The US has an incredibly strange relationship with shipbuilding.
Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China.
This naval news post says there are $5 billion in modernization costs for the shipyard needed for this project so it seems like we're still years away from a started (much less completed) project.
>"Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China."
One issue is that Naval ships are very different from commercial vessels, and at least in the USA, almost no shipyards have shared facilities and staff between the two products since WWII. Interestingly, most other countries do not build most of their naval tonnage (destroyers and frigates) to the same standards that the USA does (European countries are notable for using commercial hulls standards for these ships).
On a related note, the Odd Lots podcast had a (relatively) recent Jones Act debate episode, which is worth a listen if you're interested in the subject.
It is worth noting that the US and Korea have already been very engaged in trying to work together on ship building, mostly for the US, which we seem to have gotten quite slow and costly at.
Seems like a typical trump Big Announcement. No details, doesn't really fit with the actual state of the world, and no clear path to even getting these things built. I'll be surprised if >0 get built in Philadelphia in the next decade.
South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities. This saves them money, not having to modify their shipyards.
> South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities
Technically, yes. Politically, no.
“To produce fuel for the submarines’ naval propulsion, the ability to enrich uranium was required. However, this plan probably served two goals, since a country with enrichment capability can also enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels without significant difficulty. The fact that [former President Roh Moo-hyun] launched this plan less than five months after North Korea’s [2003] withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) supports the possibility that his ulterior motive was to acquire uranium enrichment capability in part to enable the future development of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, Roh had to abandon this plan in 2004 amid rising suspicion of South Korea’s nuclear ambitions after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered that South Korean scientists had previously conducted an unauthorized enrichment experiment” [1].
What am I missing about how hard it is to enrich uranium? We did it in the 40s, having a significantly less solid understanding of all of the physics involved. Material science on containers, motors, energy generation, etc have all been significantly improved in the intervening decades.
Wikipedia says U235 is ~0.7% of earth deposits, and as little as 7kg may be required for a minimal nuclear device. Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process. Just grinding it up and using some kind of mass spectrometer could trivially separate a 3Dalton mass difference.
It takes a lot of centrifuges to refine the amount and, more importantly, the purity of fissile material. By the time you need them, it would take a long time to spin up that infrastructure and iron out the kinks.
It’s not a casual undertaking and other nations will know you’re doing it. The major global powers are not interested in more nuclear weapons, not only to maintain their hegemony but also to limit the number of parties that could cause massive issues. Not to mention the likelihood that a national or political shift could mean nukes in the hands of those less…restrained.
Plus it raises the surface area of others gaining access to the material or capabilities. Proliferation is bad for the world, generally.
> What am I missing about how hard it is to enrich uranium?
The challenges are primarily geopolitical. There are uranium enrichment operations in a number of countries around the world. Weapons grade enrichment is a lot harder, but nothing that a sufficiently funded and motivated nation state couldn’t achieve if they wanted to and, most importantly, didn’t have any other countries discover it.
> Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process.
You have to get enough uranium ore, process that down, then enrich it on a large scale. Uranium ore deposits aren’t very uranium dense except for a few known mines, so pulling rocks out of the ground in another country may produce extremely low yields.
Enrichment is a very slow process requiring a lot of stages because U235 and U238 are barely different, so they don’t separate much in each stage. Everything has to work together and work well. Like you said it’s not insurmountable, but by the time a country has spent years mining low-yield ore and building complicated many stage centrifuges they’re likely to make a mistake that leads to an intelligence agency catching on.
Brilliant move. Giving South Korea the U.S. approval required to provide for its own defense, while using that to incentivize investment into American shipbuilding.
It's more that South Korea and Japan are the last developed countries, where it's still economically viable to build cargo ships. Several European countries have robust shipbuilding industry, but they focus on higher-value ships such as cruise ships.
By becoming wealthy later than European countries.
Shipyards are long-term investments. It makes sense to build them when you have the expertise and labor costs are in your favor. But once you have built them, they are a sunk cost. You can remain competitive against countries with cheaper labor for decades.
Globalization and the growth of international trade also helped. China built new shipyards, but the demand for new ships also grew, keeping Korean and Japanese shipyards in business. Meanwhile, the wage gap is gradually getting narrower.
Not an expert but I think it has a lot to do with what gets prioritized by the government and other groups. Tax breaks and other support aren't infinite and where they (any given government) chooses to use them makes a big impact.
An interesting example of this is the US modernizations of its military industrial capacity by supply pre- and during WWI. There was intense debate in the international community as to whether non-warring countries could supply nations at war without being considered combatants.
