By Henry Sokolski
For decades, the Defense Department made little or no connection between China’s civilian nuclear power program and its military nuclear weapons buildup. No longer. With its latest annual assessment of China’s military power, the Pentagon identifies Beijing’s civilian fast reactor and plutonium reprocessing efforts as being ideal for producing significant quantities of super weapons-grade plutonium for bombs (and cites NPEC’s 2021 study, “China’s Civilian Nuclear Sector: Swords from Plowshares?” for the third year running).
This year, however, the Pentagon’s annual China report went further, linking China’s civilian power reactors to Beijing’s production of tritium for its nuclear arsenal. An optimal way to produce this thermonuclear weapons fuel is to extract it from operating heavy water reactors. China has two, both Canadian, both operated by China National Nuclear Corporation, (CNNC), China’s chief nuclear weapons contractor.
Canada’s commercial connection with CNNC, though, does not end here. As I note in The National Interest, Canada is working with CNNC on the development of new, advanced heavy water reactors and just approved the sale of nearly 100 thousand metric tons of uranium to CNNC. Canada plans to ship China 12,700 metric tons of this uranium a year for each of the next four years. This is roughly 200 to 300 metric tons more than China’s civilian sector currently consumes annually. This surplus amount alone could fuel as many as 100 bombs each year.