Nuclear Industry Subsidies Part III: The Military Connection

This is the Part III of my review of Doug Koplow, Union of Concerned Scientists report titled, Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidies. The Part I offered some definition of subsidies, and noted that very large government subsidies to the renewable power industry had not made renewable generated electricity cheap. Part I noted that the definitions of subsidy and nuclear industry needed to be determined in any valid study of subsidies, and questioned whether Koplow had done so. Part II looked at Koplow's claims about subsidies to the uranium mining and determined that these subsidies were largely intended to support military uses of uranium, were typical of the energy and mining industry, had little effect on the cost of nuclear generated electricity, and had offered little long term benefit to the either the American uranium mining industry or to the American civilian nuclear power industry as a whole. At the end of Part II. I promised to look carefully at Koplow's claims concerning the relationship between military nuclear weapons programs, and the civilian nuclear industry.

Although Doug Koplow frequently makes many factual and logical errors in his report "Nuclear Power: Still not viable without subsidises," he is sometimes on the right track. He correctly acknowledges military involvement with the United States Nuclear program as creating problems for the Civilian Nuclear power industry. Koplow quotes

Sharon Squassoni, director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the “dual-use [civilian and military] nature of nuclear technology is unavoidable. For the five nuclear-weapons states, commercial nuclear power was a spinoff from weapons programs; for later proliferates, the civilian sector has served as a convenient avenue and cover for weapons programs” (Squassoni 2009a). By artificially accelerating the expansion of civilian programs, subsidies to nuclear technology and fuel-cycle services worldwide exacerbate the already challenging problems of weapons proliferation. To date, the negative externality of proliferation has not been reflected in the economics of civilian reactors.

In fact there have been several attempts to serve military interests with ostensibly civilian oriented nuclear R&D programs. In other instances scientists diverted military programs to civilian purposes. The ORNL report, AN ACCOUNT OF OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY’S THIRTEEN NUCLEAR REACTORS, by Murray W. Rosenthal demonstrates examples of both tedencies at ORNL. For example the ORNL gas cooled reactor was an attempted replication of the British dual purpose Magnox reactors.

The British wanted to produce plutonium for bombs and simultaneously generate nuclear power, and the 50 MW(e) Calder Hall power plants that they built used dual-purpose reactors that could do both. The British did not yet have enriched uranium and had no domestic source of helium, so the Calder Hall reactors were restricted to natural uranium and used carbon dioxide as the coolant. The metal fuel was clad in a magnesium alloy called Magnox, and from that they came to be called Magnox reactors. The Calder Hall reactors were the first to supply commercial amounts of power to a utility grid.

The dual-purpose Magnox reactors were followed in the United Kingdom by larger gas-cooled power reactors. They were still cooled with carbon dioxide but used low-enriched uranium in stainless-steel-clad UO2 fuel elements that enabled higher temperatures and thus higher thermal efficiency.

The British attempt to kill two birds with one stone was much admired by some members of the United States Congress who probably thought the British approach would save money. In fact, the Magnox reactors produced plutonium of an inferior quality. British and American weapons testing involving the use of Magnox plutonium's, proved so disappointing that work on the Oak Ridge gas cooled reactor was terminated before the reactor could be tested. This was unfortunate because the gas cooled reactor was probably safer than conventional water cooled reactors.

The ORNL Aircraft Reactor Experiment was an example of the diversion of money from a purely military program to civilian oriented scientific use. The idea was to design a reactor to power large military aircraft - bombers. The reactor had to be light and compact, but it also had to produce a lot of power. Oak Ridge engineers came up with a novel idea, a high temperature salt cooled reactor, with the uranium fuel dissolved in the liquid salt. None of the scientists and engineers involved in the project believed that the ARE would serve a military purpose.

The ORNL Thirteen Reactor Report states,

The Air Force was pleased with the performance of the ARE and brought Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Company aboard to develop the indirect cycle power plant. ORNL began the design of a compact 60 MW reactor. And in spite of growing skepticism about success and the recognition that missiles might substitute for bombers, industrial and political support kept the national program going. But it was killed in March 1961 soon after John Kennedy took office.

Thus ORNL’s ANP program came to an end, but in its 12-year run, it greatly expanded knowledge of the chemistry and technology of molten salts and made advances in materials, shield design, and other areas that enlarged the Laboratory’s ability to undertake new projects.

