this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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At least until the next French election. Not exactly a long-term guarantee. Germany needs its own deterrent.
France has no choice. Europe is so small and densely populated that any nuclear attack would have an immense impact on France as well (due to the channel, that is less clear for the UK).
And on the other hand, Germany's nukes would be highly dependant on France as well, as Germany shut down their civil nuclear program a while ago, and you can't have nukes without one. And restarting their civil nuclear program would be complete economic madness for Germany. So the nuclear material and expertise will come from France most likely, and then Germany might as well negotiate a much cheaper sharing arrangement directly.
I guess the logic is that France might stand by if Germany is attacked conventionally. It's not just about whether a nuke hitting Germany would affect France.
No sane state would use nuclear arms against another nuclear armed nation unless threatend in its existence. If a conventional army large enough to overrun Germany would exist and attack Germany, France knows full well that they are next and could not defend themselves conventionally either. But that scenario is rather unlikely.
And beyond that there are a bunch of different game theoretical considerations mostly centering around second strike capabilities to protect against the threat of a sudden unprovoked nuclear strike aiming to decapitate an enemy state, and in all those scenarios France IMHO comes out as having no choice but to extend their nuclear shield to nearly all of Europe.
Do we really need that many nuclear power plants for it though? Wouldn't some experimental nuclear power plants be sufficient? I guess we still have some, right? ..right?
Its mainly about the people. You need a lot of trained people to develop and maintain these weapons, and having a larger pool of civil nuclear engineers (and univercity departments to train them) makes this much more realistic.
Macron was recently pretty clear about this: France is maintaining their nuclear reactors because they need them to maintain their nuclear weapons. Economically these reactors are a bottomless pit and Germany was smart to shut them down.
Not only the people, also the supply chains to produce and handle the fissile materials. (which also include a whole lot of people)
Germany still has some research reactors running. But for enrichment you don't need a reactor, gas diffusion and centrifuges are also options. There should be enough fuel left to enrich enough uranium for at least some bombs. So it should be possible without too much reliance on external partners.
You can improvise a few test bombs that way, but that is not a credible nuclear deterrence.
Why not? Plutonium supremacy? ;)
It would take longer and use more energy but the boom is the same in the end. Did Germany ever have a breeder/dual use reactor? If not you'd have to build one first anyway and i bet that takes longer than building a shitton of centrifuges.
And isn't the issue with a credible nuclear deterrence the delivery and second strike capability anyway? Germany would need submarines and icbms too.
Germany build a fully complete breeder reactor and then decided to never turn it on. It is a theme park now.
The Kernwasser-Wunderland - I actually life somewhat close to it. Never been there though..