Ukraine could build rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump cuts US military aid, reports The Times, citing a document prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
The country can quickly create a plutonium base unit using technology similar to the “Fat“ (the Fat Man bomb) dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. in World War II, the report said.
„Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did with the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later,”, the document says.
Without time to build and operate the large facilities needed to enrich uranium, wartime Ukraine will have to rely on using plutonium extracted from fuel rods removed from Ukrainian nuclear reactors.
Ukraine still controls nine operating reactors and has significant nuclear experience, despite giving up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal in 1996.
The weight of reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at seven tons. Much less material would be needed to create a significant arsenal of nuclear weapons. The amount of material is enough for hundreds of warheads with a tactical power of several kilotons, UNIAN agency writes.
Such a bomb would have about one-tenth the power of Fat Man. This would be enough to destroy a Russian air base as well as industrial and logistics facilities. The technology is complex, but it is within Ukraine's competence, the report says.
Western experts believe that it will take at least five years for Ukraine to develop a nuclear weapon and a suitable launch vehicle, but in Kiev they are confident that they can do it faster.