Plutonium with depleted uranium (MOx) allows to use Bushehr-1 or any nuclear reactor in a subcritical fashion very efficiently without any difficulty.

There are three ways to do that :

• Using a small neutron source like the Stanford “accelerator-on-a-chip” is risky but not unfeasible.

Unlike what’s said usually in scientific papers written by scientists trying to create more jobs through the artificial roundaboutness of reactors, there is no need for a powerful neutron source for a powerful subcritical nuclear engine. It simply takes more time to start up and needs a correct fuel assembly with lots of plutonium 239 close to the neutron source to compensate. Basically we bring the natural Keff at 0,90 for a Stanford chip by using 7,8 kgs of plutonium 239 in unpressurized CO2 and insert 200 kgs of depleted uranium not inbetween the plutonium 239 rods but on the sides, along the zircalloy walls (in this precise configuration. I usually use tungsten, which is great with DU powder as neutron source, it catches some neutrons (in my view with Pu239 this is not significant at all) but shields from heat losses, which is critical re. climate change). The Stanford chip produces enough energy for a start up in a month or two depending on outside heat (right now it’s 36 days). After that the fission chain will oscillate between the DU walls and the core, and it will provide at Keff = 0,95 (5 loops of coolant are needed to extract enough heat for climate neutrality) 2850 MWt (almost as the 3000 expected as LEU reactor) over 2 years (and will be at 2000 MWts then).

Let’s note that the Stanford chip neutron source is cheap (100 000$) and that hence several can be aligned for a faster startup of the subcritical nuclear core.

• With a good neutron source such as the Combinated missile system.

The Combinated missile provides 100 times as much neutrons as the Stanford chip through fusion under accelerated light of tritium. So for a Keff =0,95, 5 days for startup only are needed. The reactor fuel will last 2 years as well, starting at 2850 MWts (then power will be at 1900 MWts). Here tungsten is used (18 days startup with zircalloy as neutrons cannot go through as well, and it becomes almost uncontrollable later at that high Keff, it might become prompt critical).

• There are also way more powerful military neutron sources relying on adaptation of the Combinated missile system. Uranium 238 pulsed on tungsten produces a lot of neutrons per impact (and even more on beryllium or lithium). With that, up to 747 billions of times the Stanford chip have been achieved.

With that “B747” neutron source, start up time will be of a bit less than 2 hours, reaching 2850 MWts. After 2 years of use, the reactor is still at 1850 MWts. Of course for the same reasons as above tungsten is also used there.

In all cases 5 loops of coolant are needed to extract all the heat. They all should rely on supercritical CO2. Each loop linked to its own turbine, the nuclear core produces 2840 MWe. The costs are higher but this is much more than compensated by the electricity surplus extracted from the nuclear core.

Hence in this system Iran can burn some depleted uranium (there is a LOT around from the bombings of 2025 and 2026 – 1000 tons), and does not need uranium enrichment.

The AI CLP-FPL confirms everything.