If they aren’t, you can’t neutralize the enemies supplies. If they are, those third countries are effectively part of the conflict.
The US had to take the latter stance because it didn’t have a strong industry to product its own weapons. If it supported nations from buying from non-warring parties, it would be shit out of luck if it had its own wars. So it received a lot of investment from European powers, generating jobs, economic growth, and the funding to expand its domestic production without having to take on debt or wait for a war to break out.
Come its entry into WWI and then WWII, the US had a strong home base of industrial capacity for arms manufacturing.
I imagine countries would only do this begrudgingly out of necessity. The U.S. has positioned itself as unworthy of trust and respect and is basically taking the mafia protection approach to getting other nations to work with it.
I would be very worried about any form of built in kill switch / degrade effectiveness based on recent F-16 fiasco that sobered entire Europe into massive military spending.
Trust lost is trust that either never comes back or it takes tremendous, long term continuous effort. Not holding my breath.
the good news here is that embedding a kill switch into a nuclear sub won't work very well since they don't communicate with the outside world for months at a time
I'm not a native English speaker, but I think "nuclear submarine" implies "submarine powered by nuclear", otherwise they'd use "nuclear-armed" or similar. Of course, the title is probably ambiguous on purpose, so people click on it to try to figure it out.
> Subsequently, the construction of Nuclear submarines marks a departure from past efforts, as previous South Korean submarine construction has focused primarily on conventionally powered submarines
They mean nuclear-powered submarines (some of those are nuclear armed, but that's mostly unrelated).
It's a very big deal because nuclear-powered submarines are very powerful weapons. Subs are about stealth, and other subs must surface regularly (daily?), greatly limiting their ability to hide. Nuclear-powered subs can stay submerged for many months and can be almost impossible to detect. They are, in a sense, unstoppable weapons.
And it's a very big deal because, as of five years ago, the US only shared this very difficult technology with one country (afaik), the UK. It is among the US's most valuable military secrets. The Biden administration shared it with Australia, apparently to cement the bond with Australia as a counter to China (Australia will require many years to develop the shipyards and capability to build their own nuclear-powered subs.)
Would environmental damage be a big deal if the reactor exploded? It seems odd that people care very much about nuclear power plants, but relatively little about nuclear submarines, which are just smaller power plants.
If the environmental effects don’t matter, then I’m surprised it’s ever been a big deal in the first place. Also slightly surprising that we don’t have nuclear sub-sized power plants powering neighborhoods or cities.
I guess one big difference is that any nuclear sub accident would be located far from populated areas. But has there been any studies of how bad the fallout from one of these smaller reactors could be? If it’s 1/100th the size of Chernobyl, it seems like the maximum damage could be 1/100th of Chernobyl, which may or may not be a sufficient buffer.
Someone downthread joked about using nuclear powered submarines to transmit electricity back to the mainland, but it seems plausible to build a nuclear sub sized reactor offshore (just the reactor, no sub) while enjoying the safety benefits that this class of nuclear reactor apparently has.
Of course there will be fallout, but much less severe than a meltdown on land. Water is extremely effective in containing radiation, and the ocean is so huge it will be dilutet to neligible amount very quickly.
> the ocean is so huge it will be dilutet to neligible amount very quickly.
Are you basing this on actually knowing this, because it sounds doubtful to me. The ocean would probably dilute a bit, maybe even a bunch, but it'll also lead to contamination of everything around there, the bottom, the animals, and so on, the radiation doesn't suddenly "disappear" in "thin" water.
Nuclear powered. i.e. No need to resurface for air (as all oxygen can be recycled or separated from water) and no need to refuel for the entire lifespan of the submarine.
How long can they actually stay below the surface in practice though? I'm guessing water is filtered on the vessel, but food must be re-supplied constantly I'm again guessing? Maybe they do it like airplanes refuel in the air, rendevouz with another submarine and somehow transfer the resources for food making between then? Probably read too much Tom Clancy...
both. nuclear powered submarines are the primary wing of nuclear deterrent because launching a missile from a platform that stays underwater for months at a time and is basically impossible to track is basically impossible to prevent
I have not read that the US is giving SK the technology to build nuclear-armed subs - that is, ballistic missile submarines - but only nuclear-powered subs.
The US has those and also nuclear-powered but conventionally armed subs. The ballistic missile subs hide and, if called upon, launch their nuclear-armed missiles (which never has happened, of course). The conventionally armed subs attack ships and other subs.
Maybe we can buy some of these South Korean nuclear submarines, park them off the coast of the US, and use them for energy. If we do it quick, we might be able to get nuclear power going before the environmentalists notice.
