I had an idea we might come to a discussion like this Andrew.
Firstly, I believe that you might be sincere, you seem to have no reason to suspect that what you might know about this is could be limited.
Similarly my own knowledge could be limited.
Either way, one or the other of us needs to educate the other, to bring our knowledge into line with reality, it seems to me.
For example, when you were working for the bank, were you aware that money is issued on creation of credit alone? Most ex bank employees I ask about that actually try to argue this isn't true, even members of my family, when we can see it is plainly the truth, even admitted by the real seniors in banks by way of fractional reserves, and actually that is a very important part of the climate disaster story.
Now I will describe to you the role of a Systems Engineer, in creating a system of any kind including nuclear.
We are bound by a few things, some rules, including what we call Systems Lifecycle Standards, and in the case of nuclear, the official secrets act. So there is only so much we would be at liberty to discuss in public, if I happened to have been directly involved in nuclear system lifecycle design, which I haven't, I would technically not be at liberty to discuss, in fact I would be discouraged even from revealing I had any such experience.
But I've worked with many people who have such experience, in my role as a Systems Engineer and Systems Architect on systems other than nuclear, so of course there is a lot of cross referencing of safety standards and etc in any system design. We are often required to use nuclear standards on non-nuclear systems to ensure maximum safety, for example.
I am guessing similar rules apply to you, if you were in a senior position managing a nuclear power station.
But there is nothing to stop us discussing the system lifecycle standards, which are public, though copyrighted information, and some general nuclear physics and economics from the point of view of anyone who has studied this from public information alone, like me, if I had no relevant experience at all, for example.
So firstly we should agree some basic publicly known facts, please do correct me anywhere you think I am wrong:
1. The process of creating nuclear weapons grade ingredients involves two different stages, one for refinement of raw materials to a low volatility pre-weapons stage, and another to convert the same materials to the volatility required for nuclear weapons.
All of these processes generate heat, as in a lot of heat, many megawatts of heat, for a long time.
2. A primary aim of the lifecycle design of any system is to make shareholders happy. In most cases shareholders will appoint a technically savvy "Lender's technical authority", to approve the system design, to ensure the system delivers maximum profitability to shareholders.
Of course it makes perfect sense to capture the heat generated from the processes in (1) above, and put to as profitable use as possible, in fact it would be environmentally irresponsible not to, as well as a being a huge loss of shareholder revenue.
So to minimise impact to environment, and to maximise shareholder gain, it is a no-brainer, to design the system lifecycle such that all refinement is done as a nuclear power station.
3. The job of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), in countries which have nuclear power, but are "not allowed" to have nuclear weapons, is to oversee the nuclear power facilities to ensure that the station is not engaged in second stage materials processing for weapons. In other words, there is a maximum processing time they are allowed to subject materials to. This is what the IAEA cameras fitted in Iranian facilities were for, to ensure second stage materials processing was not being carried out, until those cameras were recently controversially removed.
So to me, it looks like a pretty open and shut case, that the materials input to nuclear weapons is a product of nuclear power stations.
Which part(s) do you think I have wrong?
