Can commercial nuclear plants make bomb material?

Commercial nuclear power is a poor pathway to weapons, and that's good news. The plutonium in reactor fuel has an isotope mix that's badly suited to bombs, and used fuel is so radioactive it can't be handled without heavy shielding — anyone seeking a weapon has far easier routes than diverting it.

Proliferation risk isn't zero, so it's labelled contested, and experts reasonably debate how widely to spread enrichment technology. But decades of international safeguards show the civilian fuel cycle can be run responsibly — and keeping nuclear energy growing under that framework is far better than ceding the field.