Your post raises an interesting question. Will the US let South Korea use its naval reactors? The US naval reactors use highly enriched uranium, which can be easily converted into bombs. France used to use highly enriched uranium, but their latest nuclear subs use low enriched uranium (LEU). Now, part of what made the US naval reactors so reliable is that they kept the same design over so many decades. If they change to LEU, that probably requires quite a major design change. If they do that, they might as well allow the civilian industry to use that design for non-military purposes.
Your post is flippant, or you forgot the /s (Poe's law strikes again), but in case anyone took this seriously: using the subs to provide energy would be grossly uneconomical even by current nuclear power standards. Naval reactors are comparatively puny and optimized for compactness and long periods between refueling, which means using highly enriched fuels: very expensive and a proliferation concern.
Why would we buy south korean subs for this, especially ones south korea is building with us navy help? we have nuclear subs and the us is actually pretty good at building more of them. It's the cheapest kind of reactor we have and doesn't get protested by environmentalists.
The transmission from sub / ship to shore is not great I think, though. They're used for power during disaster recovery?
Imagine if south korea needed china's permission to build nuclear submarines. We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty.
Imagine if the title was : "China Gives South Korea Green Light to Build Nuclear Submarines".
What would the comments here be like. No doubt a lot of nonsense about "the ccp" this and "the ccp" that.
> I will say that the "in/on US territory" piece is a very key detail.
That's the point. South korea is not allowed to build nuclear submarines in their own territory. They lack the sovereignty to do it. The US won't give them permission to build one on their own.
But you probably knew this and your comment is meant to distract.
I believe that's accurate. SK depends on the US for its security, and also generally is a memeber of the US-led order and coordinates with it. The spread of high-value miltiary technologies is limited to maintain secrecy and the US-led order's technological advantage.
Countries like SK seem to let the US do the heavy lifting, including fighting major wars with them and for them, and in return they give the US considerable influence over international relations and military affairs.
That's just not true? South Korean ministers have been discussing building nuclear submarines domestically long before this current agreement.
And the US has an agreement with South Korea that limits domestic production of fissile material for military uses but it's a mutual agreement that we have with a bunch of countries (including China) and is essentially always renegotiable as situations change. Essentially it's just an explicit agreement of how much material a given country intends on producing for the purposes of requiring public political discussions domestically before ramping up production.
That is all very much a flexible situation and the US doesn't have any actual power to legitimately stop South Korea from manufacturing domestic nuclear reactors for military purposes.
> Are you being intentionally dense? Why wouldn't they be building it in their own territory if nobody was stopping them?
They actually could. This has been an ongoing discussion in South Korean politics for years. Nuclear Submarine shipbuilding is a large undertaking and it requires a lot of security to prevent sabotage in ways that other types of shipbuilding just don't have to put up with. So it is in many ways cheaper and more secure to just rely on the US for nuclear shipbuilding as we already have the infrastructure and we are on the opposite side of the world from any adversaries who would have interest in sabotage.
> Besides, I already replied to your other comment that South korea is not allowed to enrich uranium by the US.
This is not true. There are mutual agreements that set the limits on enriched uranium for military purposes but they are flexible agreements that can be renegotiated or broken off as needed. The US has them with everyone including our allies and our adversaries. It's essentially just a tool to say "hey you need to discuss this publicly within your country first before you can change it". Nothing more or less.
No, I am not being dense. From your continued lack of citations I am starting to assume there is no law stopping the RoK from enriching uranium (though I have been trying to find one). Uranium enrichment facilities are expensive. If you have a partner nation who is willing to sell you the enriched uranium that just makes sense. Again, it being the property of another nation, they have the right to judge who should have access it it and what they might do with it. If RoK wanted to spend a percentage of their GDP on enrichment facilities they could. They don't have an urgent reason to. Further they don't have any deposits of any uranium to begin with so they would still need to partner with another nation anyways, so I ask you - Why would RoK want their own enrichment facilities?
> If RoK wanted to spend a percentage of their GDP on enrichment facilities they could
And they have in the past. Guess who shut that down?
> They don't have an urgent reason to.
South korea is surrounded by 3 nuclear powers ( north korea, china, russia ) and militarily occupied by another nuclear power and yet, they have no urgent reason to? Good one.
> Why would RoK want their own enrichment facilities?
This is just absurd. Your questions answer themselves. And it's obvious you already know the answers but just are trying to distract.
You keep googling and I'll look for the citations. Okay buddy?
The US invaded South Korea, had and still has massive influence on their government, has military bases there. It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal. Makes US look better in the media, etc.
When was that? After the Pacific War with Japan, the US had bases in SK (from driving Japan out of SK?). NK and eventually China invaded SK and the US defended them, and since then SK has given the US military bases in order to deter NK and China.
