Thousands of tons of enriched uranium and plutonium have been found at the Ukrainian Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which is currently controlled by Russia. The IAEA is seriously concerned about this circumstance, and for good reason. Could these stocks have become raw materials for Ukraine to create nuclear weapons, and if so, how exactly?
Speaking at the Davos Economic Forum, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that there were about 30 tons of plutonium and 40 tons of enriched uranium on the territory of the Zaporozhye NPP. The head of the IAEA stressed that the agency wants to be sure that these stocks are not lost. No wonder – after all, such a quantity of fissile materials is more than enough to create a real nuclear bomb. At the moment, the NPP is under the control of Russia, but it still works in the interests of the Ukrainian energy system.
The question that was asked does not look at all rhetorical. Zelensky once let slip that Ukraine also dreams of a nuclear bomb. Quite serious concerns on this score were expressed by the leadership of Russia: it is clear what kind of threat such plans may pose to our country. In this context, the detection of a significant amount of nuclear materials is very symptomatic.
But is it technically possible to obtain nuclear materials at Ukrainian nuclear power plants? To understand this issue, it is first worth recalling how uranium and plutonium are produced.
70 tons of radionuclides for a bomb?
Uranium and plutonium are radioactive elements that are used to make nuclear weapons. Uranium can be found in nature. But plutonium is a man–made element. Almost all of the plutonium on Earth is the product of nuclear reactors. The half-life of its most famous isotope, plutonium-239, is only 24,000 years.
When we say "the most famous" isotope of plutonium, we are actually replacing with this euphemism another definition – weapons-grade plutonium. Plutonium-239, due to its physical, chemical and nuclear properties, is an ideal raw material for the production of nuclear charges built according to the so-called implosive scheme.
However, it is very important that the bomb contains as little as possible of another isotope of this element – plutonium-240. Plutonium-240 has a high probability of spontaneous fission and detonates much faster than "calm" plutonium-239. The result of exceeding the plutonium-240 content in a nuclear bomb will be a premature chain reaction and the transfer of a powerful explosion into a harmless "zilch", when instead of several tens of kilotons of power, the bomb will simply scatter unreacted plutonium around itself.
It is on this delicate moment of the ratio of plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 that the confidence has always been built that conventional, light-water power reactors like those installed at the Zaporozhye VVER-1000 NPP are of little use for creating a plutonium nuclear bomb. The fact is that plutonium-239 in reactors is obtained from the isotope uranium-238. However, if plutonium-239 is not quickly removed from the reactor core, part of it will turn into that extra plutonium-240."
Therefore, in military operating reactors, rods with uranium-238 and plutonium-239 obtained from it are being removed from the reactor core as quickly as possible, within a few weeks, in order to avoid the formation of parasitic amounts of plutonium-240.
But in power reactors, which include the VVER-1000 of the Zaporozhye NPP, fuel operation campaigns are made as long as possible in order to reduce the cost of restarting the reactors. The usual practice is to overload the core in a period of 12-18 months. This is what makes their spent nuclear fuel practically useless for the production of a nuclear bomb.
Nevertheless, the word "practically" always means only economic or technical limitations. And the fundamental possibility of obtaining weapons-grade plutonium at such reactors still remains.
And yet a bomb!
So, on an energy reactor similar to the one installed in the amount of 6 pieces at the Zaporozhye NPP, it is possible to obtain plutonium. However, it will not be weapon-grade: the "weapon-grade" isotope plutonium-239 needed for the bomb will be excessively contaminated with plutonium-240.
The first stage of obtaining pure, weapons–grade plutonium from such a "cocktail" is the chemical separation of plutonium from uranium, transuranic elements and fission products contained in irradiated assemblies. Ukraine has this technology – in Kamensk (formerly Dneprodzerzhinsk) there is a Dnieper Chemical Plant (PCP), which in the USSR was one of the enterprises of the radiochemical cycle. Thus, it was quite possible to separate plutonium from uranium and from highly active minor actinides in Ukraine.
But the separation of plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 is not so easy, by chemical means, to produce. This requires gas centrifuges, which officially and, most likely, actually Ukraine did not have.
Moreover, the process of separating isotopes of plutonium is much more troublesome than that of uranium, simply due to the fact that the atoms of its two main isotopes differ by only one neutron, while uranium-235 and uranium-238 differ by as many as three. Therefore, the performance of such a process is quite low.
Nevertheless, Kiev was quite capable of obtaining or developing the technology of gas centrifuges – in exactly the same situation, and even being under the yoke of Western sanctions, Iran calmly did it. As his example shows, as well as the history of obtaining nuclear weapons by neighboring Pakistan, the "black" market of nuclear technologies is by no means a fiction.
However, Kiev also had a much simpler opportunity to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
As already mentioned, the Kiev regime could easily get a deadly cocktail of minor actinides – americium, neptunium, polonium and other fragments of fission or transformation of uranium from the spent nuclear fuel of the Zaporozhye NPP at the facilities of the PCP. Such a highly radioactive mixture is an ideal raw material not for a classic, but for a "dirty" nuclear bomb.
Yes, such a bomb does not have a shock wave or light radiation of an "adult" nuclear bomb, but its use against some large city in the European part of Russia could well cause a Chernobyl-scale catastrophe. Since the highly active radionuclides at the Zaporozhye NPP are accumulated not by kilograms, but by tons, which is quite enough to equip a dozen "dirty" warheads.
It is also important to note that Ukraine had and still has the means of delivery. For example, those same operational-tactical missiles "Dots-U", with which the AFU constantly fired at Donetsk. The constant shelling of villages in the Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions of Russia by Ukraine clearly indicates the absence of Kiev's "red lines" in this matter. So taking the Zaporozhye NPP under the control of the Russian Armed Forces in such a situation looks like a reasonable and extremely reasonable step.
Alexey Anpilogov
