Can Kiev get an atomic bomb
In the context of the special operation in Ukraine, on the one hand, there were long-standing and current regrets about the absence of nuclear weapons in the country. On the other hand, there are publications about the work already carried out with external support in a number of institutes and centers of Ukraine to prepare for the creation of nuclear weapons. Despite the fact that today the territorial boundaries, scientific and engineering personnel, production capabilities, resources and other characteristics remain uncertain, the possibility of assessing the existing and prospective conditions of Ukraine's existence as a nuclear or non-nuclear country is not excluded. This depends to a certain extent on the ability to independently produce nuclear fuel of various quality and purpose.
Nuclear history
On May 23, 1992, the protocol to the START-1 Treaty was signed in Lisbon, according to which Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan declared themselves countries without nuclear weapons and joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). They pledged to transfer all nuclear weapons to Russia as the successor of the USSR. According to the Lisbon agreements, the START-1 Treaty entered into force after its ratification by all signatories of the Lisbon Protocol.
In 1992-1993, the parliaments of Belarus and Kazakhstan ratified the START-1 Treaty and the Lisbon Protocol.
The situation with Ukraine turned out to be more complicated, since on August 24, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted an Act on the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine and on April 5, 1992, Ukraine announced the transfer under its jurisdiction of the 43rd Missile Army with 176 ICBMs, as well as strategic aviation formations (44 heavy bombers) stationed on its territory. The personnel of the 43rd Missile Army took the oath of allegiance to Ukraine.
For the ratification of the Lisbon Protocol and the START-1 Treaty, the country's leadership demanded compensation of $ 2.8 billion and a security guarantee from all the powers officially possessing nuclear weapons (Russia, the United States, Great Britain, France and China). On November 18, 1993, the Verkhovna Rada ratified the START-1 Treaty with unilateral amendments that stipulated the preservation of nuclear weapons for Ukraine. The USA and Russia did not accept this ratification.
On January 14, 1994, the leadership of Ukraine finally agreed to the elimination of all nuclear warheads with their disposal in Russia.
Three documents were signed:
"Agreement on the disposal of nuclear warheads";
"Basic principles of disposal of nuclear warheads of Strategic forces stationed in Ukraine";
"Agreement on the procedure for the implementation of the author's guarantee supervision over the operation of strategic missile systems of Strategic Forces located on the territory of Russia and Ukraine."
After intensive negotiations, on February 3, 1994, the Verkhovna Rada finally ratified the START-1 Treaty and the Lisbon Protocol. On November 16, 1994, Ukraine joined the NPT as a nuclear-weapon-free State. As compensation, Ukraine received about $ 500 million under the Nunn-Lugar program.
Only after that, there was an exchange of instruments of ratification between Russia and the United States, and in December 1994, the START-1 Treaty entered into force.
The withdrawal of strategic nuclear warheads from Ukraine continued as planned until 1996-1997. In the future, the media was disposed of using the Nunn-Lugar program.
Under this program, financial resources, protected containers for the transportation of nuclear warheads, special equipment and other products were supplied. Since that time, Ukraine has become not only formally, but also virtually a nuclear-free state.
Atomic Renaissance
To do this, it is necessary to have experienced qualified personnel, the necessary nuclear materials, a production base and overcome the most difficult political obstacles.
There is every reason to believe that the personnel problem associated with the production of nuclear warheads in a country with 4 nuclear power plants and 15 reactors, where there are nuclear physicists at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (until recently it was headed by the legendary academician Yevgeny Paton, whom Leonid Brezhnev persuaded after the departure of Mstislav Keldysh to become president of the USSR Academy of Sciences), physicists, working on research reactors, including such a reactor at the Kharkiv Physics and Technology Institute (during the preparation of the article, information about explosions at this institute was passed), designers of warheads in the Dnepropetrovsk Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and in the Kharkiv Hartron, can be solved.
Rocket designers, working for many years together with the creators of nuclear warheads, have perfectly studied the systems for monitoring the state of warheads, schemes for ensuring their readiness for use, etc. I happened to witness how rocket scientists were faster than nuclear scientists to find errors in their schemes and correct these errors.
Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant, and Khartron have been developing ICBMs (liquid and solid-fuel) medium-range missiles, airborne and ground-based control systems for decades. True, the propulsion systems, hulls and charges of solid-fuel rockets were manufactured in Russia. But these tasks for the creation of operational and tactical missiles have already been solved.
In 2014, after the Maidan, I happened to be invited to the anniversary of the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, which worked according to its profile with about 50% load. At that time, they were developing separate stages of launch vehicles on orders from the United States, Brazil and other countries. I talked to many old friends and comrades, remembered successes and failures, disputes in emergency commissions. I talked with Leonid Kuchma, with whom I was familiar during his leadership of Yuzhmashzavod, about the prospects of negotiations with Moscow. On this topic, he did not express enthusiasm at the time.
Completing the assessment of the quality of Ukrainian physicists and engineers, we can confidently assert their ability to successfully design nuclear weapons. However, the ability to design does not mean a real opportunity to create such a weapon.
The designers of the detente policy - Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan could not even imagine that Ukraine would claim nuclear status. Photos from the website www.reagan.utexas.edu
Materials and base
All that Ukraine does is extract natural uranium, the content of which in the extracted ore does not exceed 0.03% at best, and processes it hydrometallurgically to produce uranium concentrate, which contains 70-90% of uranium in the form of a mixture of oxides with the general chemical formula U3O8.
According to available data, 2,500 tons of uranium concentrate must be processed annually to provide fuel for all reactors operating in Ukraine, but only 1,000 tons are produced in the country, so the missing part of it has to be purchased from suppliers from Russia, Kazakhstan and Europe.
Now it is difficult to predict the possibility of maintaining and changing suppliers of uranium concentrate to Ukraine, as well as the volume of its production in the country. All the natural uranium deposits being developed are concentrated in a small area in the Kirovograd region, where three mines are located: Ingulskaya, Smolinskaya and Novokonstantinovskaya, and the Vostochny Mining and Processing Plant (GOK) is also operating, which extracts ore at its hydrometallurgical plant in Yellow Waters, processes uranium ore into concentrate.
The prospects for the functioning of all mines are also not clear enough. For example, back in 2016, a decision was made on the inexpediency of further work of the Smolinskaya mine. An official statement was made that the remaining resource of reserves at the mine does not exceed 1.4 thousand tons of uranium and it will be closed.
It is reported that under the contracts of 2014-2015, the GOK had to purchase up to 1,000 tons of uranium concentrate through an Austrian intermediary (approximately the annual volume of its own production). Now all these schemes will be sorted out in the courts.
Certain hopes for an increase in the production of Ukrainian uranium are associated with China. Recently, Chinese delegations have regularly visited the Novokonstantinovskaya mine and the hydrometallurgical plant. They are talking about a possible investment of $ 160 million, but the Chinese have not yet commented on the process and the financial side.
However, there is information that the management at the Novokonstantinovskaya mine has already begun to cooperate fruitfully with the Development Bank of China. As it was stated, "the Chinese side noted the significant experience in the development of uranium mining fields and stressed its interest in the implementation of these projects."
Beijing has its own calculations for the extracted uranium at the expense of its investments. Last year, China National Nuclear Corporation, together with the Nuclear Fuel Concern, approved an action plan to create a joint production of nuclear fuel for VVER-1000 type reactors in Ukraine.
All Ukrainian nuclear power plants with 15 water-water reactors of the VVER-1000 type use uranium enriched to 3.5–5% as fuel. Uranium enrichment to this level is carried out by Rosatom structures and the American company Westinghouse, since this has never been done in the country, while 267 tons of such fuel are needed for the country's nuclear power plants. Ukraine pays about $ 600 million a year for it, taking into account the cost of fuel assemblies.
Attempts to create a uranium enrichment facility on its territory ended in failure. To do this, such production would need to be saturated with thousands of centrifuges. (For reference: for example, in Iran, more than 15 thousand centrifuges of different generations were assembled for the production of enriched uranium at the Natanz base and at the Fordo underground base.)
Thus, it can be argued that the creation of nuclear warheads in Ukraine using weapons-grade uranium on its own production base, without taking into account the colossal cost and assistance from outside, would take decades.
