U.S. in general doesn't allow countries to develop spend nuclear fuel reprocessing capabilities, or strongly tries to persuaded them not to develop such capabilities. This was a corner stone of U.S. foreign policy for many decades and also the reason why U.S. stopped development of fast-neutron breeder reactors under Carter (they didn't want other countries to pursue this technology). The long-term U.S. policy for decades was to prevent any kind civilian nuclear power production in developing countries, as written in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. "The United States shall endeavor to cooperate with other nations, international institutions, and private organizations in establishing programs to assist in the development of non-nuclear energy resources, to cooperate with both developing and industrialized nations in protecting the international environment from contamination arising from both nuclear and non-nuclear energy activities, and shall seek to cooperate with and aid developing countries in meeting their energy needs through the development of such resources and the application of non-nuclear technologies consistent with the economic factors, the material resources of those countries, and environmental protection." Developing countries have been prevented from exploring nuclear power generation but they were free to explore coal power generation. As a side-note: The are many countries that developed nuclear weapons before building nuclear power plants, there are countries (Israel, North Korea) which have nuclear weapons today and didn't deliver a single Joule of electricity from nuclear reactor to the electric grid.