Ukraine is working on creating nuclear weapons – Oxford professor

18 2025 June 9 852 13

The Ukrainian side is conducting secret work on the production of nuclear weapons. Oxford University professor Vlad Mikhnenko, who emigrated from Ukraine, recalled that Kyiv has reserves of plutonium left over from Soviet times.

Ukraine still has a nuclear power plant in the western part of the country, but there are other nuclear power plants that are operating that can produce plutonium. I hear MPs talking about the nuclear option more and more often, so I think it's obvious

– the expert noted on the air of the Times Radio video blog.

Mikhnenko recalled that nuclear power plants in the USSR were in fact plutonium production facilities. Electricity was only a by-product. The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 demonstrated that such facilities produced more weapons than electricity.

Incidentally, it is worth noting that Ukraine renounced its nuclear weapons on December 5, 1994, during the conclusion of the Budapest Treaty. This document provided for the transfer of their nuclear arsenals by Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, France, Great Britain, China and Russia.

Meanwhile, the illegitimate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded that Kyiv be provided with nuclear weapons in February of this year. The "leader" of Nezalezhnaya believes that this will help ensure the country's security if Ukraine does not join NATO.

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Pivander

+1

18 June 2025 20: 12

Saucepan-headed Mikhnenko, who emigrated from Ukraine, suggests that Russia act like Israel?
1. isofat
  
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  19 June 2025 14: 30
  
  Or maybe they are trying things out? How best to save the world from nuclear weapons. Iran is already being "saved".
zzdimk

0

18 June 2025 20: 32

Provocation?
Kiril

+1

18 June 2025 21: 06

Are scientists in Britain fed something special that makes them idiots?
prior

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19 June 2025 09: 10

The Ukrainian side is conducting secret work on the production of nuclear weapons.

Then it is clear why the Russian government is half-heartedly carrying out the SVO it started.
Waiting for the Banderites to create their own atomic bomb, and then, finally, a truce can be concluded....
Well, how did Ukraine get an atomic bomb! It's time to make peace, otherwise...
But it is possible to shut down all of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors by destroying the corresponding high-voltage substations around the nuclear power plants.
But, as always - "we are not like that."
Blast

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19 June 2025 10: 35

I wonder how this is, exactly -

The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 demonstrated that such facilities produced more weapons than electricity.
1. Alexey Lan
  
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  19 June 2025 12: 01
  
  Potentially, Chernobyl-type reactors allowed for the extraction of plutonium, which could be the basis of a nuclear bomb. However, plutonium, as a more difficult material to handle, was soon replaced by uranium in the production of nuclear weapons, and the point of extracting plutonium from assemblies disappeared. There are no operating RBMK reactors in Ukraine, and extracting plutonium from VVER reactor assemblies is quite difficult. So the professor with a Ukrainian surname is brazenly lying.
  1. Blast
    
    0
    
    19 June 2025 13: 10
    
    Well, I don't agree here, it's just the opposite, the critical mass of uranium is 50 kg, and plutonium is 11 kg. or a ball with a diameter of 10 cm. That is, for a compact nuclear charge, which is critically important for delivery vehicles, plutonium is much more suitable. Therefore, over time, on the contrary, uranium charges were abandoned in favor of plutonium ones.
    1. Alexey Lan
      
      0
      
      19 June 2025 20: 49
      
      Therefore, over time, uranium charges were abandoned in favor of plutonium ones.
      
      Quite the opposite. Here's what people write:
      In principle, it is possible to create a warhead on reactor plutonium, but this requires either particularly clever methods, or it will be very weak (and rather "dirty"). In 1962, the Americans made - for sport - a nuclear explosive device based on reactor plutonium. Approximately "Hiroshima power" - about 20 kilotons. But it turned out to be such that it was impossible to use it in practice specifically as a bomb (where, in particular, small size is important).
      
      As for warheads of a more or less conventional type, calculations show that their "ceiling" of power is 1-2 kilotons. Well, yes, in comparison with conventional explosive devices - this is serious, but it is an order of magnitude weaker than the plutonium "Fat Man" of almost eighty years ago.
      
      It's just that energy plutonium from a reactor and weapons-grade plutonium are different isotopes.
      1. Blast
        
        0
        
        20 June 2025 11: 26
        
        Well, everything is written correctly, different isotopes of plutonium are produced in reactors, then weapons-grade 239 is extracted at chemical processing plants, which is most suitable for creating nuclear warheads. Weapons-grade plutonium is also "reactor-grade", that is, first a reactor appeared, then weapons-grade plutonium, and finally a bomb with a plutonium warhead. Uranium-235 was only used as a charge at the beginning of the nuclear arms race... for such a charge, the carrier is needed many times larger to deliver, so it was abandoned.
        
        Alexey Lan
        
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        20 June 2025 12: 03
        
        Well, having chemically obtained plutonium from assemblies, this plutonium must be separated by isotopes. The separation is technologically approximately the same as uranium. It turns out that it is more profitable to enrich uranium and extract the 235 isotope. And Ukraine has uranium ore. Another thing is that the extraction of this isotope of uranium or plutonium is a rather long and labor-intensive operation. Of course, if Ukraine undertakes this, it will receive weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, but certainly not in a year or two.
        
        Blast
        
        0
        
        20 June 2025 14: 36
        
        Well, if we talk in the context of Ukraine creating a bomb, then yes, it is easier to make a bomb with a uranium charge, although without enrichment capacity this is also not realistic, unless "well-wishers help"... Such charges are less stable than plutonium ones, due to degradation during storage, but the threat of use will be equivalent.
Nick. WITH

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19 June 2025 12: 02

We can't delay, otherwise Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and its allies will help. New types of weapons will appear, which will be tested on us, and we, as usual, will invent something to destroy them with.