So basically ORNL Director Alvin Weinberg tricked the United States Air Force into developing new civilian nuclear technology.

The Shippingport Reactor was an apparently successful dual purpose nuclear program, but one which was to have a serious long term consequences for the United States nuclear industry. The design of the Shippingport reactor emerged from the design of the of a reactor intended to power air craft carriers. Early in the Eisenhower the Navy was not yet ready to build nuclear carriers, so when President Eisenhower proposed the Atoms for Peace Program Hyman Rickover offered to build an experimental nuclear power plant based on the Navy carrier reactor design, but with low enriched fuel, rather than the highly enriched fuel. The beauty of the Rickover plan is that the Navy got a reactor it wanted to test for nothing while seemingly operating the test reactor as a peaceful atomic project.

While the Shippingport project probably proved useful to the Navy, it may have had a negative impact on the development of the Civilian nuclear industry. Everyone involved in reactor development understood that there were safety problems with the Light Water Reactor (LWR). The military realized that there were safety problems with its LWRs, but thought that it could solve those problems with careful designs, reactor operator training, and rule books that cover every possible aspect of reactor operation.

The Soviets did not take reactor safety seriously, used careless naval reactor designs, allowed untrained people operate its reactors, and had operation rule books that were no where as strict and comprehensive. The Soviets had far more accidents, and worse accidents, so the U.S. Navy's approach works, but the U.S. submarines were Cadillacs driven by engineers who followed precise rules, while the Soviet subs were probably cheaper to own and operate. Sure accidents in Soviet Subs would every now and then kill a member of the crew, but there were always plenty of farm boys who could take their place.

Unfortunately the Cadillac approach is required to keep the Light Water Reactor safe, so towards the Light Water Reactor safety ends up costing money, which the Civilian Nuclear Power industry has to pay. LWR operators are expensive to train, and everyone has to follow detailed rulebooks. All of which makes nuclear power expensive. Those expensive reactors frightened the public too. Of course, nuclear power while expensive, is not as expensive as making renewable generated electricity reliable. And a reliable no-nuclear, all renewable grid can be built with big enough subsidies, built that is, if society does not collapse under the weight of the subsidies to renewable power.

Edward Teller had a different approach to nuclear safety. He thought that reactors should b e buried deep underground and operate with out human intervention. That way if the reactor broke, you could throw in a few shovels of dirt, and that would be all it took to keep the reactor safe forever, or so Teller thought. Towards the end of his life, Teller realized that Alvin Weinberg's Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was safe, and that if you built MSRs they would not have to be buried so deep in order to protect the public. The MSR was very stable, in fact so stable that no operators were required. Since the reactor core was a molten fluid, you did not have to worry about nuclear meltdown. Teller explained it all in his last paper, Thorium fueled underground power plant based on molten salt technology.

We don't have MSRs because the government preferred to subsidize a money pit called the Fast Breeder Reactor. People at ORNL knew that the MSR would be cheaper to develop, cheaper to build, and cheaper to operate. But the fast breeder was capable of producing bomb grade plutonium. Could the MSR be built without subsidies? Undoubtedly yes, it would be no more expensive develop than a modern large passenger jet is. It would probably be no more expensive to buy as well. A business would just have to be willing to take an unsubsidized risk.

Thus the statement

commercial nuclear power was a spinoff from weapons programs;

is undoubtedly true, but the statement

the civilian sector has served as a convenient avenue and cover for weapons programs

is quite problematic. Many of the dual purpose technologies proved quite useless for military purposes, and in other instances development of military technologies for civilian purposes proved quite expensive as well as militarily useless.

The claim that

By artificially accelerating the expansion of civilian programs, subsidies to nuclear technology and fuel-cycle services worldwide exacerbate the already challenging problems of weapons proliferation.

is more than questionable. The fact is that with the exception of India, nuclear power programs played no role in the development of nuclear weapons, and India should have never been excluded from the original nuclear arrangement. It is absurd to suggest that cost related to nuclear proliferation and its prevention somehow represent a subsidy to the nuclear power industry. The global spread of nuclear technology has not lead to nuclear proliferation. Most nations which have developed nuclear weapons without authorization by anti-proliferation treaties, have done so without possessing civilian nuclear power industries. Knowledge of nuclear weapons technology is sufficient to start a nuclear weapons program, and that knowledge can be found in physics and physics and engineering text books. South Africa demonstrated that a limited number of nuclear weapons could be built from scratch very cheaply. The nuclear proliferation problem will not go away, or lessen even if there are no civilian power reactors, as long as there are physic and engineering textbooks.

