China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[FairAndUnbiased]

No way. The R-7 was not reliable as a deterrent in later years but back when it came out it was better than using an intercontinental bomber to deliver a weapon. In the early 1960s the Soviets had hundreds of R-16 ICBMs alone. Those were a credible deterrent since it used storable fuel. It was comparable to the US Titan II. The problem the Soviets had was they lagged on solid rocket technology and they lagged in nuclear warhead design. Their warheads were much larger and required larger rockets to deliver them. For example the counter to the US Minuteman-II ICBM was the Soviet RT-2 missile and it only came out 3 years after the US missile.

A lot of people also ignore that the initial US Polaris SLBMs had a pitiful short range. The Polaris did not have intercontinental range. The Soviets did have a gap in number of SSBNs in the early 1960s sure.



Yet that is precisely when the Soviet economy started sliding backwards. When they had basically caught up in terms of nuclear buildup.

Soviet economy: relative Soviet economy peaked in the mid 1970s as they reached near parity. Indeed the 1970s were good for the Eastern Bloc: victory in Vietnam, Soviet economy peak and crushing dissidents in Czechia and Hungary while stagflation and OPEC boycott hit the US. Oil prices were sky high.

However at this point the US had overtaken the Soviets conventionally. While the F-4 was nothing spectacular the F-15 and F-16 we're game changers. When launched in 1972 and 1976 they were outright better than everything else in the Soviet air force, even projected Soviet spending. The other part was the Mig-25 defection which destroyed their premier 70s fighter program.

Because of policy momentum, the Soviets felt they had to pour even more money conventionally when they could've actually just retired behind the iron curtain and chilled out. The other issue was the Sino-Soviet split draining their resources into maintaining a large standing army in the east far away from infrastructure lines.

China is avoiding everything the Soviets did wrong. However we only know the Soviets were wrong in retrospect. Tactical mistakes are unavoidable. But I'm confident that with historical progress and superior technology, major mistakes in policy directions can be avoided.

 

[Suetham]

Fissile material required for 1000 kiloton ranged warheads depends on the warhead design. I don't think anyone here is an expert in those specifics but if we take the fact that there is no fissile material limit for China, not even back in the 1960s, how could there be any limit to building 1000+ warheads if China has for over 60 years, the facilities (and many secretive ones since nearly all the weapon making facilities are secretive!) and all the material it needs within its own borders and supplied from North Korea if not also Australia. It's not hard to import 1000T of Australian ore and then saying 1000T are going towards energy while only 500T went towards energy production.

In this case, to produce an atomic bomb, 52 kilos of uranium would be needed. According to an article written by a group of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which helped develop US nuclear technology, this is the amount needed for a so-called critical mass to occur, starting the chain reaction that causes the bomb to explode. If simple modern technology is used, a kind of mirror that bounces off the particles inside the bomb, the amount of uranium needed drops to 26 kilograms. But it's still a lot compared to modern enrichment processes.

Let's take for example the warhead

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. that the W76 has a ratio of 100 kT/61.5 kg - 0.615 g/1 kT.

The W-76 is a medium-yield (100 kT instead of 1,000 kT) warhead bomb in relatively light weight packages. These are weapons that take advantage of the fact that they are expected to be relatively accurate (they don't have to be in the several hundred kT range to have strategic implications), along with what are seemingly sophisticated thermonuclear design tricks to extract a lot of energy from the which is a relatively small amount of material.

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Let's say that for China their warheads are of small yield - something around 2 to 3x less than the nuclear yield of American warheads, thus requiring larger amounts of kg for each kT, this could require 1.23-1.84 kg for every kT of yield of a nuclear bomb.

In the case of plutonium, six to eight kilograms are enough to produce a nuclear device.

I am quite sure that currently, to produce a nuclear weapon with recent technologies, at least 50 kg of uranium could have been reduced to something around 15-20 kg of uranium.

About the uranium supply. Mongolia has virtually untouched reserves and Xi Jinping has already declared that China and Mongolia can increase trade relations, including uranium mining.

