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It would take them only a few months. Ukraine is filled with Soviet nuclear technology and Soviet nuclear engineers. They have nuclear reactors. Ukraine is richer than North Korea, and they have their own uranium mines. North Korea spent a couple billion on their nukes, but Ukraine's military budget is $82B a year, so they could easily surpass North Korea.
Geopolitics experts agree that Ukraine could build a nuke if they wanted to. The issue is that the west definitely would not want to see a world where countries threatened by Russia turn to nuclear proliferation.
Here's a video from a Danish military analyst talking about the decisions that have to be made on how to secure Ukraine after the war:
https://youtu.be/aTiunvocl5c
It's important to note, Ukraine is willing to freeze the front line now in return for security guarantees. But If the US or the EU don't step up to end the war soon, Ukrainian nuclear engineers will.
That was an interesting watch, but he doesn't put a clear timeline on how long it would take. I found this article that notes that:
It goes on to interview a couple of engineer about what they could be expected to produce, by when, and with what level of discresion:
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.
CANDU-like or RBMK-like design could work for this purpose, but i have doubts about VVERs that they have
There’s a really easy way for them to get hydrogen bombs, actually: we give them some B61s.
And no, that’s not a joke.
or just let them join nato instead of proliferating?
You think that’s a realistic scenario at this point? That’ll never happen. The US is going to leave NATO.