The Pentagon frets about China’s nuclear ambitions as it shovels more weapons into Ukraine

(Originally published April 20 in “What in the World“) Patriot missile batteries, which the Administration of U.S. President Joe Biden promised to Ukraine last December, finally arrived this week to shoot down Russian missiles.

Part of the delay was because Ukrainian troops needed to travel to Oklahoma to be trained on how to use the Patriots. Every Patriot missile they fire will cost $4 million.

The Patriot delivery coincides with a pledge for $325 million in fresh military aid from Washington to Ukraine that will include more rockets for Ukraine’s Himars missile launchers and more artillery rounds to replenish Ukraine’s rapidly depleting stockpile. That raises the amount of weaponry provided since Russia’s invasion to $35.4 billion (full inventory below). U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Europe to discuss giving Ukraine even more as Ukraine gears up for its spring counteroffensive.

China is expanding its nuclear arsenal in hopes of matching the “mutually assured destruction” capability of Russia and the United States. In a story that amplifies news covered in this space last November when The Wall Street Journal reported it, the Pentagon is worried about Beijing’s plans to increase its stockpile of nuclear weapons. The Times focuses on Beijing’s construction of a fast breeder reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium using fuel secured from Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, as well as China’s construction of a nuclear missile silo field in the remote deserts of Xinjiang province.

China now has an estimated 410 nuclear warheads; China’s President Xi Jinping would like to expand that in response to U.S. efforts to contain China’s rising power. The Pentagon worries China would also use its nuclear deterrent, as Putin has in Ukraine, to discourage any military intervention against any forcible takeover of Taiwan.

Last November, the Pentagon warned that China could triple its nuclear arsenal by 2035, giving it roughly 1,500 warheads. The U.S. has more than 5,200 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists, the same source the Times cites for its estimates of China’s arsenal. That makes China’s ambitions seem somewhat less frightening. But the Times doesn’t include that number in its article. Instead, it includes only the total number of U.S. long-range nuclear weapons, which is 1,550 and raises the question of how many of China’s 1,500 warheads might be affixed to long-range missiles.

Just in case the Pentagon’s own line projections of China’s nuclear stockpile doesn’t demonstrate Beijing’s menace to Taiwan, the Times makes clear in the lede that the breeder reactor China is building is only “135 miles from Taiwan.” But a breeder reactor is not a missile silo filled with nuclear weapons pointed at Taipei. On the contrary, building the nuclear power plant on China’s populous coast so close to Taiwan seems particularly foolish if China aims to go to war for the “renegade province.” The breeder reactor could be vulnerable to counterattacks the same way Europe’s largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, is now imperiled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Then, of course, there’s China’s assertion that the breeder reactor isn’t for military purposes at all, but rather for energy. Breeder reactors, those who remember their grade-school science classes may recall, produce more radioactive fuel than they consume. But they also produce radioactive waste, including highly radioactive plutonium, which you can’t just dump in a landfill somewhere. Well, you can. But you shouldn’t. Plutonium also happens to be the preferred trigger for modern nuclear weapons.

The U.S. stopped using breeder reactors under former President Jimmy Carter, the same president who pulled the last U.S. troops out of Taiwan as part of normalization of relations with China. France, Germany, and the U.K. have also phased out their breeder reactors. Japan didn’t shut down its last breeder reactor until 2017. India still operates one. Russia operates two.

If China completes its new breeder reactor, the Pentagon wants Congress to believe, it’s for weapons. “There’s no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons,” John F. Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy told Congress in March.

The U.S. doesn’t need a breeder reactor for its nuclear weapons. It has 40 tons of plutonium just sitting around, as well as 20,000 plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons it can use to build more if needed. Indeed, the Times points out that the Biden Administration is building plants to refurbish the old triggers rather than just risk recycling them. It’s also developing a new nuclear warhead, the W93, to sit atop submarine-based nuclear missiles as part of a sweeping renovation of America’s existing nuclear arsenal.