Is the scenario that commercial reactor plutonium could be stolen by terrorists and made into bombs realistic?
Very far-fetched. It’s very far-fetched. If you look at the weapons programs of those countries who have produced weapons, you will find most of them have probably tried using plutonium with mixtures of isotopes, probably never as dirty a mixture as you find in reactor plutonium today. But tried to see whether they could make effective bombs with not quite so pure plutonium-239. If they tried it once, I think you will find they never did it again. I think perhaps the U.K. tried it twice but after that, went right back to trying to assure that the plutonium was as pure 239 as possible.