Koplow boasts of his many reviewers,

We are grateful to the following people for reviewing versions of this paper: Michele Boyd (Physicians for Social Responsibility), Peter Bradford (University of Vermont Law School), Simon Carroll (Swedish Biodiversity Centre and Member, Nuclear Liabilities Financing Assurance Board, UK), Mark Cooper (University of Vermont Law School), Robert Cowin (UCS), Antony Frogatt (Chatham House), Ken Green (American Enterprise Institute), Autumn Hanna (Taxpayers for Common Sense), Dusty Horwitt (Environmental Working Group), Stan Kaplan (U.S. Congressional Research Service), Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute), Ed Lyman (UCS), Arjun Makhijani (Institute for Energy and Environmental Research), Alan Nogee (UCS), Doug Norlen (Pacific Environment and ECA Watch), Marcus Peacock (Pew Charitable Trusts/Subsidyscope), Mycle Schneider (Mycle Schneider Consulting), Henry Sokolski (Nonproliferation Policy Education Project), Sharon Squassoni (Center for Strategic and International Studies), and Steve Thomas (University of Greenwich Business School).

Didn't one of them catch the erroneous linking of the nuclear proliferation problem and subsidies? Of course most of these reviewers are strident critics of nuclear power, who may be emotionally incapable of spotting logically fallacious anti-nuclear arguments.

Thus the marriage of military and civilian nuclear technology proved to be quite unsuccessful, and in cases where it worked, expensive. Reactors that are both cheaper and safer are possible, and without subsidies. What is required is some investors who are bold and imaginative enough to take some risks. Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry have been relatively small, and have not enhanced nuclear weapons programs. A civilian nuclear power industry might flourish if left to its own devices and if it were willing to take a risk on the molten salt nuclear technology developed in Oak Ridge.

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The nuclear proliferation through reactor fuel recycling canard

Alvin Weinberg once pointed out that nuclear

[p]roliferation has become a sort of ultimate Sword of Damocles that hangs over nuclear energy.

Nuclear non-proliferation is a poorly understood, but important factor in the future global energy picture, that taints the prospects for post carbon nuclear energy use, despite nuclear's cost and reliability advantages over renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Consideration of the nuclear post-carbon option is potentially important, because as Alvin Weinberg long ago pointed out,

a plausible case [exists] for two major theses:

1. That mankind must have an alternative, essentially inexhaustible energy source. From what we now know, this source must be nuclear.
2. That there probably are no insuperable global effects even if nuclear energy from fission breeders reaches 60 times the total energy man now produces.

Weinberg suggested

we would do well to contemplate the full implications of a complete commitment to nuclear energy.

The alternatives, as Weinberg saw them were "abundant energy" through nuclear power, and

force population control by tightening the Malthusian vise, by not holding out hope for this energy panacea

But do proliferation concerns really impose on us Weinberg's dilemma of "abundant energy" and nuclear proliferation or the "Malthusian vice"? really pose such a significant impediment

Perhaps the most significant mistake made by United States non-proliferation policy makers was the exclusion of India from the Nuclear club. This was part of an ultimately disastrous, pig-headed, anti-Indian cold war foreign policy, perused by the United States during the Cold War. India preferred to remain neutral in the United States, Russian conflict, and American foreign policy makers saw that Pakistan was willing to cut deals, so they chose an alliance with Pakistan over Indian good will. Pakistan in many respects was an undesirable Allie, which formed an second alliance with a then United States Enemy power, Communist China. Thus the United States had to look the other way while Pakistan and nuclear armed China, both of which had fought border wars with India, motivated by territorial greed. The Pakistan-China alliance, thus posed a significant threat to India, and that threat feed into Indian concerns which created an Indian motive for proliferation.

