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Underground Fire Stokes Fear of Nuclear Disaster in Missouri
Jim Suhr, Portland Press Herald
October 26, 2015
A plan to make sure an underground St. Louis-area landfill fire doesn't reach a cache of Cold War-era nuclear waste buried nearby will come before the end of 2016, an Environmental Protection Agency administrator said Monday despite the state attorney general's calls for swifter action.
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Iran to Meet Rouhani Timetable on Ending Sanctions: Nuclear Chief
Aaron Sheldrick, Reuters
November 5, 2015
Iran will fulfill its commitments under the July nuclear agreement with major powers in time to have sanctions, that have crippled its economy, lifted by the end of the year, its atomic energy chief said on Thursday.
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The Iran Deal is Iran's Nuclear Bomb
Mohammed Alyahya, Al Arabiya
November 4, 2015
"The nuclear deal paradoxically gives Iran the same protection that a nuclear bomb would have given it."
What the P5+1 have done, essentially, is traded every single bargaining chip at their disposal, i.e. all the sanctions, for a bomb that Iran does not yet have. The only ground for the return of any of the sanctions according to the concluded deal, would have to be a violation related to Iran's nuclear program. This deal is, in effect, normalizing Iran's destructive foreign policy.
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Addressing the Military Dimensions of Iran's Nuclear Program
David Albright, Olli heinonen, and Andrea Stricker, Institute for Science and International Security
November 4, 2015
While Iran continues to keep the pressure on to weaken the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA's) effort to get to the bottom of the well-founded allegations that it had a nuclear weapons program, the Obama administration is giving the impression that it is softening its position on this critical issue. The administration should publicly state that the results of the IAEA's investigation are critical and are linked to sanctions relief.
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MEMRI: "The Emperor Has No Clothes"
Yigal Carmon, Middle East Media Research Institute
October 30, 2015
What is mistakenly perceived as an agreement under the title of "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" (JCPOA), that was concluded on July 14 in Vienna, and celebrated by the White House as an "historic agreement," is neither a contract nor even a real agreement between Iran and the P5+1. It is a set of understandings and disputes compiled into a single document.
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Gates; Russia Sought to Abandon Nuclear Missile Treaty in 2007
Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon
October 27, 2015
The Russian government told the United States more than eight years ago that it wanted to abandon the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at a Senate hearing last week.
"The Russian defense minister as early as 2007 approached me about doing away with the INF Treaty," Gates said in Senate Armed Services Committee testimony Wednesday.
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A Russian Official Wants to Start Training Civilians to Respond to
Nuclear Attacks - Just Like During the Cold War
Denis Dyomkin, Reuters
October 30, 2015
Russia's authorities should revive the old Cold War practice of training civilians on how to respond in the event of a large-scale nuclear attack, a senior government official said on Friday.
Speaking after a meeting of Russia's Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister in charge the defense industry, said the United States was upsetting the nuclear balance by developing new weapons systems.
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Britain's Missing Nuclear Debate
Johnathan Leader Maynard, New Statesman
October 30, 2015
Political debates over Britain's independent nuclear deterrent offer many causes for depression. One, of course, is the fear of nuclear apocalypse. This, for all its science-fiction improbability, lurks underneath all discussions of the most devastating technology ever conceived of by our species. But a second cause for depression is how magnificently rubbish these nuclear debates generally are.
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The United Kingdom and Nuclear Weapons:
The Necessity for a Strategic View
John Gower, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
November 5, 2015
On September 30, Jeremy Corbyn, the newly elected leader of the United Kingdom's Labour Party, in a clear break from all of his predecessors, stated categorically that in his opinion it was "immoral to have or use nuclear weapons." The usual UK internal debate on nuclear weapons has also been sharpened by the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence and the electoral success of the staunchly antinuclear Scottish National Party (SNP).
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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY LABORATORIES
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DOE Commission Report on National Labs Released
Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories
October 2015
The Commission will review whether the DOE national laboratories are properly aligned with the Department's strategic priorities, have clear and balanced missions, have unique capabilities to meet current energy and national security challenges, are appropriately sized to meet the Department's energy and national security missions, and are appropriately supporting other Federal agencies.
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Give US National Labs Freer Rein, Commission Urges Skeptical Senators
Adrian Cho, Science Insider
October 30, 2015
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Managing Decay at Lawrence Livermore Nuclear-Weapons Lab
Brian L. Frank,The Wall Street Journal
November 1, 2015
The government is struggling to clean up dirty and decaying structures where nuclear-weapons work and other federal nuclear activities were carried out.
The Energy Department's cleanup operation is wrestling with reduced budgets, tens of billions of dollars in ballooning cost estimates and 2,700 structures on its to-do list.
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Nuclear Power Plants Warn of Closure Crisis
Timothy Cama, The Hill
November 5, 2015
The nuclear power industry is sounding the alarm over the latest in a series of plant closures, warning that an energy source central to meeting President Obama's climate change goals is deteriorating.
