On the same day in December when Chinese and U.S. diplomats said they’d held constructive talks to reduce military tensions, Russian engineers were delivering a massive load of nuclear fuel to a remote island just 220 kilometers off Taiwan’s northern coast.
China’s so-called fast-breeder reactor on Changbiao Island is one of the world’s most closely-watched nuclear installations. U.S. intelligence officials forecast that when it begins working this year, the CFR-600 will produce weapons-grade plutonium that could help Beijing increase its stockpile of warheads as much as fourfold in the next 12 years. That would allow China to match the nuclear arsenals currently deployed by the U.S. and Russia.
"It is entirely possible that this breeder program is purely civilian,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based nuclear analyst with the United Nations’s Institute for Disarmament Research. "One thing that makes me nervous is that China stopped reporting its civilian and separated plutonium stockpiles. It’s not a smoking gun but it’s definitely not a good sign.”