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Snowdens Secret posted:A couple of nations fall into that basket, Brazil and Argentina jumping to mind. Probably the biggest "We have no nukes, but could whip some up in an afternoon if needed" would be Japan.
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Feb 21, 2013 02:59
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Frozen Horse posted:Probably the biggest "We have no giant transforming robots, but could whip some up in an afternoon if needed" would be Japan.
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Feb 21, 2013 03:38
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Nukes, Japan could do if they had the will. Giant transforming robots? I think if they had the technical ability, the island would already be a smoldering wreckage from the resulting AI war.
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Feb 21, 2013 03:43
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Frozen Horse posted:Probably the biggest "We have no nukes, but could whip some up in an afternoon if needed" would be Japan. Australia too is considered a turn key nuclear power.
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Feb 21, 2013 03:44
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Canada supplied the US with a bunch of plutonium from the Chalk River Labs back in the day. However a couple cities are designated "Nuclear Weapons Free" zones so are therefore immune from nuclear attack. Suck on that, North Korea!   Municipal tax dollars at work.
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Feb 21, 2013 05:07
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gfanikf posted:Australia too is considered a turn key nuclear power. I thought Australia was super anti-nuclear (including nuclear power).
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Feb 21, 2013 05:22
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Mortabis posted:I thought Australia was super anti-nuclear (including nuclear power). I think New Zealand is.
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Feb 21, 2013 05:24
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Not having the desire and not having the ability are two different things. Remember, crude nuclear devices that can be delivered by a bomber are quite literally 1940's technology. The hard work has been done. The modern difficulty in making nuclear weapons is in getting the fuel, enriching it, and making it small enough to fit on a ICBM. If you have the raw material and the technical know-how, building a enriched-uranium Little Boy style bomb is fairly easy. Australia has uranium mines, a high GDP and a giant gently caress-off Australian outback to do poo poo in relative secrecy. On the other hand, if you don't have access to nuclear materials, building a bomb is p loving difficult. Even with access to nuclear materials, if you're a broke dick country that resorts to drug running, counterfeit money scams and whatnot, (looking at you North Korea) and your idea of high technology is a Sony Walkman, you can have a poo poo-ton of uranium and still take years to build a viable nuclear device. TL;DR: If you've got easy access to the raw materials and tons of cash, it's not that hard to slap together a Hiroshima type nuke. If you lack one of the two, it's a bit harder.
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Feb 21, 2013 05:34
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The methods of making and refining plutonium (and tritium for fusion) are not the same as making regular old reactor fuel, and have little civilian use at the scale necessary for warhead production. Brazil and Argentina supposedly have the sites and equipment, just mothballed. I'm fairly sure Japan does not and Aus is an almost definite no. E: Even just using uranium still requires a lot of work and specialized equipment that you wouldn't have without a rather specific preexisting need. Snowdens Secret fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 05:38
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Snowdens Secret posted:The methods of making and refining plutonium (and tritium for fusion) I was specifically talking about uranium gun-type devices. It's not trivial, but if Australia woke up tomorrow and said to itself "You know what, I've always wanted a nuclear device" it would be pretty hard to stop them.
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Feb 21, 2013 05:44
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It's NZ, in the '80s they refused to let US warships make port calls unless they declared themselves to be nuclear free. Since stated US govt policy is not to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons on any US warship, the practical result of this was to eliminate US vessels from being allowed to visit New Zealand, something that put a serious strain on US-NZ relations as well as the ANZUS Alliance, to the point of the US suspending its treaty obligations to NZ. Relations have improved since, although up until last year NZ naval vessels were still prohibited from docking or visiting US military facilities. But politics has zero impact on being a "turn key" nuclear power. It is simply talking about having the technical ability and infrastructure to rapidly produce a nuclear weapon, given the political go ahead. This is why a country like Japan that is still at least publicly extremely anti-nuclear can be referred to as a turn key power. e: Although as the others pointed out there are varying degrees of readiness, depending on whether we are just talking about having the technical ability, or the infrastructure, or ready access to the required raw materials.
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Feb 21, 2013 05:46
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priznat posted:Canada supplied the US with a bunch of plutonium from the Chalk River Labs back in the day. Nuclear free zone I can understand declaring if that's your bag, nuclear weapon free is kind of to be expected. Still, comforting to know!
