China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[antiterror13]

It makes more sense to use enriched U235 than civilian reactor Pu.

Problem with civilian pu is it contain lot of pu240 , and same 242 and 238. Each of them creating different issues and challenges, and additional equipment (pu238 means active cooling of the Pu pit)

It is not possible to make miniaturised ICBM warhead from it, and generally, making more than one thermonuclear weapon design is very expensive.

Problem is the same again: replacing Pu239 with U235 or civilian Pu increasing dramatically the amount of required delivery vehicles.

The delivery vehicles makes the 90-95% of the cost of the nuclear triad, so saving pennies on the pit material loose serious pounds on the delivery equipment and development funding.

What type of Plutonium that Japan has (a lot) ?

 

[Anlsvrthng]

What type of Plutonium that Japan has (a lot) ?

Civilian reactor type.

 

[totenchan]

@Hendrik_2000 is a big contributor and has been around for long time in this forum, you may not agree with him but please be respectful and use your arguments instead of your rubb** comments

I also don't agree of some of his posts, and it is totally fine, the same thing to many members here

I don't see why I need to be respectful to someone who clearly isn't respectful himself. Go back and read his post, it's not only full of garbage, it's chock full of plenty of uncivil stuff as well. That said, I don't want to start anything here, considering being old apparently gives you a free pass for all kinds of shit.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

I don't see why I need to be respectful to someone who clearly isn't respectful himself. Go back and read his post, it's not only full of garbage, it's chock full of plenty of uncivil stuff as well. That said, I don't want to start anything here, considering being old apparently gives you a free pass for all kinds of shit.

Please don't just say garbage show me where did I say garbage or something untrue. In fact it is you who is spouting garbage. Saying like the estimate is from reliable sources. What reliable source care to spell it out?. All those estimate about Chinese nuclear stockpile is just that estimate. There is no scientific way to calculate the Chinese nuclear stockpile And the chinese never publish or openly enumerate their nuclear stock pile

 

[Hendrik_2000]

Hendrik is spouting actual garbage like "Iran is making plutonium" and "Plutonium reprocessing is easy to hide" while at the same time not understanding that the Pu you get from uranium reprocessing is not even remotely suitable for weapons production and needs to be further processed in large facilities that are extremely hard to hide. He somehow turns incorrect estimates of uranium enrichment in North Korea into incorrect estimates of Pu processing in North Korea. He insultse people using incredibly poor grammar while failing to actually provide any sources to back half his claims up. So when he claims other people are amateurs, with the implication that he himself is not, it has about as much weight as me claiming my dad works at Nintendo.

I never said Iran is hiding plutonium production. I said Iran hide their U235 uranium enriching processing facility and that is true. You are the one who confused the uranium 235 enriching plant with plutonium production. You just don't have any idea about nuclear processing other than reading my references here and even then you don't understand the subject !

All along I said U235 is the preferred fissile material instead of plutonium because it is easier to extract U235 than plutonium and you can hide it underground with no heat signature at all. I said you Heavy water reactor generate plutonium but you need reporcessing It is very clear in my post. READ AGAIN MY POST!

 

[antiterror13]

I don't see why I need to be respectful to someone who clearly isn't respectful himself. Go back and read his post, it's not only full of garbage, it's chock full of plenty of uncivil stuff as well. That said, I don't want to start anything here, considering being old apparently gives you a free pass for all kinds of shit.