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[AndrewS]

It seems with revelations clear enough now, China in the early 2010s delayed nuclear expansion because they were waiting for new generation of warheads. Presumably ones that can be integrated with new generations of delivery systems. After all, China was flying and testing hypersonics in the late 2000s and flights during the 2010s were performed in the hundreds according to American military intelligence.

I'd say that up to 2017, the threat assessment was far more benign. This was still the era of Obama and engagement.
So there wasn't any rush or need for a large nuclear arsenal.

But relations rapidly went downhill after Trump was elected and China became the bogeyman in every respect.
So after 2017 there was more urgency to increasing the nuclear arsenal.

 

[clockwork]

Are plutonium and uranium not interchangeable in Chinese thermonuclear designs? This is still unclear to me. Why would China need plutonium specifically such that it's supposedly constrained by its production rate and needs fast breeder reactors and things like that?

 

[Suetham]

Are plutonium and uranium not interchangeable in Chinese thermonuclear designs? This is still unclear to me. Why would China need plutonium specifically such that it's supposedly constrained by its production rate and needs fast breeder reactors and things like that?

I will try to explain to you.

In nature, there are two isotopes of uranium, U-235 and U-238. The latter is by far the most common: it represents 99.3% of all uranium on Earth. The problem, so to speak, is that it is not good for making an atomic bomb. The material that really matters is U-235, which corresponds to only 0.7%, in short, in 1 kg of uranium there are only 7 g of U-235. Very little. And to complicate matters, it comes mixed with bad uranium. If you want to make a bomb, you have to separate the good uranium from the bad uranium - in a process called "enrichment".

It's like separating beans. You play a lot at the table. Almost all are black, but there is always one or one or two whites. It is the latter that you need to manufacture the atomic bomb.

First, the uranium is turned into gas and placed in a centrifuge. As the centrifuge spins, it separates the lighter U-235 from the heavier U-238. This process is repeated many times and generates an increasingly concentrated material, that is, with a higher content of U-235. If you want uranium to power a nuclear power plant, just raise the amount from 0.7% to 3%. As for making a bomb, the concentration has to be huge: at least 90% U-235. This requires high technology, and is subject to several problems.

In 2010, the Stuxnet computer virus (allegedly created by the US or Israel) infected Iran's centrifuges and made them spin too fast, until they burned, which stunted uranium production and made them spin too fast, until they burned. that hampered uranium production and delayed the country's nuclear program.

Continuing...

View the image showing the uranium enrichment process:



Below, the description of each step of the image above:

1 - Uranium is a relatively abundant metal – the Earth contains 40 times more uranium than silver. Most of the world's production (36%) comes from Kazakhstan, but material can also be obtained in 18 other countries.

2 - The extracted material is ground and mixed with chemical substances that isolate the uranium from the rest.

3 - But 99% of the uranium is of the U-238 type, which is not suitable for the construction of an atomic bomb. It needs to be separated from the uranium that matters: U-235.

4 - This separation that we call uranium enrichment needs to be carried out. The first step is to mix the metal with hydrofluoric acid (HF). This will trigger chemical reactions that will transform the uranium into a gas: uranium hexafluoride.

5 - This gas is placed inside a special centrifuge that spins very quickly, at 100,000 RPM (6.6 times more than an F-1 engine). With the rotation, the heavier U-238 atoms go to the corners of the centrifuge. The lighter U-235 sits in the middle – and can be extracted. The gas from the center is withdrawn and placed in another centrifuge. The process is repeated thousands of times, until it results in a concentrated gas with 90% U-235.

6 - Mix this gas with calcium. This will return the uranium to a solid state.

7 - Cut the uranium into two pieces. They will be installed inside the bomb – and will make it explode.

Plutonium:

It is possible, however, to obtain another nuclear explosive from that enrichment exposed above, which is plutonium. Plutonium, the second material used in the atomic bomb, is also derived from uranium: it forms in the spent fuel elements (burning up of nuclear fuel) in nuclear reactors. Its extraction takes place in complex and expensive reprocessing stations.

