[krisoft]

uhm, what do you mean by that?

When we talk about the risk of a nuclear escalation we talk about the risk of this or that country launching nuclear armed missiles at an other country.

How would the posession of nuclear reactors factor into that?

[drran]

Ukraine is the post-nuclear country. Ukraine has 4 working weapons grade nuclear stations.

If Russian will capture nuclear reactor, they can convert it to nuclear landmine, because reactor uses enriched Uranium, to create equivalent of 10k Chornobyl's.

Ukraine has know-how and nuclear materials (Plutonium) to create nuclear weapons at will. The only thing that stopped us is USA, Britain, France, and Germany, which used Budapest memorandum as leverage against Ukraine to prevent that.

[deadbeeves]

I'll be the first to admit I don't know a lot about nuclear power, but I'm pretty sure you're talking nonsense. To say that a nuclear power reactor uses weapons-grade uranium is akin to saying that a car works by lighting its gas tank on fire. For nuclear power you want a carefully controlled reaction, while for an explosion you want to release as much energy as possible as quickly as possible.

Now, maybe if Russia captures a reactor they could send a scientist down to repurpose its parts to make an improvised nuke, but if that's the goal, what would be the point? It's not like Russia doesn't have nukes already.

Just having plutonium and knowledge is not enough to build a nuclear weapon. No country has ever developed nukes while its main territory was being invaded. For one, even if you can build a device, you'd need to test it at least once. What would you do if you had nukes and you detected that the non-nuclear-capable country you're invading has just run a nuclear test?

[drran]

You are talking nonsense. I will write it again just for you: Ukraine has 4 nuclear stations with 15 weapon grade nuclear reactors which are producing Plutonium and use enriched Uranium.

The point is to use the nuclear reactor like a nuclear landmine, to blow up at retreat, to do maximum amount of damage. It's called «scorched earth tactics».

Ukraine, as part of USSR, developed nukes decades ago. Ukraine is the fist post-nuclear country in the world.

[deadbeeves]

Oh, so you mean "weapons-grade" in the sense that it can produce plutonium. Maybe, but so what? Also, all nuclear reactors use enriched uranium.

Nuclear reactors can't produce nuclear explosions, for the reasons I said previously. Even the Chernobyl incident wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was a steam explosion. It's no more possible to turn a nuclear reactor into a nuclear bomb, than to turn a gas generator into a molotov cocktail. I don't know where you heard this absurd notion of a "nuclear landmine", but anyone who talks about exploding nuclear reactors is just spreading sensationalism.

Yes, Ukraine had nuclear weapons. Had. It has since dismantled all of them and doesn't have the infrastructure to make new ones. As such, it would have to develop them again. They have to build the machines to build the weapons and then they have to test the weapons to make sure the machines are building them correctly. Then they need some delivery system, which is a problem entirely separate from merely making a device that can produce a nuclear explosion. Good luck doing all that while infrastructure is disrupted by an invasion.