Nuclear Crazy

FMT:

Who has the UK nuclear button while PM Johnson is ill? No comment

The United Kingdom has a stockpile of about 215 nuclear warheads

(File pic)

LONDON: The British government declined on Tuesday to say who had responsibility for the United Kingdom’s nuclear codes while Prime Minister Boris Johnson is treated in intensive care for Covid19 complications.

When asked by the BBC if Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had been handed the nuclear codes while Johnson receives treatment, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said: “There are well-developed protocols which are in place.”

“I just really cannot talk about national security issues,” Gove said.

The United Kingdom is one of the world’s five official nuclear-weapon states and has four nuclear submarines armed with Trident II D5 ballistic missiles loaded with nuclear warheads.

The United Kingdom has a stockpile of about 215 nuclear warheads, though about 120 are operationally available.

Only the British prime minister can authorise a nuclear strike. Such an order would be transmitted to one of Britain’s nuclear submarines with a special set of codes.

Boris Johnson and acting PM Dominic Raab  

What really sucks about this issue of nuclear weapons has been the double-standards on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), very very eff-up double standards especially by the West.

The NPT recognises that 5 states are nuclear-weapon states, namely USA, Russia (before USSR), UK, France, and China. The double standards became MOST apparent when the USA insisted for aeons that India must ratify the NPT, meaning India can't have nuclear weapons.

WTF, UK and France are recognised as nuclear-weapon states but not India?

Of course India told them to F-off, wakakaka.

The 3 nuclear-weapon states (ignoring those who don't have any, eg. Sudan, wakakaka) which haven't ratified the NPT are India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Boy, you gonna give up your nukes and sign the NPT?

Eff you Old Man  

Now, the double standards by the USA becomes even more disgusting - Israel has repeatedly refused to sign the NPT but most nations know Israel has a huge cache of N-weapons.

In 2010 (Reuter) regarding the NPT, ... U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and key states would arrange a conference that would include all nations in the region, by implication including bitter enemies Israel and Iran.

Israel is presumed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal but neither confirms nor denies it. It is the only Middle East state that has not signed the NPT and, like fellow non-members India and Pakistan, did not take part in the review conference.

U.S. officials, irked at efforts to single out Israel, made clear the proposal might go nowhere, saying the Middle East could not be declared WMD-free until broad Arab-Israeli peace prevailed and Iran curbed its uranium enrichment programme.

Eff you Goyims, I'm going to follow Golda Meir's philosophy, that if Israel is ever invaded, I'll lob nukes here, there and everywhere  

In other words, the USA is okaying Israel's possession of nukes on the kerbau that ... the Middle East could not be declared WMD-free until broad Arab-Israeli peace prevailed and Iran curbed its uranium enrichment programme.

You work out that US excuse-for-Israel yourself, while reminding ourselves how aggressive the US has been in pursuing Iran's nuclear program.

Not that anyone (other than Iranian leaders) wants Iran to have a nuclear weapons program, but what eff-ing double standards the US has demonstrated, berating only Iran whilst rubba-rubba-ing Israel.

By the way, I remember reading somewhere(?) while I was a young man first working in KL (wakakaka) that Taiwan, then still calling herself the Republic of China, did jointly work with Israel and (then White Supremacist) South Africa to produce nuclear bombs, though I doubt South Africa being a White Supremacist country would have been willing to work with a Chinese nation.

Of course, when Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa his government voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons as most of the former USSR states (eg. Ukraine) did too.

Whatever, we know Taiwan had a nuclear weapon program which was eventually cancelled due to pressure from the US. Hmmm, I wonder whether Taiwan did succeed in secretly building a nuke and still possesses it, and if she does, where she is keeping it, wakakaka.

But today Taiwan keeps very quiet on the issue, whilst accepting comprehensive IAEA safeguards and the measures of the Additional Protocol to verify that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

Taiwan former nuclear plant 

From Wikipedia:The development of nuclear weapons by the Republic of China has been a contentious issue, as it had been triggered by PRC's first nuclear test in 1964. The U.S., hoping to avoid escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait, has continually opposed arming the Republic of China with nuclear weapons after 1979.

Accordingly, the Republic of China adheres to the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has stated that it does not intend to produce nuclear weapons, on an official basis. Past nuclear research by the ROC makes it a "threshold" nuclear state.

In 1967, a nuclear weapons program began under the auspices of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) at the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology. The Republic of China was able to acquire nuclear technology from abroad (including a research reactor from Canada and low-grade plutonium from the United States) allegedly for a civilian energy system, but in actuality to develop fuel for nuclear weapons.

During the 1970s, the Republic of China had an active program to produce plutonium using heavy water reactors. However, after the International Atomic Energy Agency found evidence of the Republic of China's efforts to produce weapons-grade plutonium, Taipei agreed in September 1976 under U.S. pressure to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

A study by the Mitre Corporation in 1977 included Taiwan in a list of "insecure" nuclear threshold states—states with the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons and the security motivations to seriously contemplate such an option. The other states were Israel, South Africa, South Korea, and Yugoslavia.

U.S. intelligence believed that the Republic of China also had designed devices suitable for nuclear testing.

A secret program was revealed when Colonel Chang Hsien-yi, deputy director of nuclear research at INER who was secretly working for the CIA, defected to the U.S. in December 1987 and produced a cache of incriminating documents. General Hau Pei-tsun claimed that scientists in Taiwan had already produced a controlled nuclear reaction.

Under pressure from the U.S., the program was halted. A study into the secret program concluded that at the time of Chang's defection, Taiwan was one or two years away from being able to complete a nuclear bomb.

In 1987 the warhead design had a diameter of 60-70cm with casing and a weight of 900kg meaning that further miniaturization would have been needed to optimize the weapon for delivery.

During the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, then Republic of China President Lee Teng-hui proposed to reactivate the program, but turned down the rhetoric a few days later, saying that although Taiwan was nuclear latent, it "will definitely not" produce nuclear weapons.