Олексій Дзюба War 16 November 2024, 10:01

Ukraine still does not have nuclear weapons, and we even make excuses for that. What are the options to solve this problem (not only the Israeli way, but also with the help of AI)

Periodically in the press there are refutations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Ukraine will not create nuclear weapons. This is usually a reaction to the statements of our officials or the materials of Western journalists.

But the longer the full-scale war continues in the country, the more often Ukrainians write (jokingly?) on the Internet that we need our own nuke. These sentiments are especially intensifying on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump, who will try to stop the war in a way that is not beneficial for us and with possible territorial concessions.

In June 1996, Ukraine completely abandoned nuclear weapons. In November 2024, Ukraine is on the brink of the catastrophe of losing the state. Let's look at what options we have today to correct this regrettable historical mistake.

How we lost the nucleus

As of 1991, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. It included:

— 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles: 130 liquid-fuel SS-19 (six warheads each) and 46 solid-fuel SS-24 (ten warheads each) in mine launchers;

— Tu-95MS and Tu-160 strategic bombers: from 30 to 43;

— nuclear warheads of strategic weapons: from 1,514 to 2,156;

— tactical nuclear warheads: from 2,800 to 4,200.

During the Cold War, the "rocket capital of Ukraine" was Vinnytsia. The headquarters of the 43rd Missile Army was located here. It was armed with the newest medium-range complexes at that time. From 1961 to 1984, one of the missile regiments was located in Vinnytsia - the 60th, which had three divisions at its disposal.

Tactical weapons could be controlled by Ukraine because they did not require special codes. Strategic - no, Moscow had the "button".

After Ukraine's declaration of independence, the question arose about the future fate of the powerful nuclear arsenal located on its territory. Ukraine has documentedly subscribed to the principles of non-nuclearity (not to accept, not to produce and not to acquire nuclear weapons).

This issue was fundamental for the USA and Russia, who wanted to see Ukraine as a nuclear-free state, and they put pressure on our country in order to achieve this. The state leadership, due to the positions of the then president Leonid Kravchuk and the head of the SBU, Yevhen Marchuk, began to declare their intentions to abandon nuclear weapons and deprive Ukraine of its nuclear status.

On November 16, 1994, Ukraine joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

On December 5, 1994, the Budapest Memorandum was signed between Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Great Britain and the United States of America , according to which the listed participants must respect the independence, sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine, refrain from any manifestations of aggression against Ukraine, including economic pressure.

In June 1996, Ukraine fully fulfilled its agreements — all nuclear warheads were transferred to Russia for destruction, and classified strategic bases were transferred to non-military use. The guarantors did not fulfill their obligations.

Elementary nuclear bomb of Ukraine

The other day, the British publication The Times, referring to an analytical note prepared for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, wrote that we can develop an elementary nuclear bomb using plutonium if Donald Trump stops military aid to the United States. The creation of the bomb would have lasted for several months. After that, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Heorhiy Tykhy, denied such information.

According to the analytical note, our country does not have the capacity to build and operate large facilities necessary for uranium enrichment. So it could use plutonium from spent fuel rods — from 9 Ukrainian nuclear reactors.

The weight of plutonium from nuclear power plant reactors available to Ukraine is estimated at 7 tons. The amount of material is sufficient for hundreds of warheads with a tactical power of several kilotons. This is about one-tenth the power of the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki. This would be enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistical facilities. The exact yield of a nuclear weapon would be unpredictable because it would use different isotopes of plutonium.”

The bomb would be similar to the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945 during World War II.

What did the "Fat Man" atomic bomb consist of?

The main part of the bomb consisted of a core made of plutonium-239. It is a radioactive material that served as the basis for a nuclear chain reaction. In the center of the plutonium core was an initiator that started the flow of neutrons necessary to start a chain reaction.

Around the plutonium core were explosive lenses made of explosive substances. Their purpose was to create a uniform blast wave. The bomb had several detonators.

Between the plutonium core and the explosive lenses was a layer of material called a tamper. It helped keep the neutrons in the reaction zone, delaying the expansion of the nucleus and increasing the efficiency of the explosion.

"Fat Man" had a spherical shape with a diameter of about 1.5 meters. Its weight was approximately 4.6 tons.

This nuclear bomb had sophisticated detonation technology that was designed to ensure a high probability of a successful nuclear explosion because plutonium-239 is more difficult to use than uranium-235, which was used in another bomb, Little Boy. .

Oleksiy Yizhak, as well as the director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, Valentyn Badrak, told The Times that if the US left Ukraine without defense support, the UK could fulfill its security obligations under the Budapest Memorandum and help Kyiv develop nuclear weapons. containment.

Nuclear "drop"

In October, the German publication Bild reported that Ukraine was allegedly planning to create nuclear weapons "in a few weeks." In it, the publication refers to an unnamed Ukrainian official who allegedly specializes in the purchase of weapons. This anonymous interlocutor says that Ukraine will not accept a second Russian attack on Kyiv, and in this case, the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal, which the country voluntarily gave up in the 1990s, will be restored.

The publication quotes the following words of the official: "We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order goes through, it will only take us a few weeks to get the first bomb.” At the same time, the nuclear military bases that we had during the existence of the USSR and in the early 90s now look like "ghost towns".