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Feb 21, 2013 06:12
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iyaayas01 posted:It's NZ, in the '80s they refused to let US warships make port calls unless they declared themselves to be nuclear free. Since stated US govt policy is not to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons on any US warship, the practical result of this was to eliminate US vessels from being allowed to visit New Zealand, something that put a serious strain on US-NZ relations as well as the ANZUS Alliance, to the point of the US suspending its treaty obligations to NZ. Relations have improved since, although up until last year NZ naval vessels were still prohibited from docking or visiting US military facilities. Well, how would they know if there were nuclear weapons on board... Also we would only possibly have nukes on the carriers, right? None of the other vessels have delivery systems for them except for super kamikaze action.
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Feb 21, 2013 06:32
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Smiling Jack posted:Remember, crude nuclear devices that can be delivered by a bomber are quite literally 1940's technology. The hard work has been done. The modern difficulty in making nuclear weapons is in getting the fuel, enriching it, and making it small enough to fit on a ICBM. If you have the raw material and the technical know-how, building a enriched-uranium Little Boy style bomb is fairly easy. Australia has uranium mines, a high GDP and a giant gently caress-off Australian outback to do poo poo in relative secrecy. On top of that, there's the chance of economic collapse of India/Pakistan/North Korea and pre-made nukes going to the highest bidder. Like the collapse of the Soviet Union but with many more countries. And if I were a paranoid sort, I'd worry about the growing Chinese influence in Africa (Chinese nuclear power and technology and bombs with access to uranium reserves in Africa).
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Feb 21, 2013 06:35
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Mortabis posted:Well, how would they know if there were nuclear weapons on board... Nope, nuclear tipped TLAMs were a thing well into the '90s, which meant that any VLS equipped ship could theoretically have had nukes on board. Furthermore, ASROC was nuclear capable, and most ships that didn't have VLS would have had an ASROC launcher installed. Finally, there were nuclear depth charges that were capable of being utilized by helicopters...which meant that any USN warship with a helo deck (i.e., almost all of them by the 1980s) was theoretically capable of having nuclear weapons on board. So it wasn't a matter of them knowing, it was that unlike a lot of other countries (looking at you, Japan) the govt wasn't just willing to turn a blind eye as long as the US retained their policy of neither confirming nor denying...the NZ govt wanted an active declaration of no nukes on board, the US wasn't willing to do that, so the NZ govt would not let them visit NZ.
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Feb 21, 2013 06:47
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Whenever a carrier anchors off Vancouver (rare since they usually go to Esquimalt-Victoria instead) depending on the municipal gov't at the time a very strongly worded letter is sent off but the federal gov't doesn't give a poo poo. I grew up in Victoria and you could always tell when a large US naval vessel was docked, navy seamen (heh) in civvies stick out hilariously. This is true for any port of call I'm sure.
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Feb 21, 2013 06:52
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priznat posted:I grew up in Victoria and you could always tell when a large US naval vessel was docked, navy seamen (heh) in civvies stick out hilariously. This is true for any port of call I'm sure. It's a different service/situation, but the same basic principle applies more or less across the entire US military:  Terminal Lance, eternally relevant.
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Feb 21, 2013 07:04
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I think the combo of the oversize shirts (just like the comic!) and the high-n-tight type haircut were the dead giveaways. But yeah they looked a lot like the guys in the first panel there.
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Feb 21, 2013 07:21
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Smiling Jack posted:I was specifically talking about uranium gun-type devices. It's not trivial, but if Australia woke up tomorrow and said to itself "You know what, I've always wanted a nuclear device" it would be pretty hard to stop them. Enriching the uranium is a non-trivial process, it's certainly easier to bring on line if you already have a local industry for civilian reactor fuel (Japan) than if not (Aus) but still has no real civilian purpose. It also sticks out like a sore thumb to the IAEA so you either have to go to great lengths to hide it or just tell them to piss off. These are why, for instance, we know Iran's refining efforts aren't benign. benito posted:On top of that, there's the chance of economic collapse of India/Pakistan/North Korea and pre-made nukes going to the highest bidder. The odds of a state like Pakistan deteriorating to the point where other nations casually violate their sovereign airspace, bomb their people willy-nilly, and the government is powerless to stop it despite overwhelming negative popular sentiment, has to be vanishingly small, right?
