Pakistan Joins the Nuclear Arms Race

With the US supplying modern nuclear technology to India, in view of it's new strategic relationship, Pakistan is left to keep up by creating numbers. But their plan production of plutonium will far outstrip their needs to modernize their current stockpile. So will Pakistan be stockpiling unused plutonium? I think not. More likely they will seek to counter India's technological edge with numbers of missile mounted warheads.
The other possibility is that Pakistan will play it's traditional spoiler roll and become a major exporter of plutonium. If so, what a wonderful world this will be with virtually all Islamic regimes including fundamentalist Saudi Arabia and others, and presumably Iran and North Korea, all past beneficiaries of Pakistani nuclear technology. Presumably, China is encouraging this development to counter India's missiles pointed north.
WaPo

Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race.


Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.


The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles.


"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.


[...]"Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year," it says. "At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year."

What incentive is there to stop another arms race in Asia and the Middle East? The US is so far in debt, there will be no more greenbacks for all.