A false flag operation using radioactive warheads is reportedly aimed at spent nuclear fuel
Ukrainian forces have begun preparations to target nuclear waste storage sites at a Russian power plant with radioactive warheads and to then blame Moscow, according to intelligence received by Russia.
“Sources on the other side report that the [Ukrainians] are preparing a nuclear false flag – an explosion of a dirty atomic bomb,” military journalist Marat Khairullin said Friday on his Telegram channel. “They plan to strike the storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant.”
The special warheads intended for the attack have already been delivered to the Vostochny Mining and Processing plant in Zhovti Vody, in Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region, according to Khairullin.
As possible targets of the attack, Khairullin indicated either the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar or the Kursk NPP in Kurchatov, noting that the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are “desperate and willing to try anything.”
A security official in the Russian Military Administration of Kharkov Region corroborated Khairullin’s claim to RIA Novosti on Friday. The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody.
Kiev’s intention is to accuse Moscow of a false flag so it could justify using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the security official said. The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible,” he added.
According to the security official, the intelligence came from Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Sergey Lebedev, introduced as leader of the Nikolaev Region underground, who said the planned attack would be carried out with NATO weapons, with the consent of the West.
Lebedev pointed out that a large number of Western journalists have already arrived in the Sumy Region near Kursk, as well as the Ukrainian-controlled part of Zaporozhye, suggesting that this is part of Kiev’s preparations for the nuclear false flag.
I agree that nuclear disarmament is a lovely utopian ideal to strive for, but is simply not realistic until capitalism is completely destroyed. Until then, there is no way to trust that any capitalist country is actually disarming. For example, if everyone disarms except for the US, then we are even more fucked than if everyone had nukes.
Acquiring nukes is simply the best way for any anti-imperialist country to protect themselves against overt outside interference. If capitalist countries warmonger about invading the anti-imperialist bloc, the logical response is to remind them that they will get glassed if they try. Libya is what happens when you don't get nukes.
See this previous discussion on the topic: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4516648
China's current nuclear stockpile of ~500 warheads is 1/10 the size of Russia's or the USA's (both around 5000) and is around the size of Britain + France (~250 each). China's official reason for this is the country's no-first-use policy, but such a policy assumes that NATO is not insane. Ukraine's recent NATO-backed attempts at attacking/stealing nukes is clear evidence against that. In such a scenario, China's arsenal is simply not enough to protect its 1.4 billion population.
A country must have enough nukes to ensure decently proportional retaliation. If the USA can kill 1 million Chinese, China should be able to immediately do the same ad infinitum. Otherwise, the calculus breaks down in one side's favor. Let's assume a nuclear exchange between China and the USA based on Wikipedia's stockpile numbers for each.
I do not consider nuclear winter in this scenario, only direct kills. Nuclear winter only really affects food production. Recent simulations and the experiences of the Kuwaiti oil well fires and various wildfires actually show that nuclear winter would be much less severe than initially predicted in the early 1980s, decreasing temperatures by only a few degrees for ~10 years in localized areas before returning to normal. If this wasn't the case, Canadian wildfires would be cooling the planet significantly, but they don't. Furthermore, nuclear winter depends on setting flammable cities ablaze. Modern cities are made of concrete and steel, not wood, so would not produce the firestorms and soot needed for severe nuclear winter.
Its real, relatively small effects can be mitigated with large enough stockpiles and rapid deployment of nonperishable foodstuffs, greenhouses, sunlight-independent energy like nuclear/geothermal energy, fossil fuels (which would actually make climate change a good thing to warm the planet), sunlight-free food production tech, climate geoengineering, and other technologies (much research has been focused on this topic already). China and the USA both have enough resources to invest in these and protect their own populations if tensions did spike. Ultimately, the only way to hinder their deployment is again, to kill enough of the enemy.
Based on their strategic warhead arsenal to total strategic arsenal megatonnage ratios), each warhead in both of their stockpiles is about 0.6 megatons, for a total megatonnage of 300 for China and 3000 for the USA. The average population density is ~400 per sq mile (psqm) in China and ~90 psqm in the USA.
Using NUKEMAP to estimate deaths per nuke, we can use Hanzhong, Shaanxi; Hegang, Heilongjiang; and Yuxi, Yunnan with population density around 400 psqm to estimate that the average deaths per 0.6 megaton warhead in China is ~230,000. We use Sandpoint, Idaho; Hillsboro, Texas; and Vermillion, South Dakota with population density around 90 psqm to estimate that the average deaths per 0.6 megaton warhead in the USA is ~10,000.
This means that to match the casualties for every one US warhead, China needs around 23 warheads. If the USA uses its entire stockpile, it can kill at least 1.15 billion Chinese, while China can only kill around 5 million USAmericans. What an amazing deal for the USA, a trade of one US death per 230 Chinese deaths! This is not mutually assured destruction, this is USA assured success. We aren't even counting the nukes that could be shot down by air defenses or destroyed during first strike, which would just make the US situation even better.
To just counter the USA and ensure complete mutual destruction, China needs at least 30,000 nukes with 0.6 megatons each. Notice how conveniently close this is to the USSR's maximum stockpile of 45,000 nukes. The math is valid and has been done before.
An obvious objection to my quick maths is that nukes would be used on population centers first. However, if China and the USA want true mutually assured destruction, they must kill practically every single human. At first, the deaths-per-nuke will be very high. But by the end, all population centers will have already been glassed, so the deaths-per-nuke will be very low, resulting in an overall deaths-per-nuke around that experienced by the average population density.
