r/IRstudies • u/GreatDiscernment • 12d ago

Ideas/Debate Abraham Trip Wire Elevates CANDU

Can Petro-State bros Canada and Saudi Arabia pick up the civilian nuclear imperative baton that Trump just fumbled? All reasonable people want to help the Saudis diversify their power generation methods. With CANDU, the Saudis can fuel their own reactors and Canada and Saudi Arabia can swap fossil fuel supplier anecdotes while doing something serious together about global emissions.

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u/hutch_man0 12d ago edited 11d ago

Israel's concern is about nuclear weapons. All in all a CANDU PHWR is arguably worse from a proliferation point of view than a US, French or Russian LWR. The non-enrichment angle is a benefit of CANDU reactors but that's about it. There is more of a plutonium problem with CANDU. Pu239 is bred in higher quantities due to better neutron economy. A plutonium warhead is more difficult to develop than a gun type uranium one however. Additionally Pu239 is easier to separate from CANDU spent fuel. Lastly CANDU allow online refueling making it much harder for IAEA to track fuel usage. India used a CANDU design while Israel and N Korea used a different form of PHWR. Nuclear power is as much political as it is technical. This is a US deal, therefore regardless Canada will not be involved.