NATO is unprepared to defend the Baltic States.

[evan price]

3) Unlike Ukraine, any little adventures with Russian paratroops sans rank insignia in the Baltics is going to trigger an instant REFORGER, and an amphibious exercise 300 miles to the northeast, coupled with sanctions that will cripple Moscow for 20 years, starting with blocking the Bosporous and Baltic Sea.
4) The alternative is NATO folding as an entity, simultaneous with the breakup of the EU in about 0.2 seconds, and then every nuke on or contiguous to the continent goes weapons loose before the next mealtime.

Number 3 really depends on people in the White House not being douchebags. Sans that, number 4 is the best possible outcome. How much POMCUS do we still have viable?

[Erik]

Why do you think Japan is so big on reactor fuel reprocessing?

Not saying they cant do it, just that reprocessing reactor fuel is not the same thing as making material that can be used in a bomb. I'm by no means an expert in the area, but my understanding from reading about it is that it's a time consuming process to make the specific material needed for a bomb. And there's really no point in making that specific material unless you are going to use it in a bomb, so it's pretty difficult to make it without monitoring organizations finding out about it.
You would pretty much have to stop them from inspecting to be able to start the process without anyone knowing about it, and then you'd have to stall them until you're done. Which is (if my information is right) about six months minimum.

Also, the stuff goes bad with time. So you cant make one and put it in a closet just in case you might need it a few years later, you need to maintain it in working order. So it's a continuous process.

It's certainly doable if they really want to do it, but it's not something they can do overnight.

[Aesop]

I'm by no means an expert in the area, but my understanding from reading about it is that it's a time consuming process to make the specific material needed for a bomb. And there's really no point in making that specific material unless you are going to use it in a bomb, so it's pretty difficult to make it without monitoring organizations finding out about it, but fortunately, the so-called "monitoring" is largely a joke, as the amount of unaccounted-for material (tons and tons) within any one reactor is probably enough to make an arsenal's worth of nuclear weapons, and has been since before the monitoring agencies first existed.

FIFY

And BTW, you act as though nations are like virgins, and never thought of this 20, 30, 40 years ago, and would therefore have to start the entire process from scratch tomorrow.
Somehow.

If anyone thinks the nations I mentioned are really that naïve, I have a bridge for sale too.

Neither the Swiss or Swedes are covered by the NATO umbrella, and both take their national neutrality rather seriously.

For a lesson in how long countries can keep secrets when they really want to, bear in mind that it was something like decades after WWII when the surviving members of the German and Japanese command staff learned that the Allies had broken much of their wartime codes, and were reading their mail in real time.
They were uniformly shocked and astonished.

We still don't know what happened to hundreds of Allied aircrew known to have crashed or bailed out over Soviet-controlled territory during WWII, who never made it back home. And it's only been in the last few years that it's been revealed that the loss of the USS Scorpion in 1968 was nearly certainly a Soviet ambush, which they and we both knew about, but remained unacknowledged some 40 years later.

A few countries hedging their bets and stashing a small nuke stockpile doesn't even rise to the level of mild surprise.

[Erik]

No disagreement with any of that.

My point was that no country can suddenly decide today that "gee, we need a nuclear bomb", and have it done in a few weeks. They need time to make one, especially the material for it. And though the inspections are not by any means perfect, most countries are fairly open about letting them inspect, which means that if any of those countries were actually running a bomb factory somewhere, they'd have to be really good at keeping it separate and hidden from the legal stuff. (It's a lot easier in a war situation when outsiders aren't even allowed in the country, much less into some of the buildings)

It's not at all impossible, but it would require real dedication to do so and to keep it up for years, based on the off chance that you might need one on very short notice down the road. Especially since they know that they could probably make one in a few months, should circumstances change. And that they can prepare all the plans for it ahead of time, and only need the time to refine the material.

That's not saying that maybe one or two countries felt that circumstances had changed and decided to go ahead with it a while back.

[Denis]

My point was that no country can suddenly decide today that "gee, we need a nuclear bomb", and have it done in a few weeks.

Probably not, but any country, and many private organisations, is/are capable of buying a few of the surplus warheads that went missing from WPO stockpiles in the late 1980s/1990s. There are reasons the various secret services let it be known that they will purchase undocumented special materials no questions asked. Not all the reasons are innocent. There are also reasons why countries with nuclear power programmes send their fuel-rod waste to the UK, France or Japan for expensive reprocessing instead of just storing it, and not all of those reasons are innocent either.

[Erik]

My point was that no country can suddenly decide today that "gee, we need a nuclear bomb", and have it done in a few weeks.

Probably not, but any country, and many private organisations, is/are capable of buying a few of the surplus warheads that went missing from WPO stockpiles in the late 1980s/1990s.

True, but as I understand it, they need to be maintained. You need to "fill up" with new material regularly, so just buying one in the 90's and put it in a closet just in case isn't enough. Sure, you might be able to buy new material to "fill up" with regularly, but then you might as well refine it yourself so you have a steady supply.

I am not by any means saying it's impossible to do, just that it's not a spur of the moment thing. Any country (or organisation) that does it need to have planned this for a while, and set up production and/or other ways of procurement. Complete with tight security, or we would all know about it now.

Whether or not any country have done so is anyones guess. I seriously doubt Sweden has though, for several reasons.

[evan price]

, but as I understand it, they need to be maintained. You need to "fill up" with new material regularly, so just buying one in the 90's and put it in a closet just in case isn't enough. Sure, you might be able to buy new material to "fill up" with regularly, but then you might as well refine it yourself so you have a steady supply.

A multi stage device will probably use tritium injection to the secondary core; tritium half-lifes into Helium-3 in twelve years. So your bombs need the tritium reservoirs replenished periodically to remove the Helium-3 which inhibits deuterium fusion.

[Cybrludite]

Erik, my understanding from reading open sources on the subject is that you can get a working nuke from highly enriched, but not "weapons grade", materials if you don't mind a heavier and less efficient device, and tritium boosting can improve the yield of such a device.

[slowpoke]

, but as I understand it, they need to be maintained. You need to "fill up" with new material regularly, so just buying one in the 90's and put it in a closet just in case isn't enough. Sure, you might be able to buy new material to "fill up" with regularly, but then you might as well refine it yourself so you have a steady supply.

A multi stage device will probably use tritium injection to the secondary core; tritium half-lifes into Helium-3 in twelve years. So your bombs need the tritium reservoirs replenished periodically to remove the Helium-3 which inhibits deuterium fusion.

And tritium is commercially available. Being a gas it is also lost often so....

[Steamforger]

3) Unlike Ukraine, any little adventures with Russian paratroops sans rank insignia in the Baltics is going to trigger an instant REFORGER, and an amphibious exercise 300 miles to the northeast, coupled with sanctions that will cripple Moscow for 20 years, starting with blocking the Bosporous and Baltic Sea.
4) The alternative is NATO folding as an entity, simultaneous with the breakup of the EU in about 0.2 seconds, and then every nuke on or contiguous to the continent goes weapons loose before the next mealtime.

Number 3 really depends on people in the White House not being douchebags. Sans that, number 4 is the best possible outcome. How much POMCUS do we still have viable?

I'm fairly certain that anyone who *can* answer that question *won't* answer that question.