Talk:Ukraine's nuclear weapons program

Tritium production for a third country?

An interesting comment by PavewayIV on Moon of Alabama:

Enriching uranium today is a mechanical process - no reactors involved. It's done almost exclusively in gas centrifuges.

Neutron bombs (low yield, little fallout, high 'people-killing' neutron flux) require a lot of tritium. Most boosted weapons use a little tritium, but China and Israel's neutron bombs require a lot. Tritium decays at over 5% a year, so you need to keep replenishing it whether it's just in storage for bombs or actually inside a warhead. You make tritium by irradiating lithium rods made for that purpose and inserting them (usually in place of regular fuel rods) in a nuclear reactor for the entire fuel cycle (12 - 18 months).

Russia can (or may have already) collected evidence if Zaporizhzhia reactors were used for that purpose. Chances are pretty good because so many were shut down ahead of schedule for mysterious reasons earlier this year. Reactors have to be reconfigured a bit for tritium production - they run under different parameters, produce less power and use less boron in the cooling water. I suppose it could be concealed with enough effort, but Rosatom built Ukraine's VVER1000 reactors and (until recently) has supplied all their fuel rods. They know exactly what to look for including, I suppose, an 'extra' reactor that could be used for that purpose.

Ukraine would have no reason to make substantial quantities of tritium for weapons, and certainly not in 'neutron bomb' quantities... unless THEY had developed neutron bombs, or were producing tritium for some unnamed third party to use in theirs. Did I mention that the Dimona reactor is end-of-life and can't be used for tritium production anymore?

I see the reactor operators have recently been crying about Rosatom nuclear engineers asking for 'sensitive' ZNPP operating data, which they refuse to give them. So something fishy going on for sure. Maybe Rosatom should send in a few Chechens to ask again - politely at first, then not so politely.

Ukraine would also need plutonium for weapons, but that comes from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. They did that in Ukraine in Soviet times but shouldn't have any reason to be doing that now. Pretty hard to hide any quantities of radioactive plutonium. You would need catacombs under a steel plant or something like that, but what do I know...

Posted by: PavewayIV | May 4 2022 19:31 utc | 192

My response -- Petri Krohn (talk) 01:49, 7 June 2022 (UTC)