[redprince]

> There is bridges between military and civilian nuclear,

The article make it very clear: Without civil nuclear power the maintenance cost of the nuclear powered sub fleet would skyrocket. The civil nuclear power generation masks the costs associated with maintaining the necessary know how and industrial base to fuel military nuclear reactors.

> however keep in mind that nuclear reactors like the EPRs being built in the UK are designed such that producing the necessary fission products to produce weapons is basically impossible.

Really. Last I checked these reactors were fueled with 5% enriched uranium oxide. Plutonium is formed by transmutation of U-238 which is in ample supply in that fuel. What's really stopping the UK to claim that Plutonium is the 2022 shuttering of their only reprocessing plant in Sellafield.

It's not like they need more Plutonium anyway. The UK currently sits on a 140t civilian stockpile of Plutonium in addition to whatever the military has. The pit of a nuclear bomb (fission or fusion) requires approximately 5kg Plutonium.