We should go and find more customers.
Technically, yes. Politically, no.
“To produce fuel for the submarines’ naval propulsion, the ability to enrich uranium was required. However, this plan probably served two goals, since a country with enrichment capability can also enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels without significant difficulty. The fact that [former President Roh Moo-hyun] launched this plan less than five months after North Korea’s [2003] withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) supports the possibility that his ulterior motive was to acquire uranium enrichment capability in part to enable the future development of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, Roh had to abandon this plan in 2004 amid rising suspicion of South Korea’s nuclear ambitions after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered that South Korean scientists had previously conducted an unauthorized enrichment experiment” [1].
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/will-south-koreas-nuclear-ambi...
Wikipedia says U235 is ~0.7% of earth deposits, and as little as 7kg may be required for a minimal nuclear device. Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process. Just grinding it up and using some kind of mass spectrometer could trivially separate a 3Dalton mass difference.
There was no NPT in the 40s. And we weren’t technically at war with a nuclear-armed Canada backed by a pro-NPT international alliance.
It’s not a casual undertaking and other nations will know you’re doing it. The major global powers are not interested in more nuclear weapons, not only to maintain their hegemony but also to limit the number of parties that could cause massive issues. Not to mention the likelihood that a national or political shift could mean nukes in the hands of those less…restrained.
Plus it raises the surface area of others gaining access to the material or capabilities. Proliferation is bad for the world, generally.
Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China.
This naval news post says there are $5 billion in modernization costs for the shipyard needed for this project so it seems like we're still years away from a started (much less completed) project.
[1] Nov 2024 https://thezvi.substack.com/p/repeal-the-jones-act-of-1920
[2] June 2018 https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-...
Edit: Your downvotes only make me more powerful.
The transmission from sub / ship to shore is not great I think, though. They're used for power during disaster recovery?
Imagine if the title was : "China Gives South Korea Green Light to Build Nuclear Submarines".
What would the comments here be like. No doubt a lot of nonsense about "the ccp" this and "the ccp" that.
Like obviously no matter the country, if you want to build weapons offshore in their territory you probably need permission.
That's the point. South korea is not allowed to build nuclear submarines in their own territory. They lack the sovereignty to do it. The US won't give them permission to build one on their own.
But you probably knew this and your comment is meant to distract.
Are you being intentionally dense? Why wouldn't they be building it in their own territory if nobody was stopping them?
Besides, I already replied to your other comment that South korea is not allowed to enrich uranium by the US.
Because they don't have the facilities to build a nuclear sub, and America does, since America has built over 200+ nuclear submarines in the past?
Building a nuclear sub, and fueling it, are two separate things.
And the US has an agreement with South Korea that limits domestic production of fissile material for military uses but it's a mutual agreement that we have with a bunch of countries (including China) and is essentially always renegotiable as situations change. Essentially it's just an explicit agreement of how much material a given country intends on producing for the purposes of requiring public political discussions domestically before ramping up production.
That is all very much a flexible situation and the US doesn't have any actual power to legitimately stop South Korea from manufacturing domestic nuclear reactors for military purposes.
Fully agree that reading either for geopolitical opinions is useless.
The US won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own. Want to try again?
> I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
Another intentional distracting comment.
The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1]. America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...
> The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1].
Or maybe Korea could be like India, your native country, and not be part of it.
> America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
Yeah, a loophole seoul doesn't need. You act like america is doing korea a favor. All this does is make korea even more dependent on the US. Even more of a vassal.
rayiner•58m ago
echelon•50m ago
We should get every country to do this.
Build your nuclear subs here, in the US shipyards. We'll help you!
We can massively expand our capacity, which will be important for self defense in the coming decades.
tyre•8m ago
If they aren’t, you can’t neutralize the enemies supplies. If they are, those third countries are effectively part of the conflict.
The US had to take the latter stance because it didn’t have a strong industry to product its own weapons. If it supported nations from buying from non-warring parties, it would be shit out of luck if it had its own wars. So it received a lot of investment from European powers, generating jobs, economic growth, and the funding to expand its domestic production without having to take on debt or wait for a war to break out.
Come its entry into WWI and then WWII, the US had a strong home base of industrial capacity for arms manufacturing.