Canada remains anti-nuke, but its potential path to the bomb is getting shorter
I'm starting this article not because of the title subject but what I consider alarming statements made by folks in the US about how the tech used here could be used for clandestine enrichment.
Best cast it's an attempt to dissuade other countries from adopting the CANDU reactor, or keep Canada buying enriched uranium from the states, and worse case it's further pretence for annexation.
"The only thing that inhibits Canada is the will to do it, the political decision to do it," said nuclear weapons expert Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland, who served as head of national security and international affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
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"All uranium-fuelled reactors produce plutonium. The issue with the CANDU is that it has online refuelling," explained Ed Lyman, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. "You're refuelling continuously, which makes it harder for the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]."
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"Of the countries that have made nuclear weapons with plutonium, many of them have used a heavy water reactor," he said.
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Canada is also branching out into a new kind of technology that will require enriched uranium: the small modular reactor (SMR). Some of the proposed SMRs would use uranium enriched to a level as high as 20 per cent, known as high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
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"And so I worry about this push for advanced reactors, SMRs that use HALEU up near 20 per cent, like the ARC 100 in Canada, that the material itself is in the dangerous band. And if Canada were to pursue a whole fleet of SMRs using HALEU, and especially if they were to build their own enrichment plants to support that, that might give them a threshold capability for bombs, even if they never make highly enriched [over 20 per cent] uranium."
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I hate that the idea of Canada acquiring nukes has become so prevalent. Having nukes does not help anyone, it merely increases the global risk of nuclear war. Every country with nukes is another country that can decide to pull the trigger.
Consider the actual calculus that goes into MAD. If we think we have a nuke heading towards us, we have to act prior to verification. The decision that is effectively to be made is: do we let a potential nuke hit one of our cities and let millions of people die, or do we launch a counter attack and kill millions more people and prompt further response from the enemy? The most likely outcome of this is full scale nuclear war. Even between two countries, this would devastate the planet and result in countless deaths.
Counterintuitively, even if we have nukes, launching a counterattack is the response that would result in the worst possible outcome. But it is also useless to have nukes if you have no possible intent of using them defensively. This is basically entering into the most apocalyptic game of chicken that anyone can play.
I dunno, North Korea gets away with all kinds of shit. It's more that it definitely does help you, but hurts everyone. Those are two different things.
The term gets used for other things, but in game theory this is called a non-credible threat. A group of perfectly rational agents would be able to use backwards induction on each other, and always call the bluff.
Real humans are capable of irrational spite, though, so MAD has held for decades.
It's a tragedy of the commons, which is what the prisoners paradox is, which is what MAD is.
Sort of.
Technically, it's more like chicken, which is a different two-player, non-zero-sum game. Wikipedia has a section with a nice gif on the difference between chicken and prisoner's dilemma. They're closely related, though.
Conventional war and peace is also a game of chicken, but with nukes the severity, certainty and finality of the costs involved seems to lead to a very different equilibrium. Leading over a bombed-out country is a much more palatable option for leaders than being nobody in a radioactive wasteland.
It's also worth noting that this toy model has simultaneous moves, while a real life nuclear exchange does not, which is what makes the threat of a second strike theoretically non-credible.
Ukraine wouldn't have been invaded if they had nukes. Maybe Canada just builds a few, 50 sounds like a reasonable number. You wouldn't be hearing 51st state bullshit that's for sure.
I mean, Ukraine gave up their nukes on the promise they would never be invaded...
This is why fascism is constructing the golden dome. The goal is to be able to conquer the world without the threat of MAD.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system)
By the time that's built they'll be able to mass produce cheap kamikaze drones that can kill an entire cities inhabitants for less than a billion dollars, all controlled by AI.
Who, the US, or someone targeting the US?
If you read the article blinded to the publisher, it'd probably be a surprise to see that this is published by a Canadian crown corporation and not a private US-funded outlet
The author interviewed 3 American scientists with ties to US Gov and heavily quotes them. Also, "Scientists consulted by CBC News said Canada would probably have little economic motive to build its own enrichment facilities." It's an under-statement to say that the Canadian voice is under-represented in this article
God the comments are depressing. "The only way to protect from the bad guys with nukes is to give the good guys nukes!"
Right, because the same logic worked with guns in the US. Mel Hurtig is rolling in his grave rn.
France and the UK should trade a few nukes to Canada to keep Mango Mussolini in check
If we were going this direction, hosting foreign nukes would similarly effective, but much less provocative, and proliferation-y. It seems like a no-brainer, if there's a willing partner.
France has just started loaning them out in Europe, but it's not clear if they'd be willing to expand to another continent. The UK is an interesting option in that we have the same de jure leader, anyway. But then again, they have a troubled relationship with their nuclear status as it is.
We should’ve had nukes ever since, being Canadian, we’d never want to use them, but as a deterrent.
We don’t need to go scorched earth to bring down the Orange Turd, let him ruin the U.S. on his own, financially.