The 1971 Indo-Pakistan war was the trigger of both Pakistani and Indian nuclear proliferation programs. During the war, India succeeded in dismembering Pakistan, although much of the credit for the loss of the East Pakistani wind must go to the West Pakistani Muslim land owning elite, who in alliance with the West Pakistani dominated Pakistan Army sought to prevent the emergence a democratic state.

The Pakistan conflict with India has always been a diversion from the larger social and economic problems of the failed nation of Pakistan, and hides its weaknesses. The 1971 war demonstrated that in an all out military struggle with India, Pakistan could be destroyed. As a consequence the Pakistani Army chose nuclear weapons as their last line of defense. The 1974 Indian nuclear device test, was a response to the Pakistani nuclear weapons program and a warning to nuclear armed China to not assume a nuclear disarmed India in the event of another conflict between them. India had no reason to push the development of nuclear weapons until Pakistan began stockpiling theirs in the 1990's. Thus the nuclear arming of India can be seen as a response to the illicit activities of A.Q. Khan.

Academic theories of proliferation have focused far to much attention on supposed ties between civilian nuclear power program. These ties appear far more imaginary than real. India is the only nation which moved from an active civilian nuclear power program to a nuclear weapons program, but India is clearly a special case, and India's nuclear weapons program appears to be a response to the nuclear weapons program of Pakistan, a nation that did not have a prior civilian nuclear power program.

One would expect that research on proliferation prevention, would focus on the actual routes that nations have taken to develop nuclear weapons, with special attention being given to the paths chosen by nations which chose to defy the international effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. This is not the case, however. The Dean of academic proliferation researchers is Professor Frank N. von Hippel of Princeton University and former Assistant Director for National Security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. during the Clinton administration. Von Hippel whose theory rests on the assumption that nuclear weapons proliferation can be controlled by controlling the spread of fissile materials.

Here Von Hippel commits a seeming blunder, because he argues that the fissile materials present in "spent nuclear fuel" constitutes a proliferation danger. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is far to dangerous because it leads to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, according to von Hippel. Von Hippel states that what makes nuclear fuel most dangerous

is the fact that reprocessing provides access to plutonium, a nuclear weapon material.

Since by now a far larger amount of Plutonium is tied up in once through unprocessed nuclear fuel, this would make managing the Spent Nuclear fuel supply an urgent task in the prevention of nuclear proliferation, but is it? Stephen Packard of Depleted Cranium appears to know something that Nuclear Proliferation expert Frank von Hippel doesn't, namely Why You Can’t Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel. I have on several occasions called attention to the work of nuclear disarmament expert Alexander DeVolpi, who challenged von Hippel's assumption that spent nuclear fuel is weaponizable. DeVolpi discussed the controversy at some length, and found significant flaws in von Hippel's arguments. Von Hippel, in no small measure based his case on a paper that that famed nuclear bomb designer J. Carson Marks had written on the explosive properties properties of reactor grade plutonium.

DeVolpi stated:

Mark wrote a paper, “Reactor-Grade Plutonium’s Explosive Properties,” a definitive description of the topic published in 1990 by the Nuclear Control Institute.[1] At the behest of the Department of Energy, a revised version, “Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium,” was published in a 1993 issue of Science and Global Security (Vol. 4, pp. 111-129), which includes an “Appendix: Probabilities of Different Yields” by Frank von Hippel and Edwin Lyman. [2]

It is instructive to compare the 1990 and 1993 papers which are essentially the same except for a curious, but important difference: Missing from the 1993 version is Mark’s carefully defined term “weapon” as “an object suitable for a stockpile by a military organization.” No explanation for this obvious and crucial omission is supplied with the published revision. My personal interviews and conversations with Mark before 1993 confirmed the intended significance of his 1990 definition.
While reprints of the 1993 paper designate J. Carson Mark as the sole author, the Princeton University website index for Science and Global Security credits the revised paper to “Mark, J.C., von Hippel, F.N., Lyman, E.” The revised version acknowledges that “This article is adapted from an earlier paper” (a reference back to Mark’s original 1990 article).

Von Hippel's whole case against nuclear reprocessing collapses, if reactor grade plutonium can not be used to construct a nuclear device that meet J. Carson Mark's definition of a "weapon."

DeVolpi makes the case that reactor grade plutonium is not weaponizable, and therefore von Hippel and his followers are barking up the wrong tree by trying reactor grade plutonium found in "nuclear waste" to proliferation issues.

