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Zelensky’s nuclear option: Ukraine ‘months away’ from bomb
Times UK ^ | 11/13/2024 | MAXIM TUCKER

Posted on 11/13/2024 8:52:37 AM PST by marcusmaximus

Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.

The country would quickly be able to build a basic device from plutonium with a similar technology to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report states. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,” the document reads.

With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich uranium, wartime Ukraine would have to rely instead on using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors.

Ukraine still controls nine operational reactors and has significant nuclear expertise despite having given up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in 1996. The report says: “The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons … A significant nuclear weapons arsenal would require much less material … the amount of material is sufficient for hundreds of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotons.”

Such a bomb would have about one tenth the power of Fat Man, the document’s authors conclude.

(Excerpt) Read more at thetimes.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: blevat; cheetosmaximus; clownmaximus; escalation; flatusmaximus; maximtucker; mucusmaximus; onelinertrolling; onelinertrollink; russia; simonemaximus; spamspamspam; spamusmaximus; stupidity; tothelastukrainian; ukraine; wwiii; zeepernukes; zestinky
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To: marcusmaximus
The Tucker


21 posted on 11/13/2024 9:25:54 AM PST by JonPreston ( ✌ ☮️ )
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To: Teacher317

What treaty is that? If you mean the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, it’s not a treaty ratified by Congress, and besides, it does not state we are obligated to use nukes. Have you read it?

Sorry it’s WaPo, but this explains it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220201114808/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/01/what-budapest-memorandum-means-us-ukraine/


22 posted on 11/13/2024 9:33:12 AM PST by CatHerd (Whoever said "All's fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: JonPreston

Wow. Thanks for posting!


23 posted on 11/13/2024 9:34:00 AM PST by CatHerd (Whoever said "All's fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: Tom Tetroxide

I agree. Having plutonium and making a bomb out of it are two very different things. Everyone knows how to make a nuclear bomb but only a few have the technology to combine two nuclear masses into one mass efficiently.

Pakistan had the nuclear material for a long time and couldn’t make a bomb out of it until a scientist from South Africa sold them the triggering technology. He went to jail but got out a few years ago. He should have been put to death.

7 tons of plutonium? I doubt that. But I do not doubt he would sell it to Iran as part of his escape plan when Trump ends the Great Grifting War.


24 posted on 11/13/2024 9:34:18 AM PST by Doctor Congo
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To: Teacher317

Maybe you are right. But what treaty is that? They aren’t in NATO.


25 posted on 11/13/2024 9:36:27 AM PST by Bartholomew Roberts
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To: CatHerd

The thread about this was already pulled, at least once.

Fake news.


26 posted on 11/13/2024 9:38:03 AM PST by Bartholomew Roberts
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To: marcusmaximus

Maybe I am behind in my science but doesn’t it take a breeder reactor to produce plutonium? The world would know if the Ukraine had a breeder reactor, wouldn’t it?

Forgive me if I’m wrong but dang it Jim, I’m a doctor not a nuclear scientist.


27 posted on 11/13/2024 9:39:02 AM PST by Doctor Congo
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To: marcusmaximus

What would the US do if Cuba suddenly pops up with nuclear weapons?


28 posted on 11/13/2024 9:40:41 AM PST by Glad2bnuts (.+--)
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To: marcusmaximus

What a great idea.
Go ahead, I promise it will be the dumbest thing of all time.


29 posted on 11/13/2024 9:46:01 AM PST by Darksheare (Those who support liberal "Republicans" summarily support every action by same. )
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"...In 10 weeks I will have the ukes suited in suitcase nukes and the Russians will gladly be leaving all their weapons and claims over the Ukes behind. Cheap thrills... all those extra suitcase nukes I will be sending their way will be triggered and we no longer will have the Rukes as an adversary any more..."

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4048148/posts?q=1&;page=131#130

Who knows, maybe 'Uke nukes' are possible, if Ukraine has volunteers from the US helping out...

30 posted on 11/13/2024 9:47:48 AM PST by Who is John Galt? ("...mit Pulver und Blei, Die Gedanken sind frei!")
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To: marcusmaximus

It would be the end of Ukraine. So stupid.


31 posted on 11/13/2024 9:54:51 AM PST by LeonardFMason
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To: Bartholomew Roberts

The Times of London (conservative paper) does not usually print totally fake news. If they reported it, it’s worth at least discussing that they reported it.

