Is is possible that the country of Ukraine still has nuclear weapons?

Nuclear Power in Ukraine

(Updated January 2014)
•Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear energy – it has 15 reactors generating about half of its electricity.
•Ukraine receives most of its nuclear services and nuclear fuel from Russia.
•In 2004 Ukraine commissioned two large new reactors. The government plans to maintain nuclear share in electricity production to 2030, which will involve substantial new build.

A large share of primary energy supply in Ukraine comes from the country's uranium and substantial coal resources. The remainder is oil and gas, mostly imported from Russia. In 1991, due to breakdown of the Soviet Union, the country's economy collapsed and its electricity consumption declined dramatically from 296 billion kWh in 1990 to 170 in 2000, all the decrease being from coal and gas plants. Today Ukraine is developing shale gas deposits and hoping to export this to western Europe by 2020 through the established pipeline infrastructure crossing its territory from the east.

Total electricity production in 2009 amounted to 173 billion kWh, with 4 billion kWh net exports, and total capacity is over 52 GWe. In 2009, 41% of power came from coal and gas (approx 20% gas), 48% from nuclear (82.9 TWh) and 7% from hydro, according to the Ministry of Fuel and Energy. In 2009, 77.9 billion kWh net came from nuclear, according to IAEA. Nuclear plant comprises 26.6% of capacity, hydro 9.3%.

A major increase in electricity demand to 307 billion kWh per year by 2020 and 420 billion kWh by 2030 is envisaged, and government policy was to continue supplying half of this from nuclear power. This would have required 29.5 GWe of nuclear capacity in 2030, up from 13.9 GWe (13.2 GWe net) now.

Source


Could the Ukrainians be lying????

Any thoughts?

NO 100 % , there was no single reliable report last 20 years that Ukraine have nuclear bomb.You can sleep tonight.

reply to post by Kashai


I rekn there's many soviet nukes floating around eastern Europe..
no reason there couldn't be on in Ukraine.

reply to post by xavi1000


When the Soviet Union fell, in press reports it announced that it could not effectively qualify the conclusion that it could account for all its nuclear weapons.

Kashai
reply to post by xavi1000

 

When the Soviet Union fell, in press reports it announced that it could not effectively qualify the conclusion that it could account for all its nuclear weapons.

Fear mongering journalism.Ukraine doesnt have nuclear warhead.

reply to post by xavi1000

NO 100 % , there was no single reliable report last 20 years that Ukraine have nuclear bomb.You can sleep tonight.

I myself do not know if they do or do not have one. However,I think if you are going to come into this thread and say with 100% certainty that they do NOT, you will need to provide some sort of evidence to back that claim up.

Ukraine has acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ukraine inherited about 5,000 nuclear weapons when it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, making its nuclear arsenal the third-largest in the world.[60] By 1996, Ukraine had voluntarily disposed of all nuclear weapons within its territory, transferring them to Russia.[61]

en.wikipedia.org...
So I guess that we would just have to take their word for it that they "voluntarily" destroyed the whole stash they had. Id does say they once had the third largest stockpile as recently as 1991.

reply to post by xavi1000


Based upon what evidence?

I mean if you ran the Ukraine is it possible that during the Russian/ Ukraine treaty over them having nuclear weapons they held back the equivalent of 3 ICBM's?

That would mean 30/10 megaton bombs due to the MIRV issue.

reply to post by thesmokingman


They transfered all to Russia.Russians surely will know if they left some nuke in Ukraine.They are not lolipops.

reply to post by xavi1000


I will say this again, based upon press reports....

WASHINGTON – The United States has spent as much as $5 billion since 1991 to help secure the former Soviet Union's vast nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal, but U.S. officials say they still can't account for all the weapons.

Source

Again I would ask that you prove your point??????????????????

Kashai

WASHINGTON – The United States has spent as much as $5 billion since 1991 to help secure the former Soviet Union's vast nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal, but U.S. officials say they still can't account for all the weapons.

