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Joint European Torus experiments end on a 69 megajoules high
Nice to see JET goingt out with a bang.
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(gift link)
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Who keeps feeding Trump this stuff? You know he’s never opened a history book and likely would have no clue who Truman is if they weren’t next to each other in the alphabetical encyclopedia of presidents (popup version)
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Trying to recall the few details I ever knew: was France’s nuclear arsenal was built up when de Gaulle separated France from NATO command?
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No, sooner than that.
It’s a lot more complicated than that, but:
Technically one could say that the French nuclear arms programme started in 1939 when Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Hans Halban, Lew Kowarski and Francis Perrin filed patents concerning the production of energy from uranium and “the improvement of explosive charges”. They met with the Minister of Armaments, Raoul Dautry, and Dautry gave them the go ahead to look into explosives development and energy production. At the time they had access to uranium from the Belgian Congo and heavy water from Norsk Hydro.
Then of course WW II halted any research in France itself and France was left out of the 1943 Quebec Agreement.
Research resumed as soon as 1945, with the first reactor becoming operational in 1948, but the nuclear weapons programme was sort of secret during the Fourth Republic. It was officially announced after De Gaulle had established the Fifth Republic in 1958. The first bomb was tested in 1960.
All through the 1950ies and 1960ies there were internal discussions and decisions about the weapons as such and the delivery systems. As a result, other programmes for nuclear submarines, missiles and nuclear capable airplanes were started.
Other events like the war in French Indochina, the Suez Canal adventure, Algeria and the idea of forming an European army influenced policy towards nuclear weapons and of course diverted resources.
In 1954, when French troops at Diên Biên Phu were encircled, the Comité de Défense restreint asked the United States to use atomic weapons. The US simply ignored the request.
During the Suez Canal idiocy of 1956, the USSR sent ‘stop it or else’ letters to Britain and France, with a not very much veiled threat that the ‘or else’ part would involve nuclear weapons.
The takeaway from both was that the military alliance with the United States could not fully guarantee French interests and that an independent nuclear deterrent would be nice to have.
The long and the short of it all is that every French president and/or government since 1945, left or right, was in favour of having their own nukes.
As to your original question - broadly speaking, under the Fourth Republic, French policy saw French nukes as part of NATO. The Fifth Republic saw French nukes as a guarantee of national independence from NATO - while still being in NATO. Apparently it made sense at the time. To De Gaulle, anyway. The idea was not to sever ties with longtime allies or break up NATO, but to strengthen France’s position overall.
De Gaulle said at the time, “American nuclear weapons remain the essential guarantee of world peace. […] But the fact remains that American nuclear power does not necessarily respond immediately to all eventualities concerning Europe and France.”
At the time France already had a sizable arsenal and its own delivery systems. Which were ramped up continuously during the Cold War. But they had enough by 1965 already for De Gaulle to be confident enough to make his move. The man was no fool and a skilled, experienced military man and politician.
Oh, at one point in the 1950ies there also was a secret joint venture between France, Italy and Germany to develop European nukes. Which a) wasn’t really secret because Adenauer told John Foster Dulles about it (the Eisenhower administration didn’t seem to mind) and b) didn’t go anywhere because De Gaulle scuttled it in 1958.
There also were collaborations with Israel, South Africa, the UK and, of course, the US.
Like I said, complicated. But very interesting.
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Wow. Thank you!
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Especially considering that that sentence
seems to be exactly what happens right now.
Today, in Munich, German government officials including the chancellor are painfully trying to convey that France’s nukes (and the British ones) would be, in facts the European nukes. They know Germany is bound by the NPT, and that there is no way Germany could have own nuclear weapons, both legally and politically. So they simply try to defuse the bomb the orange menace has lit.
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They want to join North Korea’s war on Aquaman!
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ETA:
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