Plutonium is formed by a transformation of U-238 - which is explosively inert - into Pu-239. This transformation occurs in a nuclear reactor: placing a jacket of natural uranium around a nuclear reactor, it gradually absorbs neutrons and turns into plutonium. In this way it is possible to obtain several kilograms of plutonium per year, using a small reactor.

Once 80% enriched uranium or plutonium is obtained, it is now possible to build an atomic bomb.

The uranium or plutonium is assembled in the form of a hollow sphere inside which a source of neutrons (initiator) is placed. The uranium sphere is surrounded by another hollow beryllium sphere which is a good neutron "reflector" if it returns to the center neutrons originated in the "initiator" that managed to escape. In turn, this reflector is covered by symmetrically arranged charges of common explosive (TNT), which can be triggered by detonators powered by an electric current. The TNT is arranged so that its detonation directs the explosive force towards the center, crushing the uranium or plutonium sphere; when this occurs, it undergoes the chain reaction described above, in a "nuclear explosion".

As plutonium is generated within the fuel of nuclear reactors, it also fissions, helping the uranium to produce energy.

Between 7 and 8 kilograms per ton of unburned plutonium remain in spent fuel. This plutonium, recovered in reprocessing, can be used to replace U-235 in nuclear fuel, making pellets of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide (MOX fuel) mixed together. MOX fuel can replace enriched uranium in light water nuclear reactors.

With 5 or 6 kg of plutonium it is possible to make a bomb of explosive power equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT, capable of destroying an entire city. This is what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The easiest way to obtain a nuclear weapon is to produce plutonium, some experts claim that the North Koreans build their nuclear weapons with this process.

The North Koreans could make the bomb the easy way, using the chemical element Pu-239 instead of U-235.

The basic idea of nuclear energy is to be able to create a "chain reaction" between the nuclei of atoms of certain chemical elements (that's why it is called "nuclear"). This energy can be released gradually, in a nuclear reactor; or violently and instantly, in the case of the bomb.

The most common uranium in nature, U-238, is not suitable for the bomb. The solution is to "enrich" the mixture by increasing the proportion of U-235.

To make the bomb even faster, you can convert U-238 into plutonium. This is done with the help of a nuclear reactor.

Neutrons emitted by the reactor are used to "bomb" atoms of U-238. The atom captures a particle for its nucleus, which transforms into unstable U-239, then neptunium-239(Np-239), and finally plutonium-239(Pu-239).

If there is no inspection, nuclear fuel from a power plant can be converted in this way into the raw material for the nuclear bomb.

Unless there are inspectors at the nuclear plants, there is no way of knowing whether Pu-239 is being made.

 

[Suetham]

Are plutonium and uranium not interchangeable in Chinese thermonuclear designs? This is still unclear to me. Why would China need plutonium specifically such that it's supposedly constrained by its production rate and needs fast breeder reactors and things like that?

China plans to commission two China Fast Reactor 600 (CFR-600) nuclear reactors, which produce plutonium and uranium, starting in 2023. They are being built on Changbiao Island in Fujian province by China National Nuclear Corporation - CNNC.

The construction of these reactors has attracted international attention and some concern.


Location of Changbiao Island, which will house the two new nuclear reactors

What has raised doubts in the scientific community is the fact that most nuclear power plants try to use as much of their fuel as possible – and not produce more. Breeder reactors do the opposite and fell into disuse early on in the history of nuclear power plants. Countries like the United States, United Kingdom and Germany abandoned their programs to develop this type of reactor many years ago.

China, meanwhile, has invested in fast reactors – which use more uranium – which is why nuclear scientists also turned away from it decades ago, due to the high cost of the fuel. China has invested in the research and development of fast neutron reactors since 1964.

CFR-600 reactors are fast breeder reactors that use sodium-cooled neutrons – instead of using water, as most working nuclear power plants do. They are cooled by liquid sodium – with a much wider temperature range and less interactivity than water. Fast neutrons have more natural energy than alternative thermal neutrons, which must be kept in a temperature-controlled medium to act. Fast reactors do not require this medium.