After this material, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, emphasized that in Ukraine they never talked about the country preparing to create nuclear weapons. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine also denied the preparation of nuclear weapons.

Zelensky recounted his conversation with the US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his visit to the States on September 27. He told Trump that Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum, that the agreements under it did not work, and that only one country was affected - Ukraine, which surrendered its nuclear weapons.

"And in a conversation with Donald Trump, I told him that this is how we work. What is the way out? "Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then it's a defense for us, or we should have some kind of alliance," Zelenskyi said.

How can we repeat the way of Israel

Israel has lived with similar nuclear weapons rumors for more than 50 years. This became his political position of "nuclear ambiguity" - neither confirming nor denying the existence of his own nuclear weapons.

There are many unconfirmed rumors surrounding Israel's nuclear weapons. If you make a general picture out of them, it looks like this. Israel developed its own nuclear weapons in the late 1960s. Most researchers agree that by the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel already had more than ten nuclear bombs and was indeed considering their use as a "last resort."

Also, that the US knows about Israel's nuclear weapons, but is silent about it. Allegedly, back in 1969, American President Richard Nixon and then Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir concluded a secret agreement. Under this agreement, Israel must keep its nuclear program secret and not conduct nuclear tests. And the United States will turn a blind eye to Israel's nuclear weapons and will not insist that it sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Israeli special services allegedly secretly buy or steal nuclear materials around the world. In the 1980s, the United States discovered that more than 100 kg of enriched uranium had disappeared from one of its plants. It was suspected that most of it got to Israel, but it was not possible to prove anything.

Israel has a nuclear triad. That is, planes and submarines that can carry nuclear missiles, and actually intercontinental ballistic missiles that can have a nuclear charge. We are talking about Jericho III missiles, which entered service with the Israeli Army in 2011. Their exact number is unknown.

Some researchers say that Israel began the production of nuclear weapons in the 1960s and by 2004 was producing 2-3 warheads per year. Now they have from 80 to 200 warheads. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) was founded in 1952, and the first reactor did not start operating until 1963.

That is, it took several decades for Israel to start a full cycle of its nuclear program from scratch, and half a century to create a full-fledged ammunition stockpile. The cost of creating a nuclear complex is unknown, but it is tens of billions of dollars.

Modern context

It is worth understanding the modern context for Ukraine. There are currently eight states officially in the "Nuclear Club" - the USA, Russia, China, Great Britain, France - they were there from the beginning. India, Pakistan and North Korea (DPRK) joined later. Israel is not officially in the "nuclear club".

Not all countries in the world have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan and India did not sign and built their nuclear weapons de jure cleanly. The DPRK signed this treaty, but then became the first country in the world to withdraw from the agreement. Thus causing massive international sanctions and dissatisfaction of a large part of the world community.

Therefore, some experts say that if Ukraine really starts the procedure of withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, it will immediately cause a lot of international trouble for our country: from a technological embargo to the closure of financial and many other markets for Ukraine. And that in reality Ukraine cannot afford nuclear military ambitions either technically, economically or technologically.

For example, Ukraine ranks 10th in the world in terms of natural uranium deposits, it is mined at the "Eastern Mining and Enrichment Plant" in Zhovty Vody. But even for a nuclear power plant, uranium must first be enriched, and there is currently no such equipment in Ukraine.

Nuclear weapons are really expensive to maintain (which is one of the reasons we gave them up in the 90s). For example, in 2019, the total cost of nuclear maintenance amounted to $72.9 billion. The most in the USA — $35.4 billion. In France — $4 billion, in India — $2.3 billion, in Israel and Pakistan — about $1 billion.

Therefore, other experts express hope that Ukraine will become a country that has nuclear weapons, but within the framework of NATO membership. Thus, maintaining a constructive track within the framework of international cooperation.

How AI is related to the nucleolus

We are at a point where there is the possibility of an arms race in AI-based nuclear weapons guidance systems. What AI-assisted guidance a nuclear weapon might have is difficult to assess at this time because much of the technology is still in the development stage.

For example, you can assume a scenario where a nuclear weapon is aimed at a naval base, but the detection of approach routes indicates that the submarines are already out to sea, and the missile chooses to redirect for an underwater strike instead of an atmospheric explosion. This is one of many possible scenarios for the involvement of AI.

Earlier, President Biden signed a memorandum on national security, in which he called on the Department of Energy and other agencies to conduct security tests of AI in classified conditions.

Recently, it became known that one of the leading companies in the direction of creation and development of AI Anthropic is working with nuclear experts of the Department of Energy to ensure that its models do not help people create nuclear weapons.

Since April, the company has been working with the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration to create a so-called "red team" for the Claude 3 Sonnet AI model to ensure that its model does not share potentially dangerous information about nuclear power.

Members of the "red team" test systems, trying to break them. The NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) is testing Anthropic's models to see if users can abuse them to find rogue uses for nuclear energy, such as developing nuclear weapons.

The pilot program will run until February. Given the sensitive nature of this testing, Anthropic is not disclosing the results of the pilot program. However, the company plans to share its findings with scientific laboratories and other organizations so they can conduct their own testing.

“AI is one of those game-changing technologies and is at the top of the agenda in many of our conversations. At the same time, assessing and testing the ability of AI to generate results that could potentially represent nuclear or radiological risks is important to national security,” said Wendyn Smith, Under Secretary for Counterterrorism and Non-Proliferation.

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