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Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

> globally, security will erode everywhere.

Just a day or so ago, Trump was asked about AUKUS, the closest military alliance that the US is a part of. He didn't know what it was.

For some months now, the Australian Liberal party has been going on and on about building nuclear power plants.

It's not about the electricity generation -- when pressed they'll admit that it might be as little as 4% of the supply -- but secretly it's about giving us the option of building nukes to defend ourselves in case our relationship with the US falls apart.

We can't be the only country thinking like this. South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and many others have the industrial base and most have nuclear power plants already, nuclear engineers, etc...

I just checked: Singapore has started talking about building nuclear power plants also.

Sigh...

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Not to go too much on an AusPol tangent, LNP Nuclear stuff is more about delaying the green-power transition.

It keeps coal / gas power around for a nuclear future that is decades away at best (and never more likely). It’s a sop to the oil and mining companies. https://youtube.com/watch?v=JBqVVBUdW84

That is probably 75% of the reason, but it does dovetail very nicely with the acquisition of nuclear submarines with nuclear weapons capabilities.

I thought I was just imagining things, but I looked it up and it turns out that the Liberal party has been flirting with arming Australia with nukes since the 1990s or maybe the late 80s.

The planned AUKUS submarines have no nuclear weapon capabilities. They're nuclear powered attack submarines that use conventional weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSN-AUKUS

> In January 2023, it was reported that the submarines were likely to incorporate a vertical launch system (VLS) for land-attack missiles. This would be a first for Royal Navy SSNs, which currently launch land-attack missiles via their torpedo tubes. A VLS system was described as likely to increase interoperability options with the US Navy since future US land attack missiles may not have a horizontal launch option.

The Tomahawk and basically every similar cruise missile can easily be outfitted with any warhead. SLBMs aren't the only delivery platform.

Isn't Singapore's interest primarily in small modular reactors for their power grid? https://www.eco-business.com/news/singapore-prime-minister-s... We're talking about civilian technologies here, not nuclear profileration.

the enrichment required for a bomb vs a reactor is a bit (a lot) different. how will all these countries that are not allowed to have nukes hide their enrichment facilities that cannot be used for reactor fuel? hollow out a mountain like NK?

Why would they need to hide them?

> these countries that are not allowed to have nukes

Who says they are not allowed?

Countries with them.

Like the US, which was offering military protection in exchange for allies not building nukes.

The assurances have now been shown to be worthless.

Yes, and it’s actually even worse, it wasn’t just ‘not building them’ with Ukraine, they were stripped of them.

Countries like North Korea and Pakistan managed to build nuclear weapons and credible enough delivery systems a couple of decades ago How difficult do you think it will be for other countries with today's much more modern technology if they really want to build them? Id be very surprised if the likes of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel or even Iran don't already secretly possess nuclear weapons. I'd expext at least several others have ongoing programns - the cautionary lesson from the different fates of Saddam, Gaddafi, Zelensky and Kim has certainly been learned.

One way to read Iran's ballistic missile attack on empty Israeli desert is as a demonstration that Israel's defence is unable to stop anything even approaching 100% of ballistic missiles. With nuclear weapons, the cost of even 1 leaker is unacceptable. You notice Netanyahu's public feud with Iran appears to be winding down.

Israel has had nuclear weapons for decades.

Maybe think about switching to buying French submarines.

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