Inside the CFR-600 is used a fuel called mixed oxide (MOX), which is made from plutonium from nuclear waste and depleted uranium. The process was initiated by China in 2003, with the China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) project. Each of the two CFR-600 reactors will produce 1500 MWt and 600 MWe of energy. The regenerative reactors differ from China's large portfolio of lightweight, water-cooled reactors – the traditional type used in most nuclear power plants in the world.

Al Jazeera revealed in its report that a small group of nuclear energy experts is concerned about China's lack of transparency about new nuclear reactors.

Experts from the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) say that with the amount of plutonium that the fast reactors will produce, China, if it wants to, can have 1,270 nuclear warheads by 2030 – close to the amount the United States has in its intercontinental missile arsenal. .

Experts say China has made its nuclear program less and less transparent. The United States, Japan and South Korea frequently report the status of their "civilian" (unused in weapons) plutonium to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). China last made this statement in 2017.


Reprocessing unit plant and MOX installation under construction - March 2020 satellite image.

The fact is that the plutonium produced by the reactors can simply be reprocessed for use as a fuel source for other nuclear reactors, rather than producing weapons.

Due to the drive towards carbon neutrality, China has a strong argument in favor of civilian application of the reactors, but there are no guarantees that they will not make nuclear weapons. In 2017, CNNC President Wang Shoujun described the project to create fast reactors as of great national importance for nuclear science and technology. He said that the realization of the closed fuel cycle promotes the sustainable development of nuclear energy in China – and the development of the local economy.

But as I've said before, unless you have inspectors on site looking into it, there's no certainty that the Pu-239 isn't being manufactured, and lack of transparency leaves some doubt on the table.

 

[antiterror13]

I thought for H-Bomb, which most of Chinese warheads are, only need plutonium 239 or U-235 as primary stage as a trigger, and the main one is Deuterium or Tritium. So I'd expect not much Uranium or Plutonium is needed

Only 5 countries able to make H-Bomb, I know India claimed it has successfully test H-Bomb in 1998, but many doubted it

USA in 1952
USSR in 1955
UK in 1957
China in 1967 (atomic bomb in 1964)
France in 1968

Yes, China when it was very poor and so backward managed to get the H-Bomb earlier than France

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

China plans to commission two China Fast Reactor 600 (CFR-600) nuclear reactors, which produce plutonium and uranium, starting in 2023. They are being built on Changbiao Island in Fujian province by China National Nuclear Corporation - CNNC.

The construction of these reactors has attracted international attention and some concern.

View attachment 82682
Location of Changbiao Island, which will house the two new nuclear reactors

What has raised doubts in the scientific community is the fact that most nuclear power plants try to use as much of their fuel as possible – and not produce more. Breeder reactors do the opposite and fell into disuse early on in the history of nuclear power plants. Countries like the United States, United Kingdom and Germany abandoned their programs to develop this type of reactor many years ago.

China, meanwhile, has invested in fast reactors – which use more uranium – which is why nuclear scientists also turned away from it decades ago, due to the high cost of the fuel. China has invested in the research and development of fast neutron reactors since 1964.

CFR-600 reactors are fast breeder reactors that use sodium-cooled neutrons – instead of using water, as most working nuclear power plants do. They are cooled by liquid sodium – with a much wider temperature range and less interactivity than water. Fast neutrons have more natural energy than alternative thermal neutrons, which must be kept in a temperature-controlled medium to act. Fast reactors do not require this medium.

Inside the CFR-600 is used a fuel called mixed oxide (MOX), which is made from plutonium from nuclear waste and depleted uranium. The process was initiated by China in 2003, with the China Experimental Fast Reactor (CEFR) project. Each of the two CFR-600 reactors will produce 1500 MWt and 600 MWe of energy. The regenerative reactors differ from China's large portfolio of lightweight, water-cooled reactors – the traditional type used in most nuclear power plants in the world.

Al Jazeera revealed in its report that a small group of nuclear energy experts is concerned about China's lack of transparency about new nuclear reactors.