> It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal
Korea is an American suzerainty. Not vassal. Similar to North Korea:China. One of the strategic considerations in countering China in Taiwan is whether Japan and Korea would refused their territory from getting involved. That's a veto a vassal doesn't get.
Iran under the Shah was a U.S. vassal. Same for Ghani's Afghanistan. (Belarus: Russia.)
> Korea is an American suzerainty. Not vassal. Similar to North Korea:China.
That's why north korea has nukes? South Korea:US is not analogous to North Korea:China. Neither is Pakistan:China analogous to South Korea:US. If you analogy held, south korea would be a nuclear power.
Stop commenting on things you know nothing about. Honestly, do you think you are an expert in every geopolitical topic?
> We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty
The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1]. America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
That's why reading comments about geopolitics on the Internet is largely useless. Big news! A country's population supports its own country on international stage! If you go on Chinese social media, it'll be mostly about how awful the Americans are, and vice versa if you are on Reddit for example. So what is even the point of reading them, anywhere..
I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub. Of course you need permission from a seller to buy products and use their facilities. I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
> I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub.
The US won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own. Want to try again?
> I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
> 190 nations have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Who cares?
> This includes China, so the very US vs China premise here is misplaced.
Sure. But it wasn't china that stopped korea's and japan's secret nuclear programs. It was the US.
> [The US, UK, France, Russia, China and 185 other countries] won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own
Just like they prevented north korea...
Your response debunks your response. It's quite remarkable actually.
The only country that can prevent another country is the one militarily occupying it. China, France, Russia, UK and the other 185 countries don't militarily occupy south korea. The only reason north korea, israel, india, pakistan, etc were able to go nuclear is because they are not vassal states military occupied by a foreign power.
If india doesn't care, why should south korea? India only has 2 nuclear powers surrounding it. South korea has 4. Why should korea care more than india? I'd love to hear your thoughts as an indian on this matter. You are my goto indian guru on all matters geopolitics, politics, economics, tech, sports ( cricket, not baseball for obvious reasons ), etc. I await enlightenment.
The US has an incredibly strange relationship with shipbuilding.
Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China.
This naval news post says there are $5 billion in modernization costs for the shipyard needed for this project so it seems like we're still years away from a started (much less completed) project.
[1] Nov 2024 https://thezvi.substack.com/p/repeal-the-jones-act-of-1920
[2] June 2018 https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-...
>"Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China."
One issue is that Naval ships are very different from commercial vessels, and at least in the USA, almost no shipyards have shared facilities and staff between the two products since WWII. Interestingly, most other countries do not build most of their naval tonnage (destroyers and frigates) to the same standards that the USA does (European countries are notable for using commercial hulls standards for these ships).
On a related note, the Odd Lots podcast had a (relatively) recent Jones Act debate episode, which is worth a listen if you're interested in the subject.
> at least in the USA, almost no shipyards have shared facilities and staff between the two products
Do other countries do it differently?
I don’t know of other countries which produce both types of vessel in the same shipyard, though I expect that some must.
5mil = "we're gonna buy five mobile truck cranes, they'll be here in February"
A million bucks doesn't go as far as it used to.
Did I misread?
> Hanwha has reportedly invested an additional $5 billion dollars into modernization and preparation
It is worth noting that the US and Korea have already been very engaged in trying to work together on ship building, mostly for the US, which we seem to have gotten quite slow and costly at.
From the same source as this article, American HHI working with Korean HD HHI. No real action yet but both companies want to be working together. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/10/hii-hosts-hd-hh...
Seems like a typical trump Big Announcement. No details, doesn't really fit with the actual state of the world, and no clear path to even getting these things built. I'll be surprised if >0 get built in Philadelphia in the next decade.
South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities. This saves them money, not having to modify their shipyards.
> South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities
Technically, yes. Politically, no.
“To produce fuel for the submarines’ naval propulsion, the ability to enrich uranium was required. However, this plan probably served two goals, since a country with enrichment capability can also enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels without significant difficulty. The fact that [former President Roh Moo-hyun] launched this plan less than five months after North Korea’s [2003] withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) supports the possibility that his ulterior motive was to acquire uranium enrichment capability in part to enable the future development of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, Roh had to abandon this plan in 2004 amid rising suspicion of South Korea’s nuclear ambitions after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered that South Korean scientists had previously conducted an unauthorized enrichment experiment” [1].
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/will-south-koreas-nuclear-ambi...
