this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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Is there a functional difference between "weapons grade" plutonium and the plutonium that would be used in a nuclear reactor?
Yes.
From Wikipedia:
Weapon Grade Plutonium has lower concentration because Plutonium has a high rate of spontaneous decay which means it leads to issues with detonations in bombs.
Yes, actually. They're both different mixes of plutonium isotopes. Iirc reactor grade plutonium is far more stable than weapons grade (because blowing up is less desirable for reactors than bombs), and has some different properties when used.
You've got it backwards. Weapons-grade is more stable. Less stability is fine for reactors, because they are designed to manage the reaction on an on-going basis and not, in general, blow up.
Quite possible. I'm not an expert and working from memory, so I could very well get something wrong
Yes, "weapons grade" has a higher purity being almost entirely made of fissile isotope Pu-239
"Reactor grade" has a greater variety of isotopes.
The functional difference is that the higher purity is required to make nuclear bombs, hence "weapons grade." Purity was a significant hurdle in nuclear arms development and one if the reasons the US got the bomb before Germany or the USSR which both struggled to get sufficient purity.