Experts from the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) say that with the amount of plutonium that the fast reactors will produce, China, if it wants to, can have 1,270 nuclear warheads by 2030 – close to the amount the United States has in its intercontinental missile arsenal. .

Experts say China has made its nuclear program less and less transparent. The United States, Japan and South Korea frequently report the status of their "civilian" (unused in weapons) plutonium to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). China last made this statement in 2017.

View attachment 82683
Reprocessing unit plant and MOX installation under construction - March 2020 satellite image.

The fact is that the plutonium produced by the reactors can simply be reprocessed for use as a fuel source for other nuclear reactors, rather than producing weapons.

Due to the drive towards carbon neutrality, China has a strong argument in favor of civilian application of the reactors, but there are no guarantees that they will not make nuclear weapons. In 2017, CNNC President Wang Shoujun described the project to create fast reactors as of great national importance for nuclear science and technology. He said that the realization of the closed fuel cycle promotes the sustainable development of nuclear energy in China – and the development of the local economy.

But as I've said before, unless you have inspectors on site looking into it, there's no certainty that the Pu-239 isn't being manufactured, and lack of transparency leaves some doubt on the table.

It would be the ultimate in trolling if one of these reactors powered China's next generation chip fabs. You make the missile chips, I make the plutonium.

 

[clockwork]

I will try to explain to you.

In nature, there are two isotopes of uranium, U-235 and U-238. The latter is by far the most common: it represents 99.3% of all uranium on Earth. The problem, so to speak, is that it is not good for making an atomic bomb. The material that really matters is U-235, which corresponds to only 0.7%, in short, in 1 kg of uranium there are only 7 g of U-235. Very little. And to complicate matters, it comes mixed with bad uranium. If you want to make a bomb, you have to separate the good uranium from the bad uranium - in a process called "enrichment".

It's like separating beans. You play a lot at the table. Almost all are black, but there is always one or one or two whites. It is the latter that you need to manufacture the atomic bomb.

First, the uranium is turned into gas and placed in a centrifuge. As the centrifuge spins, it separates the lighter U-235 from the heavier U-238. This process is repeated many times and generates an increasingly concentrated material, that is, with a higher content of U-235. If you want uranium to power a nuclear power plant, just raise the amount from 0.7% to 3%. As for making a bomb, the concentration has to be huge: at least 90% U-235. This requires high technology, and is subject to several problems.

In 2010, the Stuxnet computer virus (allegedly created by the US or Israel) infected Iran's centrifuges and made them spin too fast, until they burned, which stunted uranium production and made them spin too fast, until they burned. that hampered uranium production and delayed the country's nuclear program.

Continuing...

View the image showing the uranium enrichment process:

View attachment 82681

Below, the description of each step of the image above:

1 - Uranium is a relatively abundant metal – the Earth contains 40 times more uranium than silver. Most of the world's production (36%) comes from Kazakhstan, but material can also be obtained in 18 other countries.

2 - The extracted material is ground and mixed with chemical substances that isolate the uranium from the rest.

3 - But 99% of the uranium is of the U-238 type, which is not suitable for the construction of an atomic bomb. It needs to be separated from the uranium that matters: U-235.

4 - This separation that we call uranium enrichment needs to be carried out. The first step is to mix the metal with hydrofluoric acid (HF). This will trigger chemical reactions that will transform the uranium into a gas: uranium hexafluoride.

5 - This gas is placed inside a special centrifuge that spins very quickly, at 100,000 RPM (6.6 times more than an F-1 engine). With the rotation, the heavier U-238 atoms go to the corners of the centrifuge. The lighter U-235 sits in the middle – and can be extracted. The gas from the center is withdrawn and placed in another centrifuge. The process is repeated thousands of times, until it results in a concentrated gas with 90% U-235.

6 - Mix this gas with calcium. This will return the uranium to a solid state.

7 - Cut the uranium into two pieces. They will be installed inside the bomb – and will make it explode.

Plutonium:

It is possible, however, to obtain another nuclear explosive from that enrichment exposed above, which is plutonium. Plutonium, the second material used in the atomic bomb, is also derived from uranium: it forms in the spent fuel elements (burning up of nuclear fuel) in nuclear reactors. Its extraction takes place in complex and expensive reprocessing stations.