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Feb 21, 2013 07:38
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Snowdens Secret posted:The odds of a state like Pakistan deteriorating to the point where other nations casually violate their sovereign airspace, bomb their people willy-nilly, and the government is powerless to stop it despite overwhelming negative popular sentiment, has to be vanishingly small, right? This is my favorite kind of post
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Feb 21, 2013 07:59
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Snowdens Secret posted:Enriching the uranium is a non-trivial process, it's certainly easier to bring on line if you already have a local industry for civilian reactor fuel (Japan) than if not (Aus) but still has no real civilian purpose. It also sticks out like a sore thumb to the IAEA so you either have to go to great lengths to hide it or just tell them to piss off. These are why, for instance, we know Iran's refining efforts aren't benign. I wasn't talking about an invasion, more a situation of Country X with Nukes gets into dire straits, Country Y says, "Hey, we'd like to be one of those nations that the US/France/NATO/UN won't attack because we're now officially a nuclear power. Here are Z dollars." Edit: and yes, I get what you're talking about with US involvement in Pakistani territory recently. Iran would would be a much different ballgame, and North Korea is a totally different environment, and if a dozen other hotspots open up... benito fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 08:13
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gfanikf posted:Australia too is considered a turn key nuclear power. Australia is literally at least 15 years away from being a nuclear power, even if we decided we wanted to be one tomorrow. I use the term literally correctly and without a hint of irony. We are a technically advanced country, but we simply don't have the top level workers in the field that we would need in order to pursue that sort of programme, on account of the fact that basically everyone who has been in power since nuclear things were a thing were rabidly anti nuclear. It shits me up the wall, because what my parents' generation thinks they are against is nuclear power; what they are actually against is their generation's nuclear power. It's a poo poo ton safer than it was in the 60s. Having said all that, if you have links to some analysis that disagrees with what I've said here, I would be very glad to have a read of it.
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Feb 21, 2013 10:53
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Mortabis posted:Well, how would they know if there were nuclear weapons on board... Submarines and anything capable of carrying a tomahawk cruise missile (the warheads were retired in 1987) which would be pretty much any destroyer or cruiser for the last 40 years. There were also a couple nuclear powered cruisers around. Not that it matters, our ships tend to travel in task forces. Task forces centered around a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. If the carrier can't go near the port because it has a nuclear reactor then the port isn't especially useful for the rest of the task force whose primary purpose is protecting it around the clock. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Feb 21, 2013 |
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Feb 21, 2013 12:53
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benito posted:I wasn't talking about an invasion, more a situation of Country X with Nukes gets into dire straits, Country Y says, "Hey, we'd like to be one of those nations that the US/France/NATO/UN won't attack because we're now officially a nuclear power. Here are Z dollars." I was being snarky about the dronewar, but Pakistan has already been in the condition you describe: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/308730/ Pakistan has had negligent control of large chunks of its northernwestern territory, or the international borders of that area. Armed militias move back and forth with impunity. Our war in Afghanistan was somewhere on the line between fighting against people who would retreat to Pakistan to hide, and just a straight proxy war against those (geographically) Pakistani groups. The Pakistani government has been far more worried that US special forces would sieze their nuclear weapons than that those weapons would fall into non-state actor hands. Pakistani leaders have also admitted that some of those non-state actor terrorist groups have in fact been created by the Pakistani government, to use terror to further state aims while maintaining deniability: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/5779916/Pakistani-president-Asif-Zardari-admits-creating-terrorist-groups.html A Q Khan also gave key nuclear weapon technologies to North Korea, Iran and Libya, in exchange for money and other weapon tech, although officially the Pakistani government disavowed doing so. If he had not, chances are the Norks wouldn't have the bomb and Iran wouldn't have a working program to get one. I try to use the past tense because it does seem since the last Pakistani prime minister took office that matters have improved, but honestly I haven't kept up.
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Feb 21, 2013 14:46
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benito posted:On top of that, there's the chance of economic collapse of India/Pakistan/North Korea and pre-made nukes going to the highest bidder. Like the collapse of the Soviet Union but with many more countries. Are you claiming that the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in nukes being sold to the highest bidders?
