The US has an incredibly strange relationship with shipbuilding.
Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China.
This naval news post says there are $5 billion in modernization costs for the shipyard needed for this project so it seems like we're still years away from a started (much less completed) project.
>"Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China."
One issue is that Naval ships are very different from commercial vessels, and at least in the USA, almost no shipyards have shared facilities and staff between the two products since WWII. Interestingly, most other countries do not build most of their naval tonnage (destroyers and frigates) to the same standards that the USA does (European countries are notable for using commercial hulls standards for these ships).
On a related note, the Odd Lots podcast had a (relatively) recent Jones Act debate episode, which is worth a listen if you're interested in the subject.
Seems like a typical trump Big Announcement. No details, doesn't really fit with the actual state of the world, and no clear path to even getting these things built. I'll be surprised if >0 get built in Philadelphia in the next decade.
It is worth noting that the US and Korea have already been very engaged in trying to work together on ship building, mostly for the US, which we seem to have gotten quite slow and costly at.
Brilliant move. Giving South Korea the U.S. approval required to provide for its own defense, while using that to incentivize investment into American shipbuilding.
It's more that South Korea and Japan are the last developed countries, where it's still economically viable to build cargo ships. Several European countries have robust shipbuilding industry, but they focus on higher-value ships such as cruise ships.
An interesting example of this is the US modernizations of its military industrial capacity by supply pre- and during WWI. There was intense debate in the international community as to whether non-warring countries could supply nations at war without being considered combatants.
If they aren’t, you can’t neutralize the enemies supplies. If they are, those third countries are effectively part of the conflict.
The US had to take the latter stance because it didn’t have a strong industry to product its own weapons. If it supported nations from buying from non-warring parties, it would be shit out of luck if it had its own wars. So it received a lot of investment from European powers, generating jobs, economic growth, and the funding to expand its domestic production without having to take on debt or wait for a war to break out.
Come its entry into WWI and then WWII, the US had a strong home base of industrial capacity for arms manufacturing.
I imagine countries would only do this begrudgingly out of necessity. The U.S. has positioned itself as unworthy of trust and respect and is basically taking the mafia protection approach to getting other nations to work with it.
South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities. This saves them money, not having to modify their shipyards.
> South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities
Technically, yes. Politically, no.
“To produce fuel for the submarines’ naval propulsion, the ability to enrich uranium was required. However, this plan probably served two goals, since a country with enrichment capability can also enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels without significant difficulty. The fact that [former President Roh Moo-hyun] launched this plan less than five months after North Korea’s [2003] withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) supports the possibility that his ulterior motive was to acquire uranium enrichment capability in part to enable the future development of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, Roh had to abandon this plan in 2004 amid rising suspicion of South Korea’s nuclear ambitions after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered that South Korean scientists had previously conducted an unauthorized enrichment experiment” [1].
What am I missing about how hard it is to enrich uranium? We did it in the 40s, having a significantly less solid understanding of all of the physics involved. Material science on containers, motors, energy generation, etc have all been significantly improved in the intervening decades.
Wikipedia says U235 is ~0.7% of earth deposits, and as little as 7kg may be required for a minimal nuclear device. Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process. Just grinding it up and using some kind of mass spectrometer could trivially separate a 3Dalton mass difference.
I'm not a native English speaker, but I think "nuclear submarine" implies "submarine powered by nuclear", otherwise they'd use "nuclear-armed" or similar. Of course, the title is probably ambiguous on purpose, so people click on it to try to figure it out.
> Subsequently, the construction of Nuclear submarines marks a departure from past efforts, as previous South Korean submarine construction has focused primarily on conventionally powered submarines
Nuclear powered. i.e. No need to resurface for air (as all oxygen can be recycled or separated from water) and no need to refuel for the entire lifespan of the submarine.
