Developments in Nuclear Weapons Around the World

[Nilgiri]

Since NK missiles can reach US homeland, no one believes that Washington would trade LA or San Francisco for Seoul. The nuclear umbrella has become full of holes.

Therefore 70% of South Korean population is for arming with nuclear weapons. SK will go nuclear in the next 2 decades IMO and Japan will follow suit.

Cannot come soon enough. I hope this century, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia also get them.

Whether they declare openly or not, that is up to them....but the payback w.r.t CCP geopolitical decision to proliferate will inevitably return with interest this century.

ROK Navy has made some excellent decisions regarding its submarine development. Very well done.

 

[Merzifonlu]

If the first thing that comes to your mind in the nuclear energy discussion is accessing nuclear weapons or copying the nuclear reactors that were sold to us, you would wait many many many more years!

Either don't be of such sick mentality or be honest with yourself and develop thorium-based nuclear technology yourself without anyone's help.

 

[AzeriTank]

That‘s true. I‘m only reacting to members who post unfounded views, that building a nuclear bomb would be easy and a piece of uranium cake. It‘s not - even if you have technical knowledge.

It‘s nearly impossible nowadays to enrich Uranium with gas centrifuges (10.000 and more needed) and breed Plutonium undetected. South Africa pulled that off once. Iran got sanctioned into economic meltdown, Syria‘s secret reactor built with North Korean help got air striked and destroyed.

Pakistan is the only nuclear proliferation state with the Khan ring that did it for money: They got shafted so hard by America. Look at their economy now, it‘s falling apart.

What if Turkey tried to do it in Kazakistan, where there are thousands of km of radius and nobody lives around. Turkey still has the area to move and Turkey understand it well that it has to be super secret. Its also hard to jugde Kazakistan because they had nuclear warheads but gave up in 1990

 

[TheInsider]

Uranium enrichment is a well-known process and child's play for a country like Turkiye. We are developing a 5th gen fighter but people think an 80-90-year-old tech is an alien tech.

 

[Nilgiri]

Thread has been pinned for convenience. Please keep the general nuclear weapons chat in here everyone and keep the other threads on topic.

 

[Afif]

Cannot come soon enough. I hope this century, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia also get them.

Whether they declare openly or not, that is up to them....but the payback w.r.t CCP geopolitical decision to proliferate will inevitably return with interest this century.

And you forgot to mention Thailand, Malaysia and BD!
It will bring some serious peace and stability in the region.

 

[Chocopie]

Uranium enrichment is a well-known process and child's play for a country like Turkiye. We are developing a 5th gen fighter but people think an 80-90-year-old tech is an alien tech.

It‘s not about technical capabilities. It‘s about getting enough uranium cake and setting up centrifuge farms with thousands of them in secret. And to obtain plutonium from heavy water reactors and breed or recycle it to weapons-grade status secretly as well.

All that without getting detected by IAEA and the US is nearly impossible. Turkey as a NPT signatory would face serious consequences. So it must be a top secret nuclear weapons programme …

 

[Chocopie]

What if Turkiye tried to do it in Kazakistan, where there are thousands of km of radius and nobody lives around. Turkiye still has the area to move and Turkiye understand it well that it has to be super secret. Its also hard to jugde Kazakistan because they had nuclear warheads but gave up in 1990

Guess the Russians will find out sooner or later.

 

[Afif]

It‘s not about technical capabilities. It‘s about getting enough uranium cake and setting up centrifuge farms with thousands of them in secret. And to obtain plutonium from heavy water reactors and breed or recycle it to weapons-grade status secretly as well.

All that without getting detected by IAEA and the US is nearly impossible. Turkiye as a NPT signatory would face serious consequences. So it must be a top secret nuclear weapons programme …

yep, that is the problem!
Anyone try to do that their economy would be crippled.

 

[Chocopie]

Imagine what political and economic pressure Israeli lobbyists and US, French, UK would put on Turkey if detected. They would all freak out

 

[Afif]

Imagine what political and economic pressure Israeli lobbyists and US, French, UK would put on Turkiye if detected. They would all freak out

it would better if various countries around the world start to develop nukes in a simultaneous manner like Korea, Japan, Turkey and brazil.
it would be very hard for west to do effective sanctions.

 

[Anastasius]

I don't think nuclear non-proliferation is going to be a thing much longer. American analysts have long been observing that limiting nuclear weapons to only a handful of state actors is causing more issues vis-a-vis the benefits it brings for US world dominance. It's simply not practical any more to try and stop countries from getting their hands on nukes which is why more advanced countries (such as the US) are now searching for the Next Big Thing that will keep the West in dominant play even with everybody else also having nuclear weapons.