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Feb 21, 2013 15:02
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mlmp08 posted:Are you claiming that the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in nukes being sold to the highest bidders? Not whole nukes, but there are many documented cases of smuggling nuclear materials. http://www.cfr.org/weapons-of-terrorism/loose-nukes/p9549
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Feb 21, 2013 20:02
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mlmp08 posted:Are you claiming that the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in nukes being sold to the highest bidders? No, just that at the time there were fewer countries with nukes and the effort was pretty well concentrated to avoid loose nukes, equipment, and engineers. Hey, the Cold War's over, we can just try to avoid a mess in the cleanup. There's a lot more countries with nukes involved now, the alliances are not as evenly divided as they were during the Cold War, and there's plenty of countries that simply don't care about Pakistani nukes, since they're neither a friend or an enemy or neighbor. Not even China was able to stop North Korea from developing the bomb, and frankly if Iran wants an atomic bomb they're going to get it one way or another. It's not 1981 when Israel could just bomb Iraq's reactor. For a detailed study on one country's attempt to get the bomb, check out When Sukarno Sought the Bomb: Indonesian Nuclear Aspirations in the mid-1960s.
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Feb 22, 2013 02:31
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This may be a dumb question, but what is the difficulty in countries like Iran getting nukes? The science behind it is pretty academic by this point right? Is it just about resources?
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Feb 22, 2013 03:53
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benito posted:It's not 1981 when Israel could just bomb Iraq's reactor. Iran did it first. Probably the last time Iran and Israel agreed on something.
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Feb 22, 2013 03:54
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Branis posted:This may be a dumb question, but what is the difficulty in countries like Iran getting nukes? The science behind it is pretty academic by this point right? Is it just about resources? Pretty much. And while the science is academic, the engineering isn't.
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Feb 22, 2013 03:55
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Smiling Jack posted:Pretty much. And while the science is academic, the engineering isn't. Especially when you explode your centrifuges with Stuxnet.
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Feb 22, 2013 04:18
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Branis posted:This may be a dumb question, but what is the difficulty in countries like Iran getting nukes? The science behind it is pretty academic by this point right? Is it just about resources? It also depends on what nukes you want. Assuming you have access to and can refine the Uranium, making a 'little boy' style bomb is relatively easy, but leaves you with a bomb that has a modest upper limit in strength, and restrictions on size. Building yer fancy plutonium-implosion bomb is much more technically difficult: while the basics of building these things are widely known, the specifics of what Big 5 scientists have learned over the years about making them are closely guarded secrets. Iran doesn't want a bomb; in addition to nuclear power, I think they want what Japan has: the means and ability to construct a bomb on relatively short notice. Iranian leader have made a lot of speeches about the nuclear question, and are unequivocal about what they want: Ali Khamenei in a speech last week posted:We do not want to build nuclear weapons. Not because America would be upset if we do so. It is rather what we have decided. We believe that nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity and should not be built; and whatever weapons there are in the world should be destroyed. This is what we believe in; and this has got nothing to do with you (Americans). Still, even given this ambition, Israel (and by extension the USA) are pissed off.
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Feb 22, 2013 05:10
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benito posted:if Iran wants an atomic bomb they're going to get it one way or another. It's not 1981 when Israel could just bomb Iraq's reactor. Well Iran is much further from Israel than Iraq is, so it would have been difficult anyway. I don't really "get" Iran's beef with Israel anyway. The Arab countries might have a point about the Palestinian territories and the "Arab street" but why would Iran care about that? Israel's Arab enemies are by and large(other than Syria and Hezbolla and maybe today's Shiite rules Iraq) also enemies of Iran too. THey don't have a common border and haven't to my knowledge fought any wars with each other, you would think they'd be natural allies.
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Feb 22, 2013 05:18
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Throatwarbler posted:I don't really "get" Iran's beef with Israel anyway. The Arab countries might have a point about the Palestinian territories and the "Arab street" but why would Iran care about that? Israel's Arab enemies are by and large(other than Syria and Hezbolla and maybe today's Shiite rules Iraq) also enemies of Iran too. THey don't have a common border and haven't to my knowledge fought any wars with each other, you would think they'd be natural allies. Hamas/Hezbollah/Lebanon/Syria. I mean, really...pretty much the three biggest threats/security issues Israel faces on its borders are all funded and supported to some degree by Iran. Also Israel was real buddy buddy with the Shah. There definitely was a whole bunch of "the enemy of my enemy..." stuff during the Iran-Iraq War though. The Israelis sold a shitload of arms to Iran as well as kind of sort of not really coordinating on the Osirak strike.