How long can they actually stay below the surface in practice though? I'm guessing water is filtered on the vessel, but food must be re-supplied constantly I'm again guessing? Maybe they do it like airplanes refuel in the air, rendevouz with another submarine and somehow transfer the resources for food making between then? Probably read too much Tom Clancy...
both. nuclear powered submarines are the primary wing of nuclear deterrent because launching a missile from a platform that stays underwater for months at a time and is basically impossible to track is basically impossible to prevent
Maybe we can buy some of these South Korean nuclear submarines, park them off the coast of the US, and use them for energy. If we do it quick, we might be able to get nuclear power going before the environmentalists notice.
Your post is flippant, or you forgot the /s (Poe's law strikes again), but in case anyone took this seriously: using the subs to provide energy would be grossly uneconomical even by current nuclear power standards. Naval reactors are comparatively puny and optimized for compactness and long periods between refueling, which means using highly enriched fuels: very expensive and a proliferation concern.
Why would we buy south korean subs for this, especially ones south korea is building with us navy help? we have nuclear subs and the us is actually pretty good at building more of them. It's the cheapest kind of reactor we have and doesn't get protested by environmentalists.
The transmission from sub / ship to shore is not great I think, though. They're used for power during disaster recovery?
Imagine if south korea needed china's permission to build nuclear submarines. We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty.
Imagine if the title was : "China Gives South Korea Green Light to Build Nuclear Submarines".
What would the comments here be like. No doubt a lot of nonsense about "the ccp" this and "the ccp" that.
> I will say that the "in/on US territory" piece is a very key detail.
That's the point. South korea is not allowed to build nuclear submarines in their own territory. They lack the sovereignty to do it. The US won't give them permission to build one on their own.
But you probably knew this and your comment is meant to distract.
The US invaded South Korea, had and still has massive influence on their government, has military bases there. It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal. Makes US look better in the media, etc.
> It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal
Korea is an American suzerainty. Not vassal. Similar to North Korea:China. One of the strategic considerations in countering China in Taiwan is whether Japan and Korea would refused their territory from getting involved. That's a veto a vassal doesn't get.
Iran under the Shah was a U.S. vassal. Same for Ghani's Afghanistan. (Belarus: Russia.)
> We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty
The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1]. America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
Can you stop with the nonsense already. It never ends with you.
> The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1].
Or maybe Korea could be like India, your native country, and not be part of it.
> America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
Yeah, a loophole seoul doesn't need. You act like america is doing korea a favor. All this does is make korea even more dependent on the US. Even more of a vassal.
That's why reading comments about geopolitics on the Internet is largely useless. Big news! A country's population supports its own country on international stage! If you go on Chinese social media, it'll be mostly about how awful the Americans are, and vice versa if you are on Reddit for example. So what is even the point of reading them, anywhere..
I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub. Of course you need permission from a seller to buy products and use their facilities. I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
> I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub.
The US won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own. Want to try again?
> I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
The US has an incredibly strange relationship with shipbuilding.
Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China.
This naval news post says there are $5 billion in modernization costs for the shipyard needed for this project so it seems like we're still years away from a started (much less completed) project.
[1] Nov 2024 https://thezvi.substack.com/p/repeal-the-jones-act-of-1920
[2] June 2018 https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-...
>"Zvi and the Cato institute both have lengthy pieces about why the Jones act is bad [1] [2], and whether or not you believe that has entrenched our shipbuilders, the US essentially manufactures no ships compared to South Korea and China."
One issue is that Naval ships are very different from commercial vessels, and at least in the USA, almost no shipyards have shared facilities and staff between the two products since WWII. Interestingly, most other countries do not build most of their naval tonnage (destroyers and frigates) to the same standards that the USA does (European countries are notable for using commercial hulls standards for these ships).
On a related note, the Odd Lots podcast had a (relatively) recent Jones Act debate episode, which is worth a listen if you're interested in the subject.
> at least in the USA, almost no shipyards have shared facilities and staff between the two products
Do other countries do it differently?
Seems like a typical trump Big Announcement. No details, doesn't really fit with the actual state of the world, and no clear path to even getting these things built. I'll be surprised if >0 get built in Philadelphia in the next decade.
