Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident are still being felt on a daily basis.
If Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese nuclear safety agency had followed international standards and best practice, the Fukushima accident could have been prevented.
Public sentiment in many states has turned against nuclear energy following the March 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The Fukushima accident was, however, preventable.
While new allegations call the peaceful intentions of Iran’s nuclear program into greater question, China and Russia are unlikely to agree to sanctions they view as crippling.
When examining Beijing’s concerns about U.S. nuclear capabilities, it is important to understand the strategic challenges facing China and the ways the country’s leadership might try to resolve those challenges.
While it remains unclear whether Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is sincere in his proposal to cease production of highly enriched nuclear fuel and import it instead, it is clearly in the West’s best interests to accept the offer.
Even after the world reaches the long-for goal of zero nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence will continue to have a vital policy role for some time to come.
While an additional round of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control is in the national security interest of the United States, carrying out a new round of arms control talks will be extremely difficult.
A regime to verify the abolition of nuclear weapons requires three distinct components: the verification that declared civilian nuclear materials are not weaponized, the dismantlement of declared warheads, and the absence of undeclared nuclear warheads.
The next round of U.S.- Russia arms control presents some truly daunting challenges but there is much that the Obama administration could do in the remainder of its first term to lay the groundwork for another treaty while reducing nuclear risks.