Again I would ask that you prove your point??????????????????

edit on 6-3-2014 by Kashai because: Added content

Your thread and question is about nuclear warheads.Every warhead or nuclear bomb have unique specifics and components.If the nuke blow of, after investigation Russians and Yankees will know which nuke is it, and Soviet Union and later Russian Federation knowed exactly how many nuclear warheads are in Ukraine.With the treaty- no more nukes in Ukraine.Your article is talking about
weapons-grade nuclear material ,chemical and biological arsenal,danger of corrupted Russian and Ukrainian scientists In the field of biological weapons itn....

reply to post by xavi1000


You have to be kidding me and again I would ask that under the conditions of the conversion between the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, in respect to WMD's the Russians were perfect???

You seem to know very little about Russian History.

What do you know about the Formal Title of the heads of the former Soviet Union?????

Any thoughts?

Kashai
reply to post by xavi1000

 

I will say this again, based upon press reports....

WASHINGTON – The United States has spent as much as $5 billion since 1991 to help secure the former Soviet Union's vast nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal, but U.S. officials say they still can't account for all the weapons.

Source

Again I would ask that you prove your point??????????????????

edit on 6-3-2014 by Kashai because: Added content

True enough but one major difference between the Ukraine and the other former Soviet Satellites is that the US and UK didn't sign treaties with them guaranteeing they would get rid of all nukes in exchange for our military assistance if they were ever invaded( if they did hold up their end I bet they're feeling a little stung by us right now). So for the Ukraine to still be holding a couple of nukes the US and Russia would have to both be in on it and lying about it. I'm not saying that it isn't remotely possible, I just think it highly unlikely and I wouldn't take too much from a report covering all former soviet republics, I would prefer an IAEA report that specifically addressed Ukraine. However just to p[lay devils advocate, in 1992 then President of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, suspended the transfer of tactical nuclear weapons from the territory of Ukraine. He didn't trust Russia(rightfully so in hind sight) to hold up its end of the treaty. One of the major reasons for getting them to give up their stock pile was that their usefulness was coming to a close, making the majority of their stockpile as dangerous as it would have been ineffective. Kravchuk advocated for keeping the most effective and powerful part of the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal—46 ICBM SS-24 which could have been kept for a long time. As the Ukraine was in 1992, in possession of the 3rd largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world ( more than UK, France and China combined) and the majority of those weapons were dangerously close to the end of their ability to be safely used, there were many, many inspections and witnesses to the dismantling of some and transfer to Russia of others. Again, none of that means it isn't possible that they were able to fudge the books somehow and keep a couple, though Russia would have had an accurate count of what was in the Ukraine so unless they were able to falsify the decommissioning of some it just doesn't seem likely to me. In that part of the world though you can never rule anything out entirely.

peter vlar
So for the Ukraine to still be holding a couple of nukes the US and Russia would have to both be in on it and lying about it.

I tried this to explain to him but...

reply to post by peter vlar

Makes you wonder if Russia stockpile is still effective or not aswell.

Or are they calling the worlds bluff?

Imagine Barry in the White House got an intelligence report that stated "all Russian nukes are ineffective and outdated, they might get off the ground but they'd only crash not explode on target.

US and Europe wuld be driving their tanks into Russia tomorrow.

Nukes are a effective detterence. Then again no one can actually guarantee that Israel has nukes either. As they have never tested or used them. So.....crying wolf maybe?

Melbourne_Militia
reply to post by peter vlar

 

Makes you wonder if Russia stockpile is still effective or not aswell.

Or are they calling the worlds bluff?

Russia still has the infrastructure and technical ability to maintain and update their stockpile so unfortunately I'd say that at least the vast majority of their weapons are still viable. In the US we have a system in place for decommissioning and replacing warheads with a great deal of regularity to keep them "fresh" and able to create the most destructin possible if they were ever to be unleashed. I don't know a lot about their program in Russia but I would assume they have a similar operation parameter in place. The part that gets tricky though is a LOT of military hardware is on the verge of uselessness because they often don't have the funds available to maintain and update so its not out of the question that they have an arsenal of nuclear warheads with diminished capacity which means they are sitting on a ticking bomb, literally, and not knowing when or if it will go off. I would hope that the seriousness of it would implore them to make maintenance of their stockpile a priority but it is Russia after all and they seem to be more about force projection than they are about keeping their military in top shape. Time will tell.