What am I missing about how hard it is to enrich uranium? We did it in the 40s, having a significantly less solid understanding of all of the physics involved. Material science on containers, motors, energy generation, etc have all been significantly improved in the intervening decades.
Wikipedia says U235 is ~0.7% of earth deposits, and as little as 7kg may be required for a minimal nuclear device. Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process. Just grinding it up and using some kind of mass spectrometer could trivially separate a 3Dalton mass difference.
It takes a lot of centrifuges to refine the amount and, more importantly, the purity of fissile material. By the time you need them, it would take a long time to spin up that infrastructure and iron out the kinks.
It’s not a casual undertaking and other nations will know you’re doing it. The major global powers are not interested in more nuclear weapons, not only to maintain their hegemony but also to limit the number of parties that could cause massive issues. Not to mention the likelihood that a national or political shift could mean nukes in the hands of those less…restrained.
Plus it raises the surface area of others gaining access to the material or capabilities. Proliferation is bad for the world, generally.
How hard is it to walk on the Moon? People did it in the 1960s.
Some technology doesn't get much easier or cheaper with time. Maybe the HN crowd is biased by the hyper-speed advances of computer technology.
> What am I missing about how hard it is to enrich uranium?
The challenges are primarily geopolitical. There are uranium enrichment operations in a number of countries around the world. Weapons grade enrichment is a lot harder, but nothing that a sufficiently funded and motivated nation state couldn’t achieve if they wanted to and, most importantly, didn’t have any other countries discover it.
> Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process.
You have to get enough uranium ore, process that down, then enrich it on a large scale. Uranium ore deposits aren’t very uranium dense except for a few known mines, so pulling rocks out of the ground in another country may produce extremely low yields.
Enrichment is a very slow process requiring a lot of stages because U235 and U238 are barely different, so they don’t separate much in each stage. Everything has to work together and work well. Like you said it’s not insurmountable, but by the time a country has spent years mining low-yield ore and building complicated many stage centrifuges they’re likely to make a mistake that leads to an intelligence agency catching on.
> Just grinding it up and using some kind of mass spectrometer could trivially separate a 3Dalton mass difference.
Yes.
But people would notice, and get upset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron#Iraq
I mean Iran is certainly managing it, so I think it's mostly a political will / will this get you attention and coup'd thing?
It's really great for the US to have customers. We can expand our shipyards again.
We should go and find more customers.
Brilliant move. Giving South Korea the U.S. approval required to provide for its own defense, while using that to incentivize investment into American shipbuilding.
I wouldn’t call it a genius move.
Just long overdue: South Korea is one of the last, staunch US allies that can build large ships at scale.
But will bringing manufacturing to Philadelphia be a mistake? Will they run into the generations-steeped shipyard workers and steelworkers?
Will American steelworkers try put one over to make themselves an expense, or a legit partnership to help each other?
I can see this going either way; and I hope this partnership transcends the usual, petty partisanship.
It's more that South Korea and Japan are the last developed countries, where it's still economically viable to build cargo ships. Several European countries have robust shipbuilding industry, but they focus on higher-value ships such as cruise ships.
How do they achieve it? The cost of living and social services can’t be that much different from at least mid-tier EU members.
By becoming wealthy later than European countries.
Shipyards are long-term investments. It makes sense to build them when you have the expertise and labor costs are in your favor. But once you have built them, they are a sunk cost. You can remain competitive against countries with cheaper labor for decades.
Globalization and the growth of international trade also helped. China built new shipyards, but the demand for new ships also grew, keeping Korean and Japanese shipyards in business. Meanwhile, the wage gap is gradually getting narrower.
The Korean War played a major part, according to "Why Only Three Countries Bother Building Ships Anymore". https://youtu.be/0Gk61ginOqo
Not an expert but I think it has a lot to do with what gets prioritized by the government and other groups. Tax breaks and other support aren't infinite and where they (any given government) chooses to use them makes a big impact.
All the potential problems listed by the parent are due to the workers. Who do you think promotes those narratives and why?
That's a genius move!
We should get every country to do this.
Build your nuclear subs here, in the US shipyards. We'll help you!
We can massively expand our capacity, which will be important for self defense in the coming decades.
An interesting example of this is the US modernizations of its military industrial capacity by supply pre- and during WWI. There was intense debate in the international community as to whether non-warring countries could supply nations at war without being considered combatants.
If they aren’t, you can’t neutralize the enemies supplies. If they are, those third countries are effectively part of the conflict.
The US had to take the latter stance because it didn’t have a strong industry to product its own weapons. If it supported nations from buying from non-warring parties, it would be shit out of luck if it had its own wars. So it received a lot of investment from European powers, generating jobs, economic growth, and the funding to expand its domestic production without having to take on debt or wait for a war to break out.
