I don't understand what is he trying to say He is not worry about thousand chinese nuke? confused Anywa I open some of the link on the article you posted before It is about Chinese nuclear processing capacity Interesting the author said that Chinese reprocessing capacity has expanded over the year contrary to western press that mention one plant was discontinue in the north so their argument Chinese warhead does not grow But that is wrong the plant was discontinue because it used an old soviet era gad diffusion technology while China built newer centrifuge extraction plant and has commission several plant recently. here what he said about theoretical capacity of Chinese uranium processing plant to produce warhead as is now 1870 bomb per year and period 2020 to 2040 72000 bomb
View attachment 69725
China currently could produce would result in about 37.4 tons of WgHEU each year (about 1870 bombs/year). This is about 2.7 times China’s current inventory of about 14 tons of HEU for weapons. As a projection of China’s enrichment capacity as the medium case shown in figure 4, China could have an enrichment capacity of 16.6 million SWU/year by 2030 and 24 million SWU/year by 2040, respectively, which is equal to producing about 80 tons of weapon-grade HEU per year by 2030 and about 115 tons/year by 2040.
The cumulative domestic SWU supply would total about 300 million SWU over the period between 2020 and 2040, sufficient to producing about 1440 tons of weapon-grade HEU (about 72,000 bombs). However, it is impossible for China to shut down its all power reactors and produce such a HEU stock even much more than that of the total of U.S. and Russian stockpiles.
And here are all the plant
View attachment 69726
How Much Nuclear Weapons Material Might China Make?
Jul 16, 2020
AUTHOR: Dr. ZHANG Hui (Harvard) | Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC)
NPEC asked the leading expert of China’s nuclear activities, Dr. ZHANG Hui of Harvard, to project what the numbers might be for the next two decades.
Attached is his detailed analysis.
The high numbers for separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) stocks and production capacity are sobering: By 2030, China could have thousands of additional bombs’ worth of these materials on hand.
How is this possible?
China has an
extensive “peaceful” program to enrich uranium. It also is
building a large domestic reprocessing plant, has a pilot plant it currently operates, and is still planning on importing a massive reprocessing plant from France. These plants can extract nuclear weapons explosive plutonium from China’s fleet of heavy and light water reactors and, soon, from the fast reactor now under construction.
Note: This is a Chinese name, his family name is ZHANG.
Dr. ZHANG Hui Paper (PDF) 3,607.33 KB
China’s Uranium Enrichment and Plutonium Recycling 2020-2040: Current Practices and Projected Capacities
ZHANG Hui - June 23, 2020
Since the mid-2000s, China has adopted a strategy that combines domestic production, overseas exploitation, and purchases on the world marketplace in uranium in order to meet expectations of a rapid increase in uranium requirements. Known as the “Three One-Third” rule, one-third of its uranium comes from domestic supply, one-third from direct international trade, and another third from overseas mining by Chinese firms. Consequently, China has secured a huge amount of overseas uranium resources and more could easily be added, which would afford more than enough uranium to meet the requirements of China’s most ambitious nuclear energy plan through 2050.
While China will continue relying on domestic and overseas uranium resources, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) -- the sole player responsible for enrichment services in China -- has said that it
maintains a policy of “self-sufficiency” in the supply of enriched uranium products needed to fuel its nuclear power plants. In practice, to meet the expected rapid increase of enrichment requirements,
CNNC has expanded its indigenous centrifuge enrichment capacity significantly since 2010.
By 2020, China reached a total estimated enrichment capacity of about 7.8 million SWU (separative work units) (as shown in table 1) — enough to meet its reactors’ demands of 7.5 million SWU annually.
Moreover, China could have a surplus of up to 30 million SWU by 2019 as a result of a net import of SWU and the domestic overproduction since 2010, which means that China may not need to add new enrichment capacity at least until 2025. By 2040, the SWU requirement is expected to grow to about 18 to 32 million SWU/year.
How much will China build its enrichment capacities in the future?
CNNC experts emphasize its policy of
“meeting its domestic demand and targeting the international markets” in supply of enrichment services. They further address that China is able to produce enough enrichment uranium products to feed its domestic reactors and exported reactors.
China does not officially release information on its enrichment capacity. Based on satellite imagery, Chinese publications, and discussions with Chinese experts, this author made an estimate in 2015 on China’s enrichment capacity.
Since then, there have been significant developments. On the one hand,
new centrifuge facilities have been recently commissioned. On the other hand, enrichment expansion has been scaled back since 2016 due to China’s slowed growth in nuclear power. Such trends could continue in the near future. However,
China’s SWU capacities are expected to expand significantly in the next two decades to align with the country’s expected domestic and export reactor growth.
In essence, I just do not believe that China is being hindered by nuclear material constraint if they indeed want to produce more nuclear warheads! It will be more a matter of their strategic nuclear choices, whether or not to follow or come closer to the Cold War madness of the two nuclear giants: USA & USSR; plus possibly to some extent, the total cost consideration -- but if China deem that a certain expanded number of nuclear warheads is an absolute necessity to ensure their nuclear deterrence (preserve a credible MAD), cost factor won't block such move! eventually.
However, as China deliberately adopt a strategic nuclear ambiguity policy, the world won't know for sure how large is China's nuclear force actually (number of warheads; delivery means and so on), esp. in consideration to their vast tunnel networks of the Underground Great Wall (UGW). Needless to say, satellites can't monitor the whole time of 356 days nonstop and being foolproof tracking means to overcome weather, night shield, roofs and tunnels. And the CIA operatives there were already neutralized many years ago.