If proliferation scholars like von Hippel focused their attention on real rather imaginary behavior, they would find strong support for DeVolpe's argument. No nation has ever undertaken the development of nuclear weapons that use reactor grade plutonium. Military grade plutonium is produced by two types of reactors, graphite reactors and heavy water reactors. India appears to have produced all of the plutonium used in their nuclear weapons in small, non-power producing reactors, despite the fact that they have much larger amounts of reactor grade plutonium available from their civilian power reactor program. Anyone who argues that reactor grade plutonium represents an acceptable material for weapons construction, must explain why India chose not to use it in its nuclear arms program.

There is something seriously wrong with intellectual endeavors related to human behavior that do not test theories by references to actual cases of behavior. Thus the reputation of von Hippel as a nuclear proliferation expert, rests on his conclusions drawn from never tested assumptions. When the von Hippel assumptions are tested by reference to actual cases of proliferation, they prove invalid. Thus to the extent that the current international proliferation prevention system is based on the work of von Hippel and like minded "non-proliferation experts," it cannot be assumed to have a valid, well researched theoretical basis.

The nuclear proliferation through reactor fuel recycling is thus a canard.

Nuclear Proliferation: Devices and Weapons

Discussions of nuclear proliferation are tainted by some fundamental problems. Some academic "nuclear proliferation experts" appear to be unable to distinguish between nuclear weapons and nuclear devices. There are important differences. A nuclear weapon is deliverable by military means. That is it is possible to place a nuclear weapon at a particular spot and at a particular time, with a reasonable assurance that it will do what it is intended to do. A weapon must be storable, without short term deterioration. Finally a weapon should not kill the people who manufacture or handel it primary to delivery. A nuclear device on the other hand may be too heavy to deliver by conventional military means. Thus a device can be designed with radiation shielding materials that would be too heavy to use in a conventional nuclear weapon. A device may be constructed from material that immediately begins to damage parts of the device. A device might require immediate use in order to be effective. A device could be constructed in a special laboratory, which could be equipped with expensive and difficult to design and manufacture equipment intended to protect workers from high levels of radiation from fissionable and associated materials. Thus a device could contain materials that would be considered militarily useless or worse in a weapon.

On July 23, 1953 Edward Teller wrote a letter to Sterling Cole, who was then the
Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. Teller argued that there could be a

connection between power production and military application. . . . there is a great and increasing need for fissionable materials in the military field.

Teller suggested

It seems to be doubtful whether, on the basis of present technology, atomic energy can produce power in an economically profitable manner. Power production can, however, be conducted in such a manner as to produce militarily useful materials. It would seem to me reasonable to stimulate the construction of power-producing reactors by guaranteeing a price at which the Government will buy the militarily useful by-products. This price should of course be set lower than the price at which the Atomic Energy Commission is producing fissionable materials at the present time.

In fact both and Cole knew that this plan had not originated with Teller, in fact it had its origins in the United Kingdom. During the 1950's and 1960's the militant British Coal Miners Union, was a thorn in the flesh of the British Government, the British Economy, and the British public. Electrical power generation in the UK was dependent of coal mined by union miners, and thus the possibility existed that the British ability to generate electric power would be lost in the event of a long coal miners strike. Thus the British government proposed to build the Calder Hall Magnox Reactors the ability to generate electricity. The catch was that electricity produced by Calder Hall Magnox Reactors would be far more expensive than electricity produced by coal fired plants, but the British government had an answer to that. The real function of the Calder Hall reactors was the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Thus the British built a series of Magnox reactors for dual purpose use.

In October 1953, less than three months after the Teller letter to Cole, the British tested two devices made from some of the Calder Hall produced plutonium in a South Australian desert. The Totem devices both went off with quite a bang, but some thing about the test displeased the British mightily, for they never went through with their plan to weaponize Calder Hall Plutonium. These events have never been satisfactorily explained. In moderated reactors, if Uranium-238 absorbs a neutron, it is likely to be transformed into plutonium-239 rather than fission. Pu-239 is fissionable, but in moderated reactors 36% of the time Pu-239 undergoes transformation into Pu-240. Pu-249, like U-238 is not fissionable in moderated reactors.

