Canada’s Special Relationship With China: Expanding Nuclear Arsenal

Montréal, Quebec

In recent years, the United States has repeatedly issued warnings about China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal. In October 2023, the Pentagon released the “Annual China Military Power Report” stating that China had more than 500 usable nuclear warheads in May of that year, and it may exceed 1,000 by 2030. Canadian companies may be playing an unknowing role in China’s efforts to expand its nuclear arsenal.

It’s the end of last year, Henry Sokolski, who served as deputy for non-proliferation policy in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense under President George Bush presidency, published an article, “China’s Nuclear Weapons and Canada: The Connection between Non-Civilian Nuclear Power and the Military”, which refers to the fact that two Canadian companies are providing nuclear materials and technology to China without “effective control measures to ensure that they are used for peaceful purposes.”

Henry Sokolsky believes that “in the past few decades, the Pentagon has done little or nothing to link China’s civilian nuclear power program to its military nuclear weapons construction, but in the past three years, the Pentagon has clearly linked Beijing’s fast reactor power generation program to China’s The latest annual report on China’s military power is linked to an increase in efforts to produce tritium weapons. China is using civilian nuclear reactors to produce tritium to fuel its thermonuclear weapons. China puts lithium rods into power reactors and bombards them with neutrons. To produce tritium and then separate it, the same way the United States makes tritium for weapons.”

“China uses a tritium heavy water extraction process to remove hydrogen atoms that absorb neutrons and produce tritium. China’s only reactor using heavy water is located in Haiyan County, Zhejiang Province, and is operated by China Nuclear Power Corporation, China’s largest nuclear weapons contractor. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., owned by the Canadian government (AECL), which supplies these reactors to China, also collaborates with China National Nuclear Corporation on advanced heavy water reactors and related technologies. In 2011, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. sold its heavy water reactor business to Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin. -Lavalin Inc) Group, which changed its name to Atkins (AtkinsRealis) and continued to cooperate with CNNC on heavy water reactors.”

“Canada’s nuclear transfers to China are not limited to reactors. In late October 2023, one of the world’s largest uranium suppliers, Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corporation, announced that it had signed a contract with China National Nuclear Corporation to sell more than 97,500 tons of uranium. Under the contract, Cameco will send more than 12,700 tons of uranium to China each year for the next four years, which is 200 to 300 tons more than China’s entire civilian nuclear power consumption per year. This extra uranium can provide up to 100 nuclear bombs. fuel”.

Henry Sokolsky, currently the executive director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, reminded the United States to take action to ensure that domestic and foreign entities do not contribute to China’s nuclear program. He suggested that the U.S. government expose companies that engage in nuclear cooperation with China, develop an unclassified annual report by the Department of Defense and the intelligence community, clarify companies that are transferring nuclear materials and technology to China, put them on the prohibited procurement and subsidy list, and call on the international The IAEA tracks and protects tritium and unenriched uranium to prevent their diversion into nuclear bombs. He hopes that before the next Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2026, the United States will take the same measures on uranium and tritium as it does on tracking and sanctioning oil and gas transfers.

The companies he mentioned in the article that export key nuclear materials and technologies to China include Canada’s Cameco and Atkins, as well as EDF, which announced last spring that it would cooperate with CNNC to develop advanced spent fuel recycling technology, which is a key process for producing weapons, and the other is Rosatom.