§ Lord Jenkins of Putneyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the plutonium that arises from reprocessing operations at Sellafield, including reprocessing of magnox fuel and reprocessing in the new THORP reprocessing plant, is capable of being made into a crude but powerful nuclear weapon; and
Whether building a crude bomb with an assured yield of one kiloton from reactor-grade plutonium would be no more difficult than building one from weapons-grade plutonium.
§ Lord GilbertIt is technically possible that a nuclear device could be constructed from plutonium which had been recovered from the fuel from nuclear power reactors. It should be emphasised, however, that it is technically difficult to produce weapons using weapons grade material. It would be even more difficult to use this reactor grade plutonium to produce a reliable weapon giving a predictable yield.