It is worth noting that the US and Korea have already been very engaged in trying to work together on ship building, mostly for the US, which we seem to have gotten quite slow and costly at.
From the same source as this article, American HHI working with Korean HD HHI. No real action yet but both companies want to be working together. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/10/hii-hosts-hd-hh...
Brilliant move. Giving South Korea the U.S. approval required to provide for its own defense, while using that to incentivize investment into American shipbuilding.
I wouldn’t call it a genius move.
Just long overdue: South Korea is one of the last, staunch US allies that can build large ships at scale.
But will bringing manufacturing to Philadelphia be a mistake? Will they run into the generations-steeped shipyard workers and steelworkers?
Will American steelworkers try put one over to make themselves an expense, or a legit partnership to help each other?
I can see this going either way; and I hope this partnership transcends the usual, petty partisanship.
It's more that South Korea and Japan are the last developed countries, where it's still economically viable to build cargo ships. Several European countries have robust shipbuilding industry, but they focus on higher-value ships such as cruise ships.
That's a genius move!
We should get every country to do this.
Build your nuclear subs here, in the US shipyards. We'll help you!
We can massively expand our capacity, which will be important for self defense in the coming decades.
An interesting example of this is the US modernizations of its military industrial capacity by supply pre- and during WWI. There was intense debate in the international community as to whether non-warring countries could supply nations at war without being considered combatants.
If they aren’t, you can’t neutralize the enemies supplies. If they are, those third countries are effectively part of the conflict.
The US had to take the latter stance because it didn’t have a strong industry to product its own weapons. If it supported nations from buying from non-warring parties, it would be shit out of luck if it had its own wars. So it received a lot of investment from European powers, generating jobs, economic growth, and the funding to expand its domestic production without having to take on debt or wait for a war to break out.
Come its entry into WWI and then WWII, the US had a strong home base of industrial capacity for arms manufacturing.
I imagine countries would only do this begrudgingly out of necessity. The U.S. has positioned itself as unworthy of trust and respect and is basically taking the mafia protection approach to getting other nations to work with it.
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Part of AUKUS is this.
South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities. This saves them money, not having to modify their shipyards.
> South Korea is capable enough to build nuclear submarines even if the US had denied them the said facilities
Technically, yes. Politically, no.
“To produce fuel for the submarines’ naval propulsion, the ability to enrich uranium was required. However, this plan probably served two goals, since a country with enrichment capability can also enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels without significant difficulty. The fact that [former President Roh Moo-hyun] launched this plan less than five months after North Korea’s [2003] withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) supports the possibility that his ulterior motive was to acquire uranium enrichment capability in part to enable the future development of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, Roh had to abandon this plan in 2004 amid rising suspicion of South Korea’s nuclear ambitions after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discovered that South Korean scientists had previously conducted an unauthorized enrichment experiment” [1].
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/will-south-koreas-nuclear-ambi...
What am I missing about how hard it is to enrich uranium? We did it in the 40s, having a significantly less solid understanding of all of the physics involved. Material science on containers, motors, energy generation, etc have all been significantly improved in the intervening decades.
Wikipedia says U235 is ~0.7% of earth deposits, and as little as 7kg may be required for a minimal nuclear device. Processing, 700kg of uranium does not sound insurmountable, even with a terribly slow and inefficient process. Just grinding it up and using some kind of mass spectrometer could trivially separate a 3Dalton mass difference.
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It's really great for the US to have customers. We can expand our shipyards again.
We should go and find more customers.
Is it nuclear in the sense that it has nuclear bombs or it is just nuclear powered?
I'm not a native English speaker, but I think "nuclear submarine" implies "submarine powered by nuclear", otherwise they'd use "nuclear-armed" or similar. Of course, the title is probably ambiguous on purpose, so people click on it to try to figure it out.
> Subsequently, the construction of Nuclear submarines marks a departure from past efforts, as previous South Korean submarine construction has focused primarily on conventionally powered submarines
I'm asking because if it's just nuclear powered and doesn't have nuclear bombs, I don't think it's that big of a deal.