Imagine Barry in the White House got an intelligence report that stated "all Russian nukes are ineffective and outdated, they might get off the ground but they'd only crash not explode on target.

US and Europe wuld be driving their tanks into Russia tomorrow.

Without the fear of MAD the foreign policies of many western nations would certainly shift to a more aggressive stance when dealing with Russia and if that knowledge were public right now, what is going on in Crimea would be a very different scenario.

Nukes are a effective detterence. Then again no one can actually guarantee that Israel has nukes either. As they have never tested or used them. So.....crying wolf maybe?

Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, provided explicit details and photographs to the London Sunday Times of a nuclear weapons program in which he had been employed for nine years, "including equipment for extracting radioactive material for arms production and laboratory models of thermonuclear devices." When you factor that evidence in with the act that France gave them nuclear technology in the 50's(for reactors not weapons but we all know its not difficult to enrich the byproducts from a reactor) and their "ambiguity" policy when it comes to neither admitting or denying their possession of nuclear weapons as well as their refusal to sign the Non proliferation treaty, I'm inclined to think they have them. They have been repeating over the years that it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons to the Middle East, leaving ambiguity as to whether it means it will not create, will not disclose, will not make first use of the weapons or possibly some other interpretation of the phrase. Te Mbiguity, to me, is more frightening than knowing for sure that they have them.

reply to post by xavi1000



Actually no one knew India had a Nuclear weapons until the actually field tested one.

I am saying that when the Russians Republic made the deal to preserve Ukraine's Territory in exchange for the Nuclear weapons the Soviet
Union left behind, the Ukrainian's held back a few.

To suggest that it is 100% impossible is unrealistic if anything it really very possible they held back WMD"s

Further they have the technical know how to maintain them

Russia and the United States could conceivably have no idea this is true.

reply to post by Kashai


Do they have them at the current moment? No Ukraine was fully inspected and all of the arsenal there has been accounted for since 1996. Will this current situation lead them into developing a new program? It will probably lead them to seriously reconsider rearming with nuclear weapons, and honestly I wouldn't blame them for a hot minute.

Kashai
reply to post by xavi1000

 

Actually no one knew India had a Nuclear weapons until the actually field tested one.

I am saying that when the Russians Republic made the deal to preserve Ukraine's Territory in exchange for the Nuclear weapons the Soviet
Union left behind, the Ukrainian's held back a few.

To suggest that it is 100% impossible is unrealistic if anything it really very possible they held back WMD"s

Further they have the technical know how to maintain them

Russia and the United States could conceivably have no idea this is true.

Something that seems to be missing from your equation is that prior to the 1991 dissolution of the USSR, all the nuclear weapons in Ukraine WERE Russia's. Russia kept very accurate records of what they had and where they were stored. Do you honestly think that Russia would have handed over billions of dollars to the Ukrainian govt. if they didn't turn over or have proof that they decommissioned all the warheads? There's just no way that could have happened between the American inspectors, the Russian records and inspectors and the IAEA inspectors, all who verified the stock pile had been transferred to Russia or decommissioned in the Ukraine. It's just inconceivable to me that Russia would allow a country that now possessed the 3rd largest nuclear weapons cache in the world( more than France, UK and China combined) to keep those weapons when they could be pointed at Russia, leaving Russia completely defenseless. Ukraine is directly on Russia's border, far closer than Cuba is to the US. The two countries were rather bitter to each other in the 90's because they refused to join the new Russian Federation and chose closer ties with western nations. In my opinion, it is far more likely that they destroyed the warheads but maintained some of the infrastructure and then developed their own nuclear weapons once all eyes were off of them in 99 (though they were technically considered nuclear free in 96, there were still a small number of warheads still inside the Ukraine that were accounted for and prepped for decommissioning. all verified by Russia, US and IAEA inspectors).

reply to post by peter vlar


Actually there are several articles on the internet from that time period that discuss the fact that Russian weapons were not all accounted for, beyond the one I posted in this thread.

reply to post by Kashai


Does Canada still have nukes??? Apparently after 1984 no, but who the # really knows....