Come its entry into WWI and then WWII, the US had a strong home base of industrial capacity for arms manufacturing.
I imagine countries would only do this begrudgingly out of necessity. The U.S. has positioned itself as unworthy of trust and respect and is basically taking the mafia protection approach to getting other nations to work with it.
I would be very worried about any form of built in kill switch / degrade effectiveness based on recent F-16 fiasco that sobered entire Europe into massive military spending.
Trust lost is trust that either never comes back or it takes tremendous, long term continuous effort. Not holding my breath.
the good news here is that embedding a kill switch into a nuclear sub won't work very well since they don't communicate with the outside world for months at a time
Well, yes but no. Hence the doomsday planes specifically made to communicate with deep sea subs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-6_Mercury
Tl;dr attenuation of signals in water is frequency dependent, just like in air or walls, etc.
So the plane has a 5 mile long antenna
"Military functionality license expired. Surfacing required to renew license. Surface Now? [Yes] / [Okay]."
“Dive dive dive”
“We can’t. The updates are still updating”
Recent F-16 fiasco? I didn't see this. What happened?
I believe op is referencing the halting of EW support and software updates to Ukrainian f-16's.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/amp/2025/03/09/russian-media-c...
Part of AUKUS is this.
But doesnt it also give russia incentive for walking distance sabotage
Is it nuclear in the sense that it has nuclear bombs or it is just nuclear powered?
I'm not a native English speaker, but I think "nuclear submarine" implies "submarine powered by nuclear", otherwise they'd use "nuclear-armed" or similar. Of course, the title is probably ambiguous on purpose, so people click on it to try to figure it out.
> Subsequently, the construction of Nuclear submarines marks a departure from past efforts, as previous South Korean submarine construction has focused primarily on conventionally powered submarines
I'm asking because if it's just nuclear powered and doesn't have nuclear bombs, I don't think it's that big of a deal.
They mean nuclear-powered submarines (some of those are nuclear armed, but that's mostly unrelated).
It's a very big deal because nuclear-powered submarines are very powerful weapons. Subs are about stealth, and other subs must surface regularly (daily?), greatly limiting their ability to hide. Nuclear-powered subs can stay submerged for many months and can be almost impossible to detect. They are, in a sense, unstoppable weapons.
And it's a very big deal because, as of five years ago, the US only shared this very difficult technology with one country (afaik), the UK. It is among the US's most valuable military secrets. The Biden administration shared it with Australia, apparently to cement the bond with Australia as a counter to China (Australia will require many years to develop the shipyards and capability to build their own nuclear-powered subs.)
Would environmental damage be a big deal if the reactor exploded? It seems odd that people care very much about nuclear power plants, but relatively little about nuclear submarines, which are just smaller power plants.
The USS Thresher was lost at sea when it sunk below its test depth and imploded. I wonder if there was any damage whatsoever from the fallout. https://youtu.be/g-uJ1do3yV8?si=CLFS80oo564PKouo
Also the USS Scorpion if I remember correctly.
If the environmental effects don’t matter, then I’m surprised it’s ever been a big deal in the first place. Also slightly surprising that we don’t have nuclear sub-sized power plants powering neighborhoods or cities.
I guess one big difference is that any nuclear sub accident would be located far from populated areas. But has there been any studies of how bad the fallout from one of these smaller reactors could be? If it’s 1/100th the size of Chernobyl, it seems like the maximum damage could be 1/100th of Chernobyl, which may or may not be a sufficient buffer.
Someone downthread joked about using nuclear powered submarines to transmit electricity back to the mainland, but it seems plausible to build a nuclear sub sized reactor offshore (just the reactor, no sub) while enjoying the safety benefits that this class of nuclear reactor apparently has.
Of course there will be fallout, but much less severe than a meltdown on land. Water is extremely effective in containing radiation, and the ocean is so huge it will be dilutet to neligible amount very quickly.
> the ocean is so huge it will be dilutet to neligible amount very quickly.
Are you basing this on actually knowing this, because it sounds doubtful to me. The ocean would probably dilute a bit, maybe even a bunch, but it'll also lead to contamination of everything around there, the bottom, the animals, and so on, the radiation doesn't suddenly "disappear" in "thin" water.
Nuclear powered. i.e. No need to resurface for air (as all oxygen can be recycled or separated from water) and no need to refuel for the entire lifespan of the submarine.
How long can they actually stay below the surface in practice though? I'm guessing water is filtered on the vessel, but food must be re-supplied constantly I'm again guessing? Maybe they do it like airplanes refuel in the air, rendevouz with another submarine and somehow transfer the resources for food making between then? Probably read too much Tom Clancy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warspite_(S103)
Seems like the record is 111 days submerged.
