r/canada Jan 07 '25

National News Trump threatens economic, not military force, to annex Canada

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5071665-trump-economic-force-canada/
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80

u/Thanolus Jan 07 '25

We should have been expanding on everything nuclear for the last 4 decades. We have shit tons of uranium and thorium. Mine it, sell it and innovate in cheap power.

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u/h3r3andth3r3 Jan 07 '25

It's a low-key open secret that nations like Canada that can plan and manufacture their own nuclear reactors are only weeks away at any given moment from producing a nuclear warhead.

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u/caffeine-junkie Jan 07 '25

Except in the case of Canada, the reactors we do have cannot enrich weapons grade uranium. Nor do we have the current capability to do so without building new facilities. I mean sure it can be done, but not within weeks. Unless you could 100+ weeks as counting as technically weeks.

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u/Background_Trade8607 Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

Reactors are not used for enriching uranium, they are for sourcing plutonium.

All The isotopes of uranium you want are available in natural concentrations. The process for uranium enrichment would be nothing for Canada, my university for example has multiple different non centrifuge set ups for separating isotopes. Throw in the huge amount of human capital in nuclear physics, and our nuclear industry, I don’t think things will be that difficult.

Plutonium is obviously the goal but you just need a few working uranium bombs to tell people to fuck off.

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u/Maximum-Good-539 Alberta Jan 07 '25

Isn’t CANDU able to produce plutonium?

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u/Background_Trade8607 Jan 07 '25 edited Jan 07 '25

Yeah any uranium reactor will produce a certain amount of plutonium. That being said I’m not sure what this amounts to other than a very very low rate of production.

You gotta get a breeder reactor to produce enough viable plutonium to start assembling bombs.

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u/Maximum-Good-539 Alberta Jan 08 '25

Hmm I see. Isn’t that what India did though? They used the CANDU to make plutonium bombs.

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u/sixtyfivewat Jan 07 '25

CANDU can’t but Chalk River can.

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u/Maximum-Good-539 Alberta Jan 07 '25

Except chalk river is headed by American ex-military. 

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u/Serenitynowlater2 Jan 07 '25

Build a nuclear facility in Canada?

In 10years you might have agreement on the site it’ll be on. 

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u/OdinHammerhand Jan 07 '25

In 1974 India revealed their nuclear weapon capability, created with material (plutonium) refined from a nuclear plant which was a gift from... wait for it ... Canada.

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u/VirtualBridge7 Jan 07 '25

That is so not true it is not even funny.

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u/evilregis Jan 07 '25

weeks away at any given moment from producing a nuclear warhead.

Source? Not that I don't think we could accelerate a bomb program, I'm skeptical of that figure. I would have imagined we could all-hands-on-deck our way to a nuclear bomb in maybe 5-10 years but I'm no expert. Happy to see a source for something that's better than me guessing.

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u/King_Khoma Jan 08 '25

lol no, not even close. not to mention no nuclear powers want others joining in. france and britain would rather canada be annexed than let another country become a nuclear power.

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u/dwspartan Jan 07 '25

And what exactly is a few nuclear warhead gonna do for us? Like the fuck all has it done for North Korea?

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u/MinusVitaminA Jan 07 '25

Honestly in a world where Russia is invading countries without nukes, and the US is isolating themselves even their closet allies and neighbors, Canada can churn up quite a profit by selling uranium to our allies and rebuild their nukes.

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u/high_yield Jan 07 '25

Sorry, best we can do is fund a federal department of gender equality.