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Feb 22, 2013 05:50
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iyaayas01 posted:Hamas/Hezbollah/Lebanon/Syria. I mean, really...pretty much the three biggest threats/security issues Israel faces on its borders are all funded and supported to some degree by Iran. Also Israel was real buddy buddy with the Shah. But what's the point of supporting Hezbolla other than to spite Israel? So because they are enemies of israel we support them, and since we support them and they are enemies of Israel then we also hate Israel? It's not like Hezbolla is going to destroy the Israeli state any time soon, so what's the endgame here? I guess Syria kind of makes sense although that's unravelling as we speak too. Still Syria is a tiny backwater shithole? I don't think they were ever a threat to Israel in the same way Jordan, Eqypt and the other Arab countries were.
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Feb 22, 2013 06:16
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IIRC Syria used to be a regional crossroads, and was absorbing a lot of technical talent from its neighbors. Obviously nobody really wants to move there unless they have violence-related skills now.
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Feb 22, 2013 06:29
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Hating on Israel is also a great way to justify military buildup while pretending it's not to use against your Muslim neighbors (or your own people.)
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Feb 22, 2013 07:02
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Throatwarbler posted:Well Iran is much further from Israel than Iraq is, so it would have been difficult anyway. These things aren't as complex as they're made out to be. Do you think France's beef with Hapsburg Austria was about religion or ethnicity? They're the local powers competing for influence and control. Iran's democratic government was couped by the US and Britain. The US supported Saddam and Iraq in their war against Ayatollah Iran. Israel and Saudi are America's chief allies in the region. Israel pushed for the Invasion of Iraq by the US so they would no longer have a conventional threat nearby. It worked, but it also gave Iran a huge boost, Dick Cheney is the 12th imam and all that. The push for a ridiculous war on Iran continues for the same reason. Throatwarbler posted:But what's the point of supporting Hezbolla other than to spite Israel? So because they are enemies of israel we support them, and since we support them and they are enemies of Israel then we also hate Israel? It's not like Hezbolla is going to destroy the Israeli state any time soon, so what's the endgame here? Which of these countries is tiny? http://tinyurl.com/9wjqke3 Israel is currently occupying Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, and Syria has a relatively big military, and the regime can play that note as hard as it likes. If you think Israel and the gulf monarchies wouldn't be happy to get rid of a nominally Shia regime, to install a friendly government, well you'd be wrong. Israel has publically stated their intent to get rid of every conventional military threat, and they've been pretty successful. Hezbollah is a strategic counter to Israel, and has stopped Israel from running rampant in Lebanon the way they did in the past. Refer to the 2006 war. Think back to europe in the past. If you didn't pick one of the big powers, you'd get rolled over just because. Think back to the cold war. You still need to pick a side. So either you line up behind Israel-Saudi-US, or you go Iran-Russia-China. If Israel has grabbed some territory that belonged to your allies, if they've supported some internal or external enemy, why wouldn't you oppose them? It's not good vs evil, it's power politics
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Feb 22, 2013 07:40
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Nebakenezzer posted:It also depends on what nukes you want. Assuming you have access to and can refine the Uranium, making a 'little boy' style bomb is relatively easy, but leaves you with a bomb that has a modest upper limit in strength, and restrictions on size. Building yer fancy plutonium-implosion bomb is much more technically difficult: while the basics of building these things are widely known, the specifics of what Big 5 scientists have learned over the years about making them are closely guarded secrets. Closely guarded? Yes. Secrets? Nature doesn't work like that. Given what is known about the isotopes, etc. it was already possible for a few freshly-graduated physics Ph.D.s without access to classified material to develop a working design for a plutonium-implosion bomb. The barrier to the Nth country is much lower than the first country. The report is redacted heavily, but if it wasn't it would make the homework too easy. It's even easier if you go with an accelerator spallation based non-reactor source of plutonium since that can be more finely controlled to avoid 240Pu. I'm presently trying to correlate the project dates with U.S. nuclear tests to find out how well these redacted kids did.
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Feb 22, 2013 09:27
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Nebakenezzer posted:Iran doesn't want a bomb; in addition to nuclear power, I think they want what Japan has: the means and ability to construct a bomb on relatively short notice. Iranian leader have made a lot of speeches about the nuclear question, and are unequivocal about what they want: There's no reason they'd possibly want an actual nuclear bomb. After all, nobody else in the region has one, what possible good would it do them?
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Feb 22, 2013 15:16
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