Nuclear Subs are typically pretty big so they can probably bring enough food to last for the entire time without resupply.
3 months. There's an episode by smarter everyday about it
both. nuclear powered submarines are the primary wing of nuclear deterrent because launching a missile from a platform that stays underwater for months at a time and is basically impossible to track is basically impossible to prevent
I have not read that the US is giving SK the technology to build nuclear-armed subs - that is, ballistic missile submarines - but only nuclear-powered subs.
The US has those and also nuclear-powered but conventionally armed subs. The ballistic missile subs hide and, if called upon, launch their nuclear-armed missiles (which never has happened, of course). The conventionally armed subs attack ships and other subs.
Maybe we can buy some of these South Korean nuclear submarines, park them off the coast of the US, and use them for energy. If we do it quick, we might be able to get nuclear power going before the environmentalists notice.
Edit: Your downvotes only make me more powerful.
Your post raises an interesting question. Will the US let South Korea use its naval reactors? The US naval reactors use highly enriched uranium, which can be easily converted into bombs. France used to use highly enriched uranium, but their latest nuclear subs use low enriched uranium (LEU). Now, part of what made the US naval reactors so reliable is that they kept the same design over so many decades. If they change to LEU, that probably requires quite a major design change. If they do that, they might as well allow the civilian industry to use that design for non-military purposes.
Your post is flippant, or you forgot the /s (Poe's law strikes again), but in case anyone took this seriously: using the subs to provide energy would be grossly uneconomical even by current nuclear power standards. Naval reactors are comparatively puny and optimized for compactness and long periods between refueling, which means using highly enriched fuels: very expensive and a proliferation concern.
Why would we buy south korean subs for this, especially ones south korea is building with us navy help? we have nuclear subs and the us is actually pretty good at building more of them. It's the cheapest kind of reactor we have and doesn't get protested by environmentalists.
The transmission from sub / ship to shore is not great I think, though. They're used for power during disaster recovery?
Imagine if south korea needed china's permission to build nuclear submarines. We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty.
Imagine if the title was : "China Gives South Korea Green Light to Build Nuclear Submarines".
What would the comments here be like. No doubt a lot of nonsense about "the ccp" this and "the ccp" that.
I will say that the "in/on US territory" piece is a very key detail.
Like obviously no matter the country, if you want to build weapons offshore in their territory you probably need permission.
> I will say that the "in/on US territory" piece is a very key detail.
That's the point. South korea is not allowed to build nuclear submarines in their own territory. They lack the sovereignty to do it. The US won't give them permission to build one on their own.
But you probably knew this and your comment is meant to distract.
I believe that's accurate. SK depends on the US for its security, and also generally is a memeber of the US-led order and coordinates with it. The spread of high-value miltiary technologies is limited to maintain secrecy and the US-led order's technological advantage.
Countries like SK seem to let the US do the heavy lifting, including fighting major wars with them and for them, and in return they give the US considerable influence over international relations and military affairs.
That's just not true? South Korean ministers have been discussing building nuclear submarines domestically long before this current agreement.
And the US has an agreement with South Korea that limits domestic production of fissile material for military uses but it's a mutual agreement that we have with a bunch of countries (including China) and is essentially always renegotiable as situations change. Essentially it's just an explicit agreement of how much material a given country intends on producing for the purposes of requiring public political discussions domestically before ramping up production.
That is all very much a flexible situation and the US doesn't have any actual power to legitimately stop South Korea from manufacturing domestic nuclear reactors for military purposes.
Citation needed. I am unable to find any treaty that prevents the RoK from building nuclear submarines on their own territory.
> Citation needed. I am unable to find any treaty that prevents the RoK from building nuclear submarines on their own territory.
Are you being intentionally dense? Why wouldn't they be building it in their own territory if nobody was stopping them?
Besides, I already replied to your other comment that South korea is not allowed to enrich uranium by the US.
> Are you being intentionally dense? Why wouldn't they be building it in their own territory if nobody was stopping them?
They actually could. This has been an ongoing discussion in South Korean politics for years. Nuclear Submarine shipbuilding is a large undertaking and it requires a lot of security to prevent sabotage in ways that other types of shipbuilding just don't have to put up with. So it is in many ways cheaper and more secure to just rely on the US for nuclear shipbuilding as we already have the infrastructure and we are on the opposite side of the world from any adversaries who would have interest in sabotage.
> Besides, I already replied to your other comment that South korea is not allowed to enrich uranium by the US.
