China Quietly Rebuilds Secretive Base for Nuclear Tests
William J. Broad, Chris Buckley and Jonathan Corum | The New York Times
In the remote desert where China detonated its first atom bomb nearly 60 years ago, a drilling rig recently bored a deep vertical shaft that is estimated to plunge down at least a third of a mile. It is the strongest evidence yet that Beijing is weighing whether to test a new generation of nuclear arms that could increase the lethality of its rapidly expanding missile force…“All the evidence points to China making preparations that would let it resume nuclear tests,” said Tong Zhao, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Putin Says Russia’s Nuclear Arsenal Is Near Fully Modernized
Bloomberg News
President Vladimir Putin said Russia has modernized almost its entire strategic nuclear arsenal, reviving atomic rhetoric as he boasted the war in Ukraine has shifted in his favor. The role of Russia’s air, sea and land nuclear triad in ensuring a balance of power “has increased significantly” amid the “emergence of new military-political risks,” Putin told a Defense Ministry meeting in Moscow on Tuesday. The proportion of modern weaponry in its nuclear forces this year “has been brought to 95% and in the naval component almost 100%,” he said.
Kim Jong Un Says he Won’t Hesitate to Nuke US Upon ‘Nuclear Provocation’
Colin Zwirko | NK News
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he won’t hesitate to launch nuclear weapons against the U.S. in response to a “nuclear provocation,” according to a state media report Thursday on Kim meeting soldiers responsible for this week’s long-range missile test. “When a nuclear provocation from the enemy comes, our nation is ready to conduct a nuclear attack without hesitation,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim as saying, referring to the U.S. and South Korea. He added that Monday’s test launch of a Hwasong-18 solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) served as “a clear explanation of the evolution of our nuclear strategy and nuclear doctrine and our nation’s aggressive response method.”
West Accuses Iran of Illegally Testing Missiles, Transferring Drones to Russia, Enriching Uranium
Edith Lederer | Associated Press
At Monday’s council meeting, U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo stressed that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres still considers the JCPOA “the best available option to ensure that the Iranian nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful.” She urged Iran to reverse course, as did the three European countries who issued a joint statement quoting the IAEA as saying Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium now stand at 22 times the JCPOA limit. “There is no credible civilian justification for the state of Iran’s nuclear program,” the UK, France and Germany said. “The current trajectory only brings Iran closer to weapons-related capabilities.”
Scientists Successfully Replicate Historic Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Three Times
Laura Paddison | CNN
Last year on a December morning, scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (LLNL) managed, in a world first, to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that released more energy than it used, in a process called “ignition.” Now they say they have successfully replicated ignition at least three times this year, according to a December report from the LLNL. This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
How Passport Privilege Undermines the Nuclear Ban Treaty
Olamide Samuel | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The treaty was made possible largely due to leadership of non-nuclear weapons states from the Global South and activism by organizations like the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the treaty. But an analysis of participation at the New York meeting points to troubling inequities that favor organizations from Europe, Japan, and North America, and raises important questions about how global governance mechanisms spearheaded by civil society can succeed as they become institutionalized.