Plutonium-240 does have one unusual quality. It undergoes spontaneous fission. Quite a lot of it as a matter of fact. Every pound of Pu-240 will produce something close to 200,000 fission events a second. And each fission event will produce neutrons, that can trigger fission in fissionable isotopes. Unlike U-235 and Pu-239, Pu-240 does not need to absorb a neutron prior to fission, and absorbing a thermal neutron does not trigger fission in a Pu-240 atom, which then becomes Pu-241. Pu-241 is fissionable in a moderated reactor.

A moderator is a material that, such as graphite, that decreases the energy level of neutrons. Moderators increase lower the criticality threshold of low enrichment nuclear fuel. With a graphite moderator it is possible to create a chain reaction in natural uranium. Since the first American reactors were built before the United States had the ability to produce enriched uranium, they had to use a moderator to create a chain reaction, and American reactor designers chose graphite. If a Neutron is absorbed by a U-235 atom, most of the time, the U-235 splits, and releases neutrons. If one or more of those neutrons is absorbed by U-235 atoms, we have a chain reaction. If a neutron is absorbed by a U-238 atom in a moderated reactor, the U-238 will undergo a nuclear transformation and become Plutonium-239. Now Pu-239 is fissionable, but it is more fissionable with fast neutrons, In a moderated reactor if a Pu-239 atoms absorbs neutrons, 64% split, and 36% become Pu-240.

For weapons designers, Pu-240 is a bad thing. If spontaneously fissioning Pu-240 is mixed with Pu-239, neutrons from the Pu-240, will start to trigger the fission of the Pu-239. If enough Pu-239 is precent, this can trigger a nuclear explosion, although one which might be of far less power than would be expected in an plutonium based nuclear weapon. In nuclear weapons the timing of the beginning of the nuclear explosion is very important. If the trigger goes off too soon, the explosion can loose most of its potential power.

If Pu-240 is present in a plutonium based bomb, its neutrons will trigger a premature explosion of a Plutonium based weapon, compromising its military effectiveness. The way weapons designers control this is to limit the mount of Pu-240 in nuclear weapons. Since 36% of Pu-239 will become Pu-240 in a moderated reactor, it is highly desirable to get it out of a moderated reactor almost as quickly as it is created. But power reactors need to be run very differently than weapons production reactors. A power reactor functions best when fuel is kept in the reactor as long as possible. This will produce Plutonium, but a mixed form of Plutonium called Reactor Grade Plutonium. RGP includes Pu-238, Pu-239, Pu-240 and Pu-241. From the weapons viewpoint this is very undesirable. In preparing Calder Hall plutonium for the Totem tests, the British pulled the nuclear fuel from the reactor quickly, and processed it. This lead to mix of about 90% Pu-239 and 10% Pu-240. The Totum experiment demonstrated that this a vigorous explosion could be produced with this Plutonium mix, but other results of the experiment proved less than satisfactory, and the British gave up the idea of using plutonium from the Calder Hall reactors to produce nuclear weapons.

The United States also ran a nuclear test with Calder Hall plutonium in 1962, probably with even less satisfactory results than the 1953 British experiments. In fact, by the mid 1960's the British thought the Calder Hall reactors were so useless for military purposes, that they declassified their plans, something they never would have done, if they believed that the Calder Hall could produce weapons useful Plutonium.

From the 1960's onward increasing amounts of discarded RGP, became available in both the West and in the Soviet Union, as a byproduct of civilian power reactors, yet no nation ever chose to weaponize RGP. Clearly then there are significant disadvantages to the use of RGP for weapons purposes. Some of these disadvantages are understood. Not only is a weapon built from RGP likely to be of limited explosive power, when compared with ordinary nuclear weapons, but heat and radiation from RGP are likely to damage the weapons triggering mechanism. Thus if kept on the shelf for too long, the RGP weapon is likely to disarm itself. How long is too long? it could be a period as short as a few days or even a few hours.

In addition there are the problems of building a nuclear weapon from highly radioactive materials like RGP.

It is possible for people in places like Los Alamos to design and build nuclear devices using "Reactor Grade Plutonium", and successfully trigger those devices. It does not appear possible to build triggerable nuclear weapons from RGP. Thus self styled academic nuclear experts who speek knowingly of nuclear proliferation using Reactor Grade Plutonium, simply don't know what they are talking about.