A Kiev-based think tank has claimed that the country has enough plutonium to build hundreds of crude warheads
Nuclear test explosion / Galerie Bilderwelt © Getty Images Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky could raid the country’s nuclear reactors to develop crude atomic weapons if the US cuts off military aid, a think tank in Kiev has claimed. The organization is expected to make the case for nuclear weapons to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on Wednesday, The Times reported. Published by the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, the report claims that “creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later.” While Ukraine cannot enrich Uranium – a process vital for building modern nuclear weapons, its nine operating nuclear reactors contain an estimated seven tons of plutonium, its authors claimed. This could be used to build bombs similar to the ‘Fat Man’ device dropped on Nagasaki by the US in 1945, they wrote. While a Ukrainian ‘Fat Man’ would only be a tenth as powerful as the device that leveled Nagasaki, the amount of plutonium in the country’s reactors “is sufficient for hundreds of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotons,” they argued. “That would be enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistics installations. The exact nuclear yield would be unpredictable because it would use different isotopes of plutonium,” author Aleksey Yizhak explained. Excerpts from the paper were published by The Times on Wednesday. According to the British newspaper, the report has been shared with Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, and will be presented at a conference attended by the country’s defense and strategic industries ministers on Wednesday. DETAILS TO FOLLOW
