ZOMG Burma will Kill us all!

[Rumckle]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/revealed-burma8217s-nuclear-bombshell/2009/07/31/1248977200181.html

Burma's isolated military junta is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction facilities with North Korean help, with the aim of acquiring its first nuclear bomb in five years, according to evidence from key defectors revealed in an exclusive Herald report today.

I'm thinking that this will probably lead to nothing, as most of these nuclear arms projects do these days, but the North Korean link makes it slightly more interesting.

[Cain]

On one hand, I can see a cash-strapped military regime selling nuclear weapons to another regime.

On the other, "ZOMG THIS NIGER URANIUM MEMO PROVES IRAQ IS GOING TO NUKE US ALL!!!!!"  2002's bullshit "intelligence" operations, nevar forget.

[Rumckle]

On one hand, I can see a cash-strapped military regime selling nuclear weapons to another regime.

Wouldn't it be just as easy to get old soviet nukes? providing they still work.

[Cain]

No, actually.  The nuclear trade remains very much a government-led activity (A.Q. Khan's hilarious protestations aside).  Most of Russia's nukes are under Russian control, or else have been deactivated under the Nunn-Lugar decomissioning scheme.  And the trade that did exist in nuclear material, small that it was, went westwards - towards central Europe and possibly bound for Yugoslavia. 

However, Pakistan did sell systems and dual use equipement to anyone and everyone, with Libya, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea all benefitting in various ways.  So there is definite past evidence of a government led nuclear trade leading to nuclear weapons, unlike with the Russian material (which probably also had various built in safety mechanisms - the KGB, GRU and Supreme Soviet were not exactly best friends).

[Cain]

This may be of interest

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2009/08/03/Burmas-unanswered-nuclear-question.aspx

[Rumckle]

It is, thanks