The intelligence world is closely watching a remote island near Taiwan where China is preparing to produce weapons-grade plutonium from Russian nuclear fuel.
On the same day in December when Chinese and US diplomats said they’d held constructive talks to reduce military tensions, Russian engineers were delivering a massive load of nuclear fuel to a remote island just 220 kilometres off Taiwan’s northern coast.
China’s burgeoning capacity to expand its atomic weaponry comes as the last remaining treaty limiting the strategic stockpiles of the US and Russia has collapsed amid spiralling confrontation over the war in Ukraine. “Clearly, China is benefiting from Russian support,” said Hanna Notte, a German arms-control expert. The risk for Beijing is the US may expand its own stockpile in response to China’s build-up as well as the Kremlin’s abrogation of arms-control treaties and “the discrepancy will just grow again,” she said.
China rejects US concerns. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said China “strictly fulfilled its nuclear non-proliferation obligations” and voluntarily submitted “part of civil nuclear activities” to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Rosatom declined to comment. The project “will become the first nuclear power plant with a high-capacity fast reactor outside of Russia,” Rosatom’s TVEL Fuel Company said in a December statement confirming delivery of fuel.
Australia will buy up to five Virginia class attack submarines from the US under the AUKUS agreement.“The increasing secrecy and strong diplomatic efforts against providing greater transparency have raised international suspicion,” said Tong Zhao, a visiting research scholar at Princeton University’s Science and Global Security Program. “I don’t think anyone can rule out the potential military use.
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