Trump has stated he will cut American aid to Ukraine, which makes a majority of total aid. Recently Zelensky stated that if Ukraine’s only hope for sovereignty is its own nuclear arsenal, they will build it.
Trump has stated he will cut American aid to Ukraine, which makes a majority of total aid. Recently Zelensky stated that if Ukraine’s only hope for sovereignty is its own nuclear arsenal, they will build it.
Good detail in that article. With regard to plutonium, Sweden had a plutonium breeding reactor disguised as a civilian power plant called Ågestaverket. I think that Ukraine would be able to use an existing reactor for this, or retrofit it. But yeah, any Ukrainian nuclear program would obviously become a huge target by the Russian military, and potentially other nuclear states. Ideally these installations would be underground like Ågestaverket was. Even more ideal would be military guarantees from NATO.
I don’t know anything about the laws limiting transfer of fissile material and may violate issues with NATO membership. I’m not seeing the upside for Sweden to do any of this.
And from a quick search makes it sound like decommissioning of Ågestaverket began in 2020 and should be done in 2025. So the plant would need to be, essentially, rebuilt.
Next, the nuclear program was shut down in 1961 because they didn’t have any Pu-240 to refine into Pu-247. Finally, when the program did exist, they had to get their heavy water from Norway. Heavy water allows them to use yellow cake directly for fissile material, but they still use light water but need an enrichment program. So, technically it’s a long way still.
CANDU-like or RBMK-like design could work for this purpose, but i have doubts about VVERs that they have