Is there any evidence for the commonly stated idea that Japan is "a screwdriver's turn" away from developing a nuclear weapon, or is that just surmised based upon their assumed capabilities?
To be clear, Japan does have an immense plutonium stockpile and would certainly be capable of creating a working nuclear weapon within months, and there is no reason why they cannot repurpose a domestic rocket as a ballistic missile or deliver a nuclear weapon by plane.
What I am asking is if Japan any evidence has arisen of Japan having a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Would a lead time of several months for developing a nuclear weapon render it useless as a deterrent?
>Is there any evidence for the commonly stated idea that Japan is "a screwdriver's turn" away from developing a nuclear weapon, or is that just surmised based upon their assumed capabilities?
This sounds like the opening to a demon core joke.
was thinking the same thing anonkun
Even Sweden had a nuclear program once, in western countries it's not about whether they can do it or not, but about WILL they do it or not - and this is related to diplomacy and world peace, nothing else.
Any and all western countries with nuclear experience from power plants or simply physics and military, will be able to build a working warhead in a matter of months.
A fully functional weapon like an ICBM with all of its targeting, command and launch infrastructure - not so much - but the warhead, yes.
No, no they won't. The biggest blocker for most is 1) fissible material, 2) enriching. Most people in the West could enrich, but its costly and frick up your supply of fissible and problem 1 is the biggest issue. Most countries don't have much fissible material, the North American continent is one of the richest areas with material left.
All they need is a fat-man plutonium ball and a jet plane to carry it and violas start playing. It wouldn't be a proper big boy thermonuclear bomb but it'd still be a serious capability. They have the plutonium probably, or even the enriched uranium for a little boy style device, they have the scientific base, they have the jets. Don't see it taking more than 6 months tbh
>They have the plutonium probably
No probably about it. They have something like 40 tons of the stuff.
Isn't a load of it in bongland originally for disposal but now it's stuck there due to non-proliferation treaties? Only reason I cast doubt is (again iirc) plutonium producing reactors are inefficient for conventional power generation, and as that generation of reactors are now pretty much all decommissioned I didn't think there was as quick a source of new plutonium without
>It wouldn't be a proper big boy thermonuclear bomb
Once you have a fission bomb, you're 90% of the way there, basically just surround it with fusion fuel and you have an H-bomb. That needn't be hard to do, see the Castle Bravo test. Slap a "tamper" around the device and you can make the bomb yield as much as you want.
>Japan does have an immense plutonium stockpile
Why?
They enrich it from spent fuel to be repurposed as MOX fuel, something that was always part of the energy policy, but most of those reactors are offline.
Same reason as the UK, it's a byproduct of spent nuclear fuel if you want to extract it. Back in the day they thought it would possibly be useful as a nuclear fuel as well as for weapons, but that hasn't happened so it just sits there. This article is from 2013 and I don't think anything has changed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21505271
Giant lizards need feeding to keep them happy or Tokyo gets stomped.
OOOOOH NOOOO
THERE GOES TOKYO
>Godzilla jokes
>Is there any evidence for the commonly stated idea that Japan is "a screwdriver's turn" away from developing a nuclear weapon
They already have them. Japanese civilians even built and detonated their own nuclear warhead in the Australian desert in the 1990's.
Im getting worried about our timeline bros. What if Chris Chan was right and we're now merging with a world where the U.S invaded Japan for WMDs?
They say the same bullshit about Taiwan, and the reality here is that there's no nuclear program, there's no way to enrich the spent uranium fuel rods we have left over from our nuclear reactors, and if we started at the moment China launched an invasion we might have a bomb ready a few years after the war was over.
Why doesn't Taiwan get a nuke and tell the CCP if it wants to pull a Hong Kong on them then they'll have to find a new chairman and capital city?
I think given the nature of China (and in extension North Korea), it would be in Japan's, Taiwan's, and South Korea's best interest to develop some low-ish yield tactical nukes as a deterrent.
Don't need giant Castle Bravo or Tsar Bomba yields, a modest warhead can still rape most of a large city, and the prospect of having to intercept two dozen of them soaring towards Beijing from multiple different directions if they try anything silly would make them think twice.
I bet the USA just gave them a few in secret like an older brother giving his younger brother a porn magazine. "Don't let mom and dad find out, and if they do, I don't know where you got it."
If North Korea can do it then so can Japan. Nukes use a lot of expensive material but the actual design isn't complicated.
>Is there any evidence for the commonly stated idea that Japan is "a screwdriver's turn" away from developing a nuclear weapon,
Generally speaking if you got a nuclear reactor you're capable of churning out weapons grade nuclear material, they can at any moment create working nukes, they simply don't because they can piggyback out of the US nuclear umbrella and let them foot the bill on maintaining them
the mobile suits are what you should really be worried about.
It's like those people who have an electric motor and a gatling gun sitting in their garage and fervently deny that there's any intent to connect the two together.
The principles of making a low yield nuke are publicly available and any nation with a nuclear power industry has the materials or can make them
Checked, but I don't think that was the point of contention. It is obvious that they can, the question is to what extent they have worked on nuclear weapons, if at all, and whether they really have it all set up with little more than a "turn-key" between now and usable nuclear weapons.
Peacefur solid fuel rokketo ONLY for saterrite prease understand