This is not true. There are mutual agreements that set the limits on enriched uranium for military purposes but they are flexible agreements that can be renegotiated or broken off as needed. The US has them with everyone including our allies and our adversaries. It's essentially just a tool to say "hey you need to discuss this publicly within your country first before you can change it". Nothing more or less.
No, I am not being dense. From your continued lack of citations I am starting to assume there is no law stopping the RoK from enriching uranium (though I have been trying to find one). Uranium enrichment facilities are expensive. If you have a partner nation who is willing to sell you the enriched uranium that just makes sense. Again, it being the property of another nation, they have the right to judge who should have access it it and what they might do with it. If RoK wanted to spend a percentage of their GDP on enrichment facilities they could. They don't have an urgent reason to. Further they don't have any deposits of any uranium to begin with so they would still need to partner with another nation anyways, so I ask you - Why would RoK want their own enrichment facilities?
> No, I am not being dense.
Yes you are. An easy tell is "citation needed".
> there is no law
Another tell.
> If RoK wanted to spend a percentage of their GDP on enrichment facilities they could
And they have in the past. Guess who shut that down?
> They don't have an urgent reason to.
South korea is surrounded by 3 nuclear powers ( north korea, china, russia ) and militarily occupied by another nuclear power and yet, they have no urgent reason to? Good one.
> Why would RoK want their own enrichment facilities?
This is just absurd. Your questions answer themselves. And it's obvious you already know the answers but just are trying to distract.
You keep googling and I'll look for the citations. Okay buddy?
> Why wouldn't they be building it in their own territory if nobody was stopping them?
Because they don't have the facilities to build a nuclear sub, and America does, since America has built over 200+ nuclear submarines in the past?
Building a nuclear sub, and fueling it, are two separate things.
The US invaded South Korea, had and still has massive influence on their government, has military bases there. It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal. Makes US look better in the media, etc.
> The US invaded South Korea ?
When was that? After the Pacific War with Japan, the US had bases in SK (from driving Japan out of SK?). NK and eventually China invaded SK and the US defended them, and since then SK has given the US military bases in order to deter NK and China.
> It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal
Korea is an American suzerainty. Not vassal. Similar to North Korea:China. One of the strategic considerations in countering China in Taiwan is whether Japan and Korea would refused their territory from getting involved. That's a veto a vassal doesn't get.
Iran under the Shah was a U.S. vassal. Same for Ghani's Afghanistan. (Belarus: Russia.)
> Korea is an American suzerainty. Not vassal. Similar to North Korea:China.
That's why north korea has nukes? South Korea:US is not analogous to North Korea:China. Neither is Pakistan:China analogous to South Korea:US. If you analogy held, south korea would be a nuclear power.
Stop commenting on things you know nothing about. Honestly, do you think you are an expert in every geopolitical topic?
EDIT: Reply deleted. Troll/flamebait account.
> We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty
The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1]. America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...
That's why reading comments about geopolitics on the Internet is largely useless. Big news! A country's population supports its own country on international stage! If you go on Chinese social media, it'll be mostly about how awful the Americans are, and vice versa if you are on Reddit for example. So what is even the point of reading them, anywhere..
I think you and I are on very different Reddits, if you're using it as an example of pro-American social media.
Fully agree that reading either for geopolitical opinions is useless.
I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub. Of course you need permission from a seller to buy products and use their facilities. I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
> I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub.
The US won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own. Want to try again?
> I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
Another intentional distracting comment.
> The US won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own. Want to try again?
190 nations have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This includes China, so the very US vs China premise here is misplaced.
[The US, UK, France, Russia, China and 185 other countries] won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own
> 190 nations have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Who cares?
> This includes China, so the very US vs China premise here is misplaced.
Sure. But it wasn't china that stopped korea's and japan's secret nuclear programs. It was the US.
> [The US, UK, France, Russia, China and 185 other countries] won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own
Just like they prevented north korea...
Your response debunks your response. It's quite remarkable actually.
The only country that can prevent another country is the one militarily occupying it. China, France, Russia, UK and the other 185 countries don't militarily occupy south korea. The only reason north korea, israel, india, pakistan, etc were able to go nuclear is because they are not vassal states military occupied by a foreign power.
> Who cares?
You don't understand why South Korea might care about nuclear proliferation?
If india doesn't care, why should south korea? India only has 2 nuclear powers surrounding it. South korea has 4. Why should korea care more than india? I'd love to hear your thoughts as an indian on this matter. You are my goto indian guru on all matters geopolitics, politics, economics, tech, sports ( cricket, not baseball for obvious reasons ), etc. I await enlightenment.