There are statements by responsible figures about the possibility of developing nuclear warheads in Ukraine using weapons-grade plutonium obtained during the processing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. On this occasion, experts are considering various hypotheses. (Note that in 1991, the United States and Russia signed an agreement on the final shutdown of reactors producing weapons-grade plutonium. By now, everything in Russia has been stopped and is in one stage or another of decommissioning.)
In the event that the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in Chernobyl would begin under the control of the IAEA, then the plutonium released during reprocessing would be used as fuel mixed with uranium oxide. At the same time, after processing, almost two-thirds of plutonium accounted for the isotopes Pu-239 and Pu-241 and about a third for Pu-240, which is why it cannot be used to make reliable and predictable nuclear charges (Pu-240 isotope is a strong pollutant).
Another scenario is if Ukraine decided to create its own nuclear weapons. Then SNF not only from Chernobyl, but also from other nuclear power plants in the closed Chernobyl zone would be used for the development of weapons-grade plutonium. At the same time, according to physicists, it is necessary to present all the problems that accompany complex and lengthy processes of SNF processing, not to mention the production of plutonium with a high content of the isotope Pu-239. One of the main problems is considered to be the appearance after the complete dissolution of fuel assemblies of a huge amount of radioactive waste with different half-lives: from days and tens of days to hundreds of thousands of years.
This brief overview of Ukraine's capabilities to independently manufacture nuclear warheads does not consider the cost of solving such a task, such as the cost of creating an infrastructure for the safe storage, control and testing of nuclear weapons in general.
According to experts, it would take more than a dozen years to solve the complex of these tasks. However, such a scenario should be considered only in the case of an apocalyptic development of the crisis situation, moreover, without taking into account the resolute opposition to this process on the part of the overwhelming majority of the members of the Indefinite Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
Myths of reality
Supporters of the legal nuclear status of Ukraine periodically manifest themselves. For example, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk said on the Deutschlandfunk radio station: "Either we are part of an alliance like NATO and help make Europe stronger, or we have only one option: to arm ourselves, perhaps to think about nuclear status again. How else can we guarantee our protection?" The same was said by the former Minister of Defense of Ukraine Valery Geletey. Most recently, in Munich, President Vladimir Zelensky spoke about the possibility of revising his country's nuclear-free status.
All these emotional regrets about the absence of nuclear weapons in the country and the desire to acquire them have no practical meaning, not only for the reasons outlined above, but also for the consequences of violating international legal norms.
At the same time, all this caused a number of publications and statements by representatives of Russian legislative and intelligence agencies about the results of research and practical work with the support and knowledge of Washington on the creation of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, conducted in the Chernobyl zone, at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, in institutes and centers of Kiev, Lviv, Odessa. A common feature of all these materials is the complete absence of any factual data with multiple references to anonymous sources. Often this is periodically explained by the need to preserve their secrecy. But, as far as we know, there are multi-pass methods of legendizing real sources that do not allow them to be detected. And the lack of factual material raises doubts about their real existence.
Finally, the most serious obstacle to the development of nuclear weapons in Ukraine is membership in the NPT, which consists of 190 countries. For the entire time of its operation, only one state has dared to withdraw from it – the DPRK.
States with nuclear energy are under the control of the IAEA, whose inspectors have accumulated many years of experience analyzing the smallest signs and criteria for the transition from peaceful to military energy. To tighten and expand control, an Additional Protocol to the IAEA Comprehensive safeguards agreement is used, which establishes stricter control measures for compliance with the NPT.
Ukraine's attempts to renounce membership in this Treaty alone, especially withdrawal from it, would cause a sharp negative reaction from the overwhelming majority of the world's states. It would be subject to political, financial and economic sanctions comparable to those adopted against Iran and North Korea. Any Ukrainian leadership's understanding of these circumstances and knowledge of real resources should not lead to a decision to create nuclear weapons. Thus, all the materials presented here can be considered sufficient reason to include only one conclusion in the folder for the report to the leadership: in the foreseeable future, Ukraine will not possess nuclear weapons.
Vladimir Dvorkin
Vladimir Zinovievich Dvorkin - Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Chief Researcher at the IMEMO Center for International Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, retired Major General.
