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Fortunately, no small nation can enter the race unless it has a highly developed electronics and metallurgical base as well as a solid corps of expert physicists, technicians and weapons engineers. To produce four or five Hiroshima-type bombs a year, it needs a big 70-megawatt reactor and, to keep it going at full blast, 100 tons of uranium ore (which is now in oversupply throughout the world and may in time be available on the open market). This would assure the aspiring nuclear power a yearly output of some 20 kilograms of plutonium, the raw material for bombs, which reactors produce automatically as a byproduct of peaceful operation. The final bridge between a nation's peaceful and military programs is a chemical or gaseous diffusion plant (construction time: two years) to turn the raw plutonium into weapons-grade material.
Not every nation capable of building the bomb wants to. Each potential nuclear power faces a different set of circumstances and national attitudes, which may change rapidly if and when any other state decides to join the race. The nations with the greatest existing nuclear capability, and how they may act:
¶ CANADA, which has been capable of producing nuclear weapons since 1957, is the nation least likely to do so since 1) its security is inseparably enmeshed with that of the U.S., and 2) its foreign policy is keyed to the role of mediator between big and small powers.
¶ INDIA, whose aversion to the bomb is far more deep-rooted than Canada's, has nonetheless raced to complete its own atomic facilities—and has a more advanced nuclear technology than China, despite the substantial Soviet assistance that Peking received in the 1950s. India refines its own reactor fuel from vast reserves of thorium in Kerala, Madras and Bihar, thus is not subject to international controls over its allotment. It is also the first non-nuclear power to have a diffusion plant actually producing weapons-grade fissionable material, at Trombay, near Bombay. The government of Lal Bahadur Shastri has made clear that it intends to retain an option on the bomb, and has indicated that it will not sign any non-proliferation treaty unless Red China, among other nations, agrees to scrap its atomic armory. India's security and prestige have been badly dented by the Chinese invasion in 1962 and Peking's recent tests; build-the-bomb sentiment is rising. New Delhi will probably reach its agonizing decision within the next few months.
¶ JAPAN, with bitter memories of Hiroshima, is emotionally even more reluctant than India to make the bomb. Militarily and politically, however, it has the same incentive: fear of Red China, which has already threatened the Japanese with a nuclear "holocaust" in the event of an atomic war. Since Japan has to import reactor fuels under strict controls, it is not at present likely to become a nuclear power. However, if Peking grows ever more menacing and New Delhi opts for the bomb, Japan might try to obtain its uranium from India.