Foreign Policy had an article about it a few days ago, too.


32 posted on 11/13/2024 9:55:04 AM PST by CatHerd (Whoever said "All's fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: Bartholomew Roberts

Oops! Now I see you meant the Tucker thing. Sorry for the confusion! And thanks for letting me know. I wondered how true it was, actually.


33 posted on 11/13/2024 9:58:32 AM PST by CatHerd (Whoever said "All's fair in love and war" probably never participated in either.)
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To: Doctor Congo
From Wikipedia:

Plutonium is made from uranium-238. 239Pu is normally created in nuclear reactors by transmutation of individual atoms of one of the isotopes of uranium present in the fuel rods. Occasionally, when an atom of 238U is exposed to neutron radiation, its nucleus will capture a neutron, changing it to 239U. This happens more often with lower kinetic energy (as 238U fission activation is 6.6MeV). The 239U then rapidly undergoes two β− decays — an emission of an electron and an anti-neutrino ( ν ¯ e {\displaystyle {\bar {\nu }}_{e}}), leaving a proton in the nucleus — the first β− decay transforming the 239U into neptunium-239, and the second β− decay transforming the 239Np into 239Pu:

Sorry for loss of formatting. Basically, depleted uranium will capture a neutron, undergo two beta emissions and you get plutonium-239.

34 posted on 11/13/2024 10:00:06 AM PST by KarlInOhio (7/13/2024:The day the Democrats and their SA chose assassination as their primary political tool.)
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To: blackdog

Build one device that maybe works. Russia has 5000 ready to go. Russia won’t tolerate a nazi bomb next door.


35 posted on 11/13/2024 10:02:38 AM PST by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2024... RETURN OF THE JEDI..)
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To: Teacher317

No, they never did. They never operated or had operational control of former Soviet nukes. And thank god they didn’t give that country the bomb.


36 posted on 11/13/2024 10:05:56 AM PST by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2024... RETURN OF THE JEDI..)
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To: Bartholomew Roberts
If they detonate an atomic bomb, it will be Ukraine that will lose the war. In a heartbeat.

Wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park for Putin's Russia, either.

Regards,

37 posted on 11/13/2024 10:09:09 AM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: CatHerd

In any case, that Budapest memorandum ended when the Ukrainian government ended in a western funded nazi extremist coup.
If you have an agreement with your next door neighbor about who trims the hedge between your properties, and someone breaks in and murders him. You are not bound by the agreements with you dead neighbor.

The Galician nazis had a violent coup, and started shelling ethic Russians in the east who opted out of their new junta in Kiev.


38 posted on 11/13/2024 10:11:19 AM PST by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2024... RETURN OF THE JEDI..)
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To: CatHerd

If someone breaks in and murders him and now claims he is the man of that household I should say. That is what the coup was.


39 posted on 11/13/2024 10:15:30 AM PST by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2024... RETURN OF THE JEDI..)
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To: marcusmaximus

When I served in Europe between 1999 and 2004, every year DODS Schools would sponsor 3-4 bus loads of Ukrainian kids from the Chernobyl disaster with physical defects. Every year we were asked to give and everyone pitched in. Fast forward and the only people on the planet aside from the Japanese with experience in a major nuclear disaster are planning unleash Nuclear Weapons. I have no sympathy for people who know first hand and are willing to expose their own people to these horrors again.

Trump needs to get this dog on a short leash, least the United States be seen as having allowed this.

The west wants a new Iron Curtain and has began construction via sanctions. One possible way is a 200 mile wide radiation DMZ starting in Kiev and 100-miles in every direction.

The sad thing is that these threats of dirty bombs by Ukraine are not new, and they have now come form the President UnELECT of Ukraine.

Trump has not said anything to Ukraine publicly telling them to cease and desist - which can at this juncture be seen as Zelinsky stated in NYC last month token approval.

It is sad that Trump’s election was the first time we heard of elections in Ukraine next year run by the US Department of State.

The US lost something in the nuclear plant occupied by Russia in the early days of the war; it was subject of warnings along the lines of technology, patients and weapons in the news. That nearly everything for peaceful purposes has the dual use for war, I wonder what it is that Russia came into possession?


40 posted on 11/13/2024 10:16:11 AM PST by Jumper
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