[janmalec]

I know this is the internet but you have no idea what are you talking about. Nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear arsenal as the spent fuel from modern reactor is not viable weapons material. There are many countires that have peacefull nuclear power programmes and no nuclear weapons and there are also countries that heave nuclear weapons or even their own nuclear weapon program, but no nuclear power.

France has nuclear because oil was expensive and they didn't have many other alternatives like the Germans.

[Kon5ole]

>Nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear arsenal

That's not true. Once you have the expertise and infrastructure to handle nuclear fuel and waste you can also relatively easily reprocess the fuel to create weapon-grade material. It's certainly much harder if you start with solar panels and wind turbines! :)

Likewise if you have the facilities needed to create nuclear weapons, it makes sense to make some money on the side making electricity as well.

[j-pb]

__modern__ reactors are build to be rarely opened and burn off as much plutonium as possible. But that's obviously not how the french nuclear program started.

Only doing nuclear research for military purposes is frowned upon by your neighbours and makes you look suspicous, and only having a civilian program is super complex and expensive and doesn't even make you untouchable. Luckily building the infrastructure for a nuclear arsenal goes hand in hand with building the infrastructure for civilian uses, so you have a buy one, get one free situation.

>> The National Assembly approved the initial nuclear energy plan for a five-year term on July 24, 1952. The plan sought to build two experimental reactors at the Marcoule nuclear site, and construction began in 1955. Shortly thereafter, the construction of a third reactor commenced. In addition to generating electricity, these reactors would produce plutonium in sufficient quantities to support a civil advanced reactor program and potentially a military one, at a cost three times lower than highly enriched uranium.[69][70][71]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_France%27s_civil_nu...

>> In 1957 Euratom was created, and under cover of the peaceful use of nuclear power the French signed deals with West Germany and Italy to work together on nuclear weapons development.[18] The Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer told his cabinet that he "wanted to achieve, through EURATOM, as quickly as possible, the chance of producing our own nuclear weapons".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

[janmalec]

I agree. Prehaps my wording that civilian use has nothing to do with military was too strong. There were other examples of civial programs in the past (like RBMK) that complemented military use very well. I'm frustrated because this argument is used to bash nuclear power, but never other energy sources. In general it helps to have developed technology and energy abundance to develop military tech and any technology can be missused.

Civilian nuclear power is not needed to have a weapons programs, it can help tho.