Word: reactors
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...slugs of plutonium close together in a container similar to a gun barrel, then smash the two together with explosives. This triggers the chain reaction that results in a nuclear explosion. However, achieving this involves advanced skills, expensive hardware and sophisticated electronic devices. Also, recovering plutonium from spent reactor fuel is costly and complex...
...natural uranium is increased, eventually to weapons-grade material. From 33 to 55 lbs. of U-235 at roughly 93% purity can be used in a Hiroshima-size bomb. Reprocessing is the chemical procedure for extracting Pu-239 from the spent uranium fuel of nuclear reactors, where the plutonium is produced as a waste product. A breeder reactor uses plutonium as fuel rather than uranium: by atomic fission, additional uranium placed in the breeder is converted into more plutonium than was consumed in the original reaction...
...four decades is both an impressive and a daunting achievement. Five countries formally possess nuclear weapons (the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China); India's 1974 test explosion shows that it has at least mastered the capacity to build them. All told, about 345 commercial nuclear power reactors are in operation in 26 countries, and some 52 nations have nuclear research facilities. At least eleven nations possess facilities for the reprocessing of nuclear fuels, all yielding varying amounts of plutonium. Large enrichment facilities to turn uranium into nuclear fuel, or bomb-grade material, exist...
...already or to be close to that goal. The major example of that ambiguous status known as having "a bomb in the basement" is Israel. The Israelis probably developed an atomic weapon as early as 1968, in all likelihood using reprocessed plutonium from their top-secret, French-built research reactor at Dimona, in the Negev desert. By 1973, Israel was believed to possess at least 13 nuclear weapons...
...nuclear effort shows the bedeviling complexity of proliferation and the difficulties involved in containing it. Pakistan's nuclear program got under way in 1955. Over the next nine years, 37 Pakistani scientists were trained at atomic facilities in the U.S., and in 1965 Pakistan began operating its first nuclear reactor, a small research installation supplied by the U.S., under international inspection safeguards. In 1976 the Kahuta center was established...