The sad thing is, spent fuel from reactors, either LWRs or breeders or whatever, is totally unsuitable as a source of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The reason? Too much 240Pu. The 240Pu essentially "poisons" the material because of its high spontaneous fission rate. That produces neutrons when you don't want them, and causes the weapon to pre-detonate. A special plutonium breeding cycle is needed to minimize the 240Pu while still getting enough 239Pu. It requires the material to be removed at a precise time after the start of irradiation. Obviously, in a reactor, this specialized breeding cycle is not used. You just burn the fuel down as much as possible without regard to optimizing the 239Pu/240Pu ratio.
Carter didn't understand this. Neither do almost all anti-nuclear people who oppose nuclear energy on this basis. When I explain it to most people, it's like an epiphany. Of course, the dogmatic anti-nukes usually mumble some other absurd objection, but when you knock their legs out from under them with scientific arguments, you can see they are really deflated.
there are breeders that can make weapons grade plutonium. the plant killed by jimmah was claimed to potentially create weaponable plutonium. Interestingly many of the breeder designs leave nothing but lead behind, gate’s design needs just a little enriched material and a pile of yellow cake. looks like the development work will be done in china cuze you can’t do that here.