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@Jamie,

re: how to ensure you buy the world's uranium?

Not saying they should ensure anything, just commence a program with the objective of trying to acquire as much uranium, and rights to uranium exploration, uranium mines, as possible.

I know this may be a bit off-topic, but bo_sox said:
"The USA hasn't done something for the world out of pure niceness since the Marshall Plan."

Surely that wasn't *pure* niceness? Or was it?

Was it.

The majority of states in the world possessing nuclear weapons is a inevitability now the technology is available (and available much cheaper) - we need to decide how we're going to handle it. Trying to prevent it at this stage is futile, you might as well build a time machine and try to stop the Manhattan Project.

I'd say that's a bit more futile SYnapse...

Well what this forum (and the international community) suggests is absurd. Imagine if the US had tried to prevent the rest of the world acquiring automobiles. If you don't want the world to have something, protip - don't invent it.

Your reductio-ad-absurdum tricks don't work on me, @Synapse.

Um, Germany and Britain were building automobiles (and Italy motorcycles) several years before the United States. @ Synapse

I really don't think that it is, redhouse. Automobiles allowed for motorised infantry and tanks, which have definitely caused more deaths than nuclear weapons in the past century. Surely we should have tried to stop nations proliferating this technology?

Nudge: not a accurate example, but I hope the point is still demonstrated. We could have stopped Japan aquiring gunpowder for example. How different the world could have been.

so you regret our adoption of technology, and prefer the socialist agrarian utopian model of the Amish and the Khmer Rouge?

No, I embrace our adoption of technology, including nuclear technology to all states. The side-effects of this, we will have to deal with, rather than trying to prevent.

@Synapse the world is full of dangers. One cannot eradicate all. But such a danger as nuclear proliferation from large, confident powers, to small, insecure powers and finally to organizations seems something we could potentially get more control over. Obviously, tanks cause a lot of deaths, alas, we (largely) passed the stage where we can stop the proliferation of tanks. But that shouldn't mean politicians should give up on making the world a safer place altogether. They receive handsome salaries to do just that.

Nuclear weapon states according to Federation of American Scientists

Russia...... ~8,500
America... ~7,700
France......... ~300
China........... ~240
Britain.......... ~225
Pakistan...... ~100
India.............. ~ 90
Israel.............. ~80
N Korea......... ~10

Lol 240 nukes in China, good one.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8927580/China-hiding-up-to-3000-nuclear-warheads-in-secret-tunnels.html

My estimates (presuming everybody lies in international politics)
Russia...... ~9.000
America... ~8,500
France......... ~60
China........... ~800-1000
England.......... ~150
Scotland....... ~70-80
Pakistan...... ~30
India.............. ~ 100
Israel.............. ~40

And unofficially:
Kyrgystan - 1-2
DPRK - 8
Iran - 1-2
Uzbekistan - 5
Myanmar junta - 1
Falkland Islands - 5-10
Chechnyan rebels - 1-2

Redhouse, you should look into buying all the thorium reserves too then. And the oceans because, if a country wanted to badly enough, they could extra almost limitless amounts of uranium from the ocean.

@Yonni - not to mention they could buy some surplus ones from Russia. I remember reading that a French journalist was offered a nuclear warhead from the black market in Bulgaria. I personally think they're circulating everywhere. Particularly, I am sure that Burma and Uzbekistan have at least 1 functional warhead. And in Kyrgystan you can obtain anthrax and bubonic plague quite easily so enough said.

I also read that Russia has "lost" around 50 suitcase-sized warheads during the late 90's. Where are they now? The U.S. also "lost" one off the coast of Florida. James Bond-esque deals are happening all the time with things like this.

@Steephie ... the Marshall Plan is one of the most notably one-sided deals in history. It was out of pure desire to repair Europe. Some would argue that they expected repayment, but they certainly weren't expecting physical compensation.

@Yonni .. like SYnapse said, there's a lot of evidence out there that nuclear warheads are floating in the black market. Kind of freaky to think about.

@SYnapse ... I don't have a source to back me up, but for some reason I thought those Russian warheads were said to be dysfunctional so they were dismantled and Russia didn't want people to know.

I'd be skeptical of a nuclear warhead created 50 odd years ago, still working today.

"Redhouse, you should look into buying all the thorium reserves too then. And the oceans because, if a country wanted to badly enough, they could extra almost limitless amounts of uranium from the ocean."
-Not a bad idea to start buying thorium.
-Re: Oceans.
Again, (for the so manyth time), the fact that that wouldn't be possible doesn't mean this would be a bad plan (although there are certainly counterarguments, just not this one). The fact that you can't get your hands on all the available ingredients, doesn't mean you can't make it rarer, hence more difficult for terrorists to acquire. No one is aiming for perfect universal security. It's just that the more we have it, the better society will do.

I think you have a poor understanding of the abundance of fertile material in the world.

wut

I'm confused.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/ferguson2/

Extracting uranium from sea water costs about 300 dollars per kilogram, but it still needs to be enriched at that point to be of any real use.

And thorium is found just about everywhere, but is really only useful in nuclear reactors as it isn't of the unstable nature of uranium or plutonium.

There are approx. 2.8M tons of "reasonably assured" thorium in the world. There are about 5.5M of uranium. That's a lot of fissile material.

Also, note that there's actually a whole whack more of thorium but, as its relatively cheap now, the expensive deposits aren't counted.

You cannot buy an appreciable amount of the worlds reserves.