You are NEW here, you need to read the forum rules, it seems you haven't you might not be long in this forum with this behaviours

Alternatively, you could make somebody in your ignore list ... I may include you in my list soon

 

[totenchan]

Please don't just say garbage show me where did I say garbage or something untrue. In fact it is you who is spouting garbage. Saying like the estimate is from reliable sources. What reliable source care to spell it out?. All those estimate about Chinese nuclear stockpile is just that estimate. There is no scientific way to calculate the Chinese nuclear stockpile And the chinese never publish or openly enumerate their nuclear stock pile

The Chinese arms envoy has stated in an interview that the number of nuclear warheads retained by China is in the range of the English and French arsenals. The US Department of Defense places the number of warheads in the 200s. The max number of warheads China can produce based on Pu as the limiting resource is estimated to be around 900. Expanding this number is not possible unless China restarts Pu refinement, which, as has been established, there is no evidence of. If your argument is that China is using uranium instead of plutonium, that brings up a whole slew of new questions, such as why China would produce new bombs using an inferior method when it could restart plutonium production with basically no consequences other then questions on the nature of China's no first use nuclear strategy. This is already happening from the Americans and their fearmongering, what you are saying here is basically what the Americans want you to believe. Do you believe that more nuclear bombs is a sign of strength? If so, that is a childish perspective. China's principled no first use policy is the reason they don't need a large number of warheads. This strategy is a strength, not a weakness.

You are NEW here, you need to read the forum rules, it seems you haven't you might not be long in this forum with this behaviours

Alternatively, you could make somebody in your ignore list ... I may include you in my list soon

I don't like people with condescending attitudes, so I guess I'll be adding you to my ignore list.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

The Chinese arms envoy has stated in an interview that the number of nuclear warheads retained by China is in the range of the English and French arsenals. The US Department of Defense places the number of warheads in the 200s. The max number of warheads China can produce based on Pu as the limiting resource is estimated to be around 900. Expanding this number is not possible unless China restarts Pu refinement, which, as has been established, there is no evidence of. If your argument is that China is using uranium instead of plutonium, that brings up a whole slew of new questions, such as why China would produce new bombs using an inferior method when it could restart plutonium production with basically no consequences other then questions on the nature of China's no first use nuclear strategy. This is already happening from the Americans and their fearmongering, what you are saying here is basically what the Americans want you to believe. Do you believe that more nuclear bombs is a sign of strength? If so, that is a childish perspective. China's principled no first use policy is the reason they don't need a large number of warheads. This strategy is a strength, not a weakness.


I don't like people with condescending attitudes, so I guess I'll be adding you to my ignore list.

And you believe Chinese diplomat? remember this is individual diplomat statement not Chinese state. Of course they said that because they don't want to be pressured into entering nuclear limiting treaty. Their excuse is we don't have as many as the US or Soviet Union.

You still does not get it. Nowadays you don't built plutonium bomb Nobody does. They use plutonium as charger or primer to ignite the U235 fissile material You need very little of it something like 5 kg Now according to western estimate China has 200 to 300 ton of refined Plutonium So do your calculation.

Another thing why can't China increase the plutonium production? They have the technology to built graphite moderated reactor or even heavy water reactor and reprocess the spent fuel. China does have a reprocessing plant built using indigenous technology. They can't use the CANDU but they have their own heavy water reactor and nobody can prevent China to produce it. No inspector will be there as China is not signatory of any nuclear treaty. That is why US is desperate for china to join into SALT treaty

 

[sinophilia]

People who say America is trying to create a perception of China being weaker by lowballing the # of nuclear warheads China has clearly don't know much about America. If anything they do the exact opposite, trying to hype things up to be more threatening than they are. They do it with China, they did it with the Soviet Union, even with middling powers like Iraq and now Iran.

If they say China has under 400 nukes, it's because they actually THINK so. Whether it is true or not, we do not know, and we certainly don't know if the American intelligence agencies have the ability to figure it out. It seems unlikely that they do, but not impossible.

 

[sinophilia]

Their excuse is we don't have as many as the US or Soviet Union.

What is the point then of having lots of nuclear weapons. The primary reason for it is deterrence. If you produce supposedly thousands of warheads, then why on Earth would you pretend not to have them. Then their only use becomes the actual use of them, which is ridiculous as we all know what happens in a nuclear 'surprise attack'.

The only reason for the scenario in which China has actually produced significantly more warheads than it says, is if the Chinese leadership believe that they have or will have a nuclear decapitation strike capability against the United States.