Nuclear Power Without Nuclear Weapons?

Is it possible for nuclear power to be developed even without the development of nukes? If nukes are inevitable how long can they wait after the development of nuclear power? What has to happen and what could be the effects? Is this even plausible at all?
 
Japan and Germany both fit your criteria. They are both, as one intelligence analyst put it, the turn of a screwdriver away from having nuclear weapons.
 
Japan and Germany both fit your criteria. They are both, as one intelligence analyst put it, the turn of a screwdriver away from having nuclear weapons.

I think RWG meant that would it be possible to develop nuclear power in a world where nuclear weapons were never developed and that, if by some means nuclear power was developed without weapons proceeding them, is it therefore inevitable that nuclear weapons will follow?
 
I think RWG meant that would it be possible to develop nuclear power in a world where nuclear weapons were never developed and that, if by some means nuclear power was developed without weapons proceeding them, is it therefore inevitable that nuclear weapons will follow?

Nuclear power did precede nuclear weapons IOTL.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Gas cooled natural uranium reactors were used in the French and British weapons programs because they don't face the resource bottlenecks posed by other solutions. Heavy water is difficult and expensive to accumulate in the quantities required for a nuclear reactor, and enriched uranium requires expensive and complicated facilities with access to large amounts of electricity. For example, Manhattan Project sites tended to be built near areas with large hydroelectricity resources, while later sites were powered by large coal fired power plants or nuclear reactors.

However, heavy water reactors could also lend themselves to being built towards areas with extensive hydroelectricity resources to produce their heavy water, and they also have the advantage of being the best reactor design for the production of plutonium and tritium (at least in common usage, sodium cooling may be better yet). That's why the design was chosen for the military plutonium and tritium generating reactors in the United States.

Apart from the motivation of increasing energy security or reducing energy prices due to a lack of hydropower or the need to import fossil fuels for power generation, a country could also decide to pursue a power program as a way of acquiring plutonium for weapons without the need for as much infrastructure while potentially generating energy as a byproduct.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Nuclear power did precede nuclear weapons IOTL.

It depends on how you define nuclear power. None of the Manhattan Project reactors generated electricity (they weren't equipped for it), and N-Reactor in 1966 was the only dual purpose reactor ever built in the United States. The British nuclear program had dual purpose reactors at Calder Hall starting in 1956, which were the first to produce power for grid use, but I'm uncertain they were commercially viable at the time (the British government used an accounting trick to include a plutonium credit, which was never actually paid to the operators). Dresden nuclear reactor was the first unit ordered without subsidies in the United States, and it came online a few years later in 1960.

However, it's worth noting that the Atomic Energy Commission in the United States had nuclear power generation as its lowest priority task until the early to mid-1950s when the British and Soviets started progress in that area. If nuclear power had been an area of greater emphasis it might have started a few years earlier.
 
I doubt it without changing either Human nature or Science. Human's by nature weaponise, so if they discovered an energy source that produces a lot of energy they would soon think of its potential as a weapon. And with the bulk of research already done to make nuclear energy it wouldn't be too expensive of a leap to produce nuclear weapons. Whilst science links the fission of nuclear reactors to that of nuclear weapons. And only an ASB can change that.
 
While you can have nuclear power before nuclear weapons, once you develop nuclear power you have the means and the theory to build nuclear weapons. In theory if you had some sort of international agency with a brief to prevent nuclear weapons development, and the ability to prevent cheating before any state could get them nuclear power but no weapons is possible. Having said that, the odds of that situation are very slim.
 
ASB thought...

I've been toying with an asb timeline, where natural Uranium is enriched enough to be used as reactor feul, but is not weapons-grade. In a case like that, nuclear power might be discovered before the theory is fully understood, and reactors built--but, human nature being what it is, once it is understood enough, it will be weaponized. This is PURE ASB, as it would require fiddling with the half-life of U-235...
 

Delta Force

Banned
I've been toying with an asb timeline, where natural Uranium is enriched enough to be used as reactor feul, but is not weapons-grade. In a case like that, nuclear power might be discovered before the theory is fully understood, and reactors built--but, human nature being what it is, once it is understood enough, it will be weaponized. This is PURE ASB, as it would require fiddling with the half-life of U-235...

Natural uranium is enriched enough to be used as reactor fuel in a gas cooled or heavy water reactor. Light water reactors require enriched fuel, and the other types might if a desire for higher efficiency, smaller size, or other requirements require it.

Most modern reactors are light water cooled, but gas cooling was common in the early power reactors, and heavy water cooling was common for plutonium and tritium producing reactors. There are some modern heavy water cooled reactors used for commercial power generation though (the Canadian CANDU type), and they are currently the only alternative to the current de facto light water standard of the industry.
 
Have a country use only thorium fission and they’ll never get nukes.
Not quite true - the US at least tested a bomb made from U-233 which worked just fine. It's a pig to work on though - you unavoidably get U-232 in the mix as well, and the decay chain for that includes a lot of hard gamma emitters which make the stuff really nasty to work with down to 5ppm (as in, gloveboxes aren't enough, you need full remote handling kit). That makes the weapons harder but not impossible.
 
half life and ASB

Natural uranium is enriched enough to be used as reactor fuel in a gas cooled or heavy water reactor. Light water reactors require enriched fuel, and the other types might if a desire for higher efficiency, smaller size, or other requirements require it.

Most modern reactors are light water cooled, but gas cooling was common in the early power reactors, and heavy water cooling was common for plutonium and tritium producing reactors. There are some modern heavy water cooled reactors used for commercial power generation though (the Canadian CANDU type), and they are currently the only alternative to the current de facto light water standard of the industry.

I was considering an ASB scenario so that nuclear power could come about in late 1800's/early 1900's, before it's actually understood--probably with some messy oopsies in the process.
 

Delta Force

Banned
I was considering an ASB scenario so that nuclear power could come about in late 1800's/early 1900's, before it's actually understood--probably with some messy oopsies in the process.

An aqueous homogeneous reactor could produce nuclear energy with a simple reactor design (more information on the design and a possible scenario here). However, the design would either require uranyl nitrate coming into contact with a fairly large sample of heavy water, or enriched uranium coming into contact with light water. Of the two options, the one with uranyl nitrate and heavy water is probably the most likely, because heavy water was produced years before enriched uranium.
 
Japan and Germany both fit your criteria. They are both, as one intelligence analyst put it, the turn of a screwdriver away from having nuclear weapons.

These days, so is almost everyone else who has nuclear plants and manages their own waste. Since the fiction that you cannot build a bomb out of reactor-grade plutonium (one with high Pu-240 content) was dispelled, and vast amounts of nuclear weapon design information has become public, everyone with the capability to chemically separate nuclear waste who has any plutonium stores can build a bomb.

That bomb will be huge, heavy and not very efficient, though.
 
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