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Nuclear powered. i.e. No need to resurface for air (as all oxygen can be recycled or separated from water) and no need to refuel for the entire lifespan of the submarine.
How long can they actually stay below the surface in practice though? I'm guessing water is filtered on the vessel, but food must be re-supplied constantly I'm again guessing? Maybe they do it like airplanes refuel in the air, rendevouz with another submarine and somehow transfer the resources for food making between then? Probably read too much Tom Clancy...
2 replies →
both. nuclear powered submarines are the primary wing of nuclear deterrent because launching a missile from a platform that stays underwater for months at a time and is basically impossible to track is basically impossible to prevent
Maybe we can buy some of these South Korean nuclear submarines, park them off the coast of the US, and use them for energy. If we do it quick, we might be able to get nuclear power going before the environmentalists notice.
Edit: Your downvotes only make me more powerful.
Your post is flippant, or you forgot the /s (Poe's law strikes again), but in case anyone took this seriously: using the subs to provide energy would be grossly uneconomical even by current nuclear power standards. Naval reactors are comparatively puny and optimized for compactness and long periods between refueling, which means using highly enriched fuels: very expensive and a proliferation concern.
Why would we buy south korean subs for this, especially ones south korea is building with us navy help? we have nuclear subs and the us is actually pretty good at building more of them. It's the cheapest kind of reactor we have and doesn't get protested by environmentalists.
The transmission from sub / ship to shore is not great I think, though. They're used for power during disaster recovery?
Imagine if south korea needed china's permission to build nuclear submarines. We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty.
Imagine if the title was : "China Gives South Korea Green Light to Build Nuclear Submarines".
What would the comments here be like. No doubt a lot of nonsense about "the ccp" this and "the ccp" that.
I will say that the "in/on US territory" piece is a very key detail.
Like obviously no matter the country, if you want to build weapons offshore in their territory you probably need permission.
> I will say that the "in/on US territory" piece is a very key detail.
That's the point. South korea is not allowed to build nuclear submarines in their own territory. They lack the sovereignty to do it. The US won't give them permission to build one on their own.
But you probably knew this and your comment is meant to distract.
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The US invaded South Korea, had and still has massive influence on their government, has military bases there. It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal. Makes US look better in the media, etc.
> It’s just polite fiction to ignore the fact that South Korea is a US vassal
Korea is an American suzerainty. Not vassal. Similar to North Korea:China. One of the strategic considerations in countering China in Taiwan is whether Japan and Korea would refused their territory from getting involved. That's a veto a vassal doesn't get.
Iran under the Shah was a U.S. vassal. Same for Ghani's Afghanistan. (Belarus: Russia.)
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> We'd called them china's vassals and attack china for being bullies who deprived nations of their sovereignty
The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1]. America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...
Can you stop with the nonsense already. It never ends with you.
> The treaty restricting Korea is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [1].
Or maybe Korea could be like India, your native country, and not be part of it.
> America is giving Seoul a loophole by offering to do the NPT-governed work.
Yeah, a loophole seoul doesn't need. You act like america is doing korea a favor. All this does is make korea even more dependent on the US. Even more of a vassal.
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That's why reading comments about geopolitics on the Internet is largely useless. Big news! A country's population supports its own country on international stage! If you go on Chinese social media, it'll be mostly about how awful the Americans are, and vice versa if you are on Reddit for example. So what is even the point of reading them, anywhere..
I think you and I are on very different Reddits, if you're using it as an example of pro-American social media.
Fully agree that reading either for geopolitical opinions is useless.
I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub. Of course you need permission from a seller to buy products and use their facilities. I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
> I don't think any country has the right to demand that another country hands over enriched uranium and allow them to move into a shipyard so that they could build a nuclear sub.
The US won't allow south korea to enrich uranium on their own. Want to try again?
> I would recommend going beyond simply reading the headline.
Another intentional distracting comment.
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