 

[Chocopie]

No one would inform others of their secretive nuclear programmes.

Japan could easily do it without getting detected in early stages:
Enough uranium for enrichment and hydrogen isotopes from civilian nuclear industry, getting weapons grade plutonium through existing spent fuel rods recycling plant and solid-fueled Epsilon rocket (ICBM) with MIRV tech (satellite/space expertise) as delivery tools. At one point sooner or later you‘ll get busted, nobody can keep it a secret.

 

[Nilgiri]

And you forgot to mention Thailand, Malaysia and BD!
It will bring some serious peace and stability in the region.

Well I was going a bit far myself. I don't see anyone past Japan and Korea acquiring them tbh.

It comes with significant economic, political and industrial pressure and commitment this late in the juncture.

Korea for example developed its Hyunmoo Ballistic missile in the 1980s.

Japan developed its plutonium stockpile (and the infrastructure for this) similarly around that time period.

The earlier you developed the significant ecosystems needed, the more options you will have to breakout later as you have those inertias going already and need to worry less about the significant and considerable starting frictions.

 

[Afif]

Well I was going a bit far myself. I don't see anyone past Japan and Korea acquiring them tbh.

It comes with significant economic, political and industrial pressure and commitment this late in the juncture.

Korea for example developed its Hyunmoo Ballistic missile in the 1980s.

Japan developed its plutonium stockpile (and the infrastructure for this) similarly around that time period.

The earlier you developed the significant ecosystems needed, the more options you will have to breakout later as you have those inertias going already and need to worry less about the significant and considerable starting frictions.

Yes, that is common sense, but when you included Vietnam and Philippine i thought why not others also?

 

[Chocopie]

Interestingly a guy like Trump wouldn‘t interfere much when Japan and SK would go nuclear. „Uhm, it’s a wonderful thingy, when the allied yellow guys take care and pay for their own defence.“ Any liberal US administration would go ballistic instead.

During Trump‘s presidency Koreans convinced the US side to lift all remaining ballistic missile guidelines: no limits to range and warhead weight anymore. Despite of his hatred for Koreans, sometimes a douchebag in the White House ain‘t that baaad

 

[Heartbang]

Uranium enrichment is a well-known process and child's play for a country like Turkiye. We are developing a 5th gen fighter but people think an 80-90-year-old tech is an alien tech.

In theory, you wouldn't even need to enrich uranium. We just need a high neutron flux environment.

 

[Rajendra Chola]

What if Turkiye tried to do it in Kazakistan, where there are thousands of km of radius and nobody lives around. Turkiye still has the area to move and Turkiye understand it well that it has to be super secret. Its also hard to jugde Kazakistan because they had nuclear warheads but gave up in 1990

It’s not an FDI company doing R&D in another country. Nuclear bombs gives out shock waves which are now detectable. Depending upon the ground formation the shock waves generated can be less or more. But such an operation cannot be kept secret. Plus there is Russia that keeps an huge interest in Kazakasthan.

 

[Rajendra Chola]

And you forgot to mention Thailand, Malaysia and BD!
It will bring some serious peace and stability in the region.

Going much ahead of ourselves aren’t we? Having nuclear bomb is just one part of the problem. Having an effective mechanism in place so as not letting rogue elements taking control of the stockpile, delivery systems development, proliferation etc costs huge amount of money and resources.


Many countries having N Bomb is just huge proliferation risks and the next thing we would have is some terrorist getting hands on HEU and setting up an bomb. Whether we like it not, preventing such an scenario is still pretty much on the global interest, and that means preventing access to nuclear weapons to as many states as possible. Even if a next gen weapons is found, the threat from usage of nuclear weapons would still exists from a simple reason of poisoning the entire area for the next 100 years, if they start becoming like RDX IED bombs.


Countries like India spend an insane amount on Nuclear systems, R&D of reactors, engineers, mechanism for usage, communication systems, stockpiles security, delivery systems, submarines etc from black budget. I believe it might be 3-4B every year (includes missile build and SSBN). And it’s better this way.

 

[Rajendra Chola]

Cannot come soon enough. I hope this century, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia also get them.

Whether they declare openly or not, that is up to them....but the payback w.r.t CCP geopolitical decision to proliferate will inevitably return with interest this century.

ROK Navy has made some excellent decisions regarding its submarine development. Very well done.

You are requesting for an world with even more risks of nuclear war and most importantly it’s misuse. US and Probably Russia has probably 100’s of incidents where their nuclear weapons were at risks. Pakistan ran an business with Libya and NK. Now imagine countries with poor defence spending trying to control their stockpiles eventually ending in the arms of terrorists? And instead of an RDX, small sized bomb going off in any decent sized capital..

We would live in an even riskier world.