Even if this averaging assumption isn't true, it simply makes China's situation all the more pressing since each US nuke can kill way more Chinese.
There's too many fellow travellers here for them to see the point you're trying to make, some people in the West resist the New Cold War not out of any moral or principled anti-imperialist reasons but principally a selfish self-preservational fear from a potential MAD scenario they have floating in their heads.
We've been through all this before. Back in the 1980s, you had some Western "leftists" too busy celebrating over the supposed European nuclear disarmament through the "Zero Option" scam that Reagan pitched to Gorbachev to see the capitulation to imperialist hegemony that Gorbachev represented. There was a rather disgusting, though largely unserious at first, struggle session over on Hexbear a while back where they debated whether China should "bother" launching its second strike if the US suddenly launches a first strike against it. "Yes, 1.4 billion people will be murdered, 1/5th of the human race exterminated, but since things are already too late, China should prevent the loss of 'more lives' and let bygones be bygones." I'm sure they thought writing a few articles in Monthly Review afterwards condemning this nuclear holocaust would be a balanced recompense for this fantasy genocide scenario. You don't need enemies with "comrades" like these.
All these nonsense stories about Ukrainian "dirty nukes" or NATO escalatory gimmicks, that tries to make it seem like the Western leadership is more like the fictional General Ripper rather than the chicken-hawk it really is, obfuscates the fact that Russian nuclear superiority, particularly its still-active Perimeter program will always ensure that there is always a bottom line the West will avoid stepping on. China has completely bypassed the nuclear unilateralism nonsense that gripped the USSR, having rejected so far all Western attempts to shackle it to "trilateral arms agreements" (where the West combines its stockpile with Russia's against their own) when it still has not reached nuclear parity. The material conditions of a contemporary arms race are different from the first Cold War in that China's industrial capacity can afford it to outcompete the West in a nuclear buildup when this had once been an active US strategy to drain the Soviet budget.
The difference in the treatment of Libya and the DPRK, the first having drawn back from its nuclear program and the latter having heroically ensured its sovereignty through a mere modest nuclear capacity is plain to see for anyone in the Global South.
Thank you for your enlightening historical viewpoint on this topic. There is no reason why socialist and anti-imperialist states should allow the West to have nuclear force supremacy. Doing so fixes nothing and instead portends the collapse of promising socialist projects.
Slight correction: A nuclear second strike is any launch after the first one. So if the the US goes for a first strike and China launches its arsenal while the US nukes are still on their way, that'd too be a second strike.
Strongly agree with most of what you're saying.
The calculus for China is even more complex. They need the ability not just to take x lives for x lives. They need the ability to suppress US and NATO capabilities globally. It's not enough to suppress the US mainland when the US stations nukes and has military forces, bases, reserves, pawns all over western Europe, as well as smaller bases in the middle east in places like Jordan, as well as places in Asia itself like Japan, occupied Korea, etc, etc. Nukes could come from anywhere including a pawn which the US disavows.
China needs a nuclear capability that is enough they can wipe out the US in a tit for tat mainland attack but also have enough that if they start with attacking US assets outside the US, they'll have enough after finishing that to still finish the US and the UK. I'd say 1500 bare minimum. Luckily they are on their way to 1000 though it will take time, time in which they're under greater threat.
They must also consider interceptor tech or the math that not all warheads will reach their destination if this is in response to a first strike by the US who is now waiting fully prepared to mitigate as much as possible (to say nothing of the possibility of the US actually managing to take out a chunk of their warhead stock in the first strike). So you need to allocate at least 10-20% more warheads than you think you need, maybe as high as 30%. Having reserves never hurts. Of course this is alleviated somewhat by putting such warheads on hypersonic missiles/delivery systems but I don't think the Chinese have entirely switched their nuclear arsenal over to those yet as they are still kind of a beta product and may not be considered ready for that duty. But even those there's still the chance the US could launch counter-nukes into the atmosphere in the path of incoming weapons to destroy them and a hypersonic missile if caught close enough would be destroyed just the same as a regular one (though I admit given the plasma around them they probably have an advantage in being able to be closer to such a blast and continue than normal missiles).
And I've mentioned this before they need enough to hit all these places plus New Zealand. Why NZ? Because it's where all the big western bourgeoisie have their bunkers and will likely flee and they need to know they'll die because China will drop 3 nukes one on top of the other on them and bury them alive in their now tombs.
I agree. The US and all its vassals and military bases absolutely have to be subdued in the event of nuclear war. In other words, the USSR's 45,000 nuke stockpile should be the goal for China as well, and is even more prescient than we expected.
Russia and North Korea should be encouraged to assist as well, as it increases redundancy and is in their interests also. In the same vein, Iran still desperately needs nukes to defend itself and contribute as well.
As @MelianPretext@lemmygrad.ml discussed, unlike the USSR, China actually has the industry to rapidly build up and maintain a stockpile of this size. If China can automate electric car production like no other, it should automate nuke production as well. Nuclear warheads are about the size of electric scooters, so should be able to be built on similar production lines. China's rapid buildout of nuclear reactors should help this along, as nuclear reactors are needed to produce the plutonium for nukes.
It seems many of our considerations have been taken into account by Xi already. If western media is to be believed, China's buildup is real. I only hope that production is scaled exponentially to reach the necessary amounts before it is too late.
As a side note, IDK why western journalists on this topic say that China is building up nukes for "ambiguous political reasoning and muddled thinking". Clearly, Chinese thinking isn't muddled if we here are discussing the same things. It's so funny how westerners will warmonger about destroying China, then act surprised when China prepares by strengthening its arms.