Ukraine could develop atomic bomb within months if Trump refuses military aid - The Times

This was reported by the British newspaper The Times, citing an analytical note prepared for the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.

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It says that Ukraine will quickly be able to create a basic plutonium device similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

"Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did as part of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task even 80 years later," the publication quotes a document for the Ministry of Defence.

According to the policy brief, Ukraine does not have the necessary capacity to build and maintain large uranium enrichment facilities. However, the country could use plutonium obtained from spent fuel rods from nine existing nuclear reactors.

The amount of available plutonium is estimated at around 7 tonnes, which would allow for the production of a significant number of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotons each. This corresponds to about one-tenth of the yield of the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

"This would be enough to destroy an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistical facilities. The precise yield of the nuclear weapon would be unpredictable, as it would use different isotopes of plutonium," said the report's author, Oleksiy Yizhak, head of a department at the National Institute for Strategic Studies of Ukraine.

Yizhak, as well as Valentyn Badrak, director of the Centre for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, told The Times that if the US leaves Ukraine without defence support, the UK could fulfil its security commitments under the Budapest Memorandum and help Kyiv develop a nuclear deterrent.

Source: The Times