Plutonium is formed by a transformation of U-238 - which is explosively inert - into Pu-239. This transformation occurs in a nuclear reactor: placing a jacket of natural uranium around a nuclear reactor, it gradually absorbs neutrons and turns into plutonium. In this way it is possible to obtain several kilograms of plutonium per year, using a small reactor.

Once 80% enriched uranium or plutonium is obtained, it is now possible to build an atomic bomb.

The uranium or plutonium is assembled in the form of a hollow sphere inside which a source of neutrons (initiator) is placed. The uranium sphere is surrounded by another hollow beryllium sphere which is a good neutron "reflector" if it returns to the center neutrons originated in the "initiator" that managed to escape. In turn, this reflector is covered by symmetrically arranged charges of common explosive (TNT), which can be triggered by detonators powered by an electric current. The TNT is arranged so that its detonation directs the explosive force towards the center, crushing the uranium or plutonium sphere; when this occurs, it undergoes the chain reaction described above, in a "nuclear explosion".

As plutonium is generated within the fuel of nuclear reactors, it also fissions, helping the uranium to produce energy.

Between 7 and 8 kilograms per ton of unburned plutonium remain in spent fuel. This plutonium, recovered in reprocessing, can be used to replace U-235 in nuclear fuel, making pellets of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide (MOX fuel) mixed together. MOX fuel can replace enriched uranium in light water nuclear reactors.

With 5 or 6 kg of plutonium it is possible to make a bomb of explosive power equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT, capable of destroying an entire city. This is what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The easiest way to obtain a nuclear weapon is to produce plutonium, some experts claim that the North Koreans build their nuclear weapons with this process.

The North Koreans could make the bomb the easy way, using the chemical element Pu-239 instead of U-235.

The basic idea of nuclear energy is to be able to create a "chain reaction" between the nuclei of atoms of certain chemical elements (that's why it is called "nuclear"). This energy can be released gradually, in a nuclear reactor; or violently and instantly, in the case of the bomb.

The most common uranium in nature, U-238, is not suitable for the bomb. The solution is to "enrich" the mixture by increasing the proportion of U-235.

To make the bomb even faster, you can convert U-238 into plutonium. This is done with the help of a nuclear reactor.

Neutrons emitted by the reactor are used to "bomb" atoms of U-238. The atom captures a particle for its nucleus, which transforms into unstable U-239, then neptunium-239(Np-239), and finally plutonium-239(Pu-239).

If there is no inspection, nuclear fuel from a power plant can be converted in this way into the raw material for the nuclear bomb.

Unless there are inspectors at the nuclear plants, there is no way of knowing whether Pu-239 is being made.

Okay I'm well aware of most of what you said but you don't seem to have answered my question. Why use U-235 over plutonium or vice versa, in either the primary or secondary, if both are suitable fissile material? Is one less dense for equivalent yield (warhead weight savings)? Why doesn't China just enrich more uranium, if Plutonium production is slow/difficult/the rate limiting factor holding up the buildup? AFAIK U and Pu are completely interchangeable in the primary at least (Fat Man was plutonium, China's first bomb was uranium implosion), I'm less sure about the secondary (besides that the tamper and radiation case can be depleted uranium).

 

[clockwork]

I thought for H-Bomb, which most of Chinese warheads are, only need plutonium 239 or U-235 as primary stage as a trigger, and the main one is Deuterium or Tritium. So I'd expect not much Uranium or Plutonium is needed

Only 5 countries able to make H-Bomb, I know India claimed it has successfully test H-Bomb in 1998, but many doubted it

USA in 1952
USSR in 1955
UK in 1957
China in 1967 (atomic bomb in 1964)
France in 1968

Yes, China when it was very poor and so backward managed to get the H-Bomb earlier than France

No, you need fissile fuel in the secondary too. See eg.

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It's not clear where in modern miniaturized Teller-Ulam designs, but at least in the spark plug.