With nuclear providing the majority of carbon emissions-free electricity in the United States, utilities and suppliers in the industry say Obama's planned 32 percent reduction in power-sector carbon is impossible if reactors keep shutting down.
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New Nuclear Plants in US May Offset Planned Closures
John Timmer, ArsTechnica
November 5, 2015
Although the US is on the brink of ending a long hiatus in new additions to its nuclear capacity, there's a very good chance it will see the overall capacity drop before the decade is out. That's in part because of extensive delays in the construction of some new plants and in part because some of the older, smaller nuclear plants can't be operated profitably.
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What Killed America's Climate-Saving Nuclear Renaissance?
Paul Barrett, Bloomberg
November 5, 2015
Stunting the renaissance before it got going were the 2008-09 recession, the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, and especially the proliferation of cheap natural gas. Nuclear, which provides 19 percent of U.S. electricity and two-thirds of the country's emission-free power, has arrived at a perilous crossroads. Four nuclear plants have shut down over the past several years because of recession-stifled demand and inexpensive gas. Eight or nine more are in danger of premature retirement for similar economic reasons.
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Why Nuclear Power Should Play A Greater Role
in Response to Climate Change
Gwyneth Cravens, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
November, 2015
In this interview, author Gwyneth Cravens talks with the Bulletin's Dawn Stover about why nuclear power should play a greater role in the response to climate change. Cravens describes her conversion from nuclear protester to nuclear supporter, and calls for expedited approval of reactor construction and new designs. She dismisses typical fears about radiation and nuclear waste as ignorance, and explains why she believes that changing people's minds about nuclear power is not as difficult as it might seem.
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Why Nuclear Power Will Not Be the Whole Solution to Climate Change
Joe Romm, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
November, 2015
In this interview, physicist and climate change blogger Joe Romm speaks with theBulletin's Dawn Stover about whether nuclear energy will be a major player in efforts to mitigate global warming. Romm points to economics as a limiting factor for nuclear power, at least until the world grows more desperate to reduce carbon pollution. He explains the reasons why nuclear energy is expensive in the United States and Europe but expanding in China. Although pessimistic about nuclear, Romm is optimistic that the world has reached a turning point for the adoption of renewable energy generation and storage technologies, energy efficiency, and carbon abatement policies.
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ARMS CONTROL AND NUCLEAR STRATEGY
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Military Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium Stocks in Acknowledged Nuclear Weapon States, End of 2014
David Albright and Serea Kelleher-Vergantini, Institute for Science and International Security
November 3, 2015
Plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU), called "fissile materials," were first produced in large quantities for use in nuclear weapons. In the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) only five countries - Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States.- are designated as "nuclear-weapon states." Although other countries possess nuclear weapons and fissile material, the acknowledged states have gained a special status in international affairs. As part of that status, however, these five states also committed to work towards nuclear disarmament, in particular steps accompanied by the elimination of their own stocks of fissile material for nuclear weapons.
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The End of Arms Control in the Second Nuclear Age?
Peter Huessy, Gate Stone Institute
October 26, 2015
The United States may have come to the end of traditional nuclear arms control. Since 1972 the United States and Russia have signed seven major nuclear weapons treaties, beginning with the SALT I agreement in 1972 and concluding with the 2010 New Start treaty; however, upwards of 65% of all nuclear warheads in the world still remain under no treaty limits, mainly because countries with such arsenals have no interest in agreeing to nor the technical means to verify, such controls.
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NEW REPORT: A nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2030
Elbridge Colby, Center for a New American Security
October, 2015
U.S. nuclear strategy and posture have exhibited a great degree of continuity over time. This continuity is largely a virtue given how consequential these weapons are in guaranteeing the security of the United States and its allies, telegraphing the strength and stability of U.S. resolve, and, more broadly, discouraging major war. Yet while continuity has been a hallmark of U.S. nuclear policy and posture, so too have been adaptation and evolution.
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Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Take Two
Leigh Munsil, Politico
October 26, 2015
Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz are mounting a bid to persuade the Senate to reconsider the nuclear test ban treaty that it rejected in 1999.
"Reviving the treaty - the first to fail in the Senate since the Treaty of Versailles after World War I - would be a huge step toward preventing the emergence of new nuclear weapons states and controlling nuclear outlaws, the two Cabinet members believe,"
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The Strengthening Nuclear Security Implementation Initiative:
Evolution, Status, and Next Steps
Kenneth N. Luongo, Bart Dal, and Jonathan Herbach
October, 2015
The "Strengthening Nuclear Security Implementation" initiative broke new ground at the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in the effort to harmonize and strengthen the global nuclear security regime. It has been subscribed to by 35 NSS-participating states who are committed to implementing the best practices found in the International Atomic Energy Agency's Nuclear Security Series documents.In this report, NSGEG members Bart Dal and Kenneth N. Luongo, along with Jonathan Herbach of Utrecht University, discuss the significance of the initiative, the importance of expanding its signatories, and the need to demonstrate its implementation.
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