The light-water reactor, which is not capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, was promised to North Korea in the early 1990s for the North giving up its nuclear weapons.
It is building a facility in South Carolina to transform excess weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors.
In a major and welcomed development, Russia announced that it will close its last weapons-grade plutonium production reactor.
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Russia and America finalised a decade-old deal to eliminate 68 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for nearly 17, 000 nuclear devices.
That reactor type is not ideal for producing weapons-grade plutonium, but all reactors produce plutonium that could be used in a nuclear explosion.
In the midst of the mayhem, they must also shut down an unexpected threat in the nick of time - prevent five tons of weapons-grade plutonium from falling into the wrong hands.
If its clandestine uranium-enrichment program has made strides, Pyongyang could demonstrate that it will gain access to a far larger pool of fissile material than simply its limited supply of weapons-grade plutonium.
In softening its demand for a full declaration from North Korea, the United States concluded it is more important to get North Korea to surrender its weapons-grade plutonium than risk the deal fall apart all together, officials said.
For example, a 350, 000 square-foot uranium processing facility will be built at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and three different facilities will be built at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium.
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Nuclear weapons, too, can be produced using either uranium enriched to weapons-grade or plutonium.
While it has depleted its stocks of "reactor-grade" plutonium needed to make the weapons-grade variety, the country has plentiful reserves of uranium ore.
Iran, by comparison, is producing near-weapons-grade uranium, but it also has a heavy-water reactor being developed that could produce weapons-usable plutonium.
Extrapolating from the amounts of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium each is thought to possess, India may have up to 95 nuclear weapons and Pakistan up to about 50 (see table), though possibly both have far fewer.
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