North Korea Appears to Have Restarted Yongbyon Nuclear Reactor
Michael R. Gordon and Laurence Norman | Wall Street Journal
North Korea appears to have resumed operation of its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon in a move that could enable the reclusive country to expand its nuclear-weapons arsenal, the U.N. atomic agency said. The development, disclosed in the agency’s annual report on North Korea’s nuclear activities, adds a new challenge to President Biden’s foreign policy agenda, alongside the dangerous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and stalemated talks on restoring the 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran Appoints Ex-Roads Minister as Head of Nuclear Agency
Nasser Karimi | Associated Press
Iran’s president on Sunday appointed a new director of the country’s nuclear department, state TV reported, replacing the nation’s most prominent nuclear scientist with a U.N.-sanctioned minister who has no reported experience in nuclear energy but ties to the defense ministry. Iran’s newly elected hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi chose Mohammad Eslami, a 64-year-old civil engineer who previously oversaw the country’s road network, to lead Iran’s civilian nuclear program and serve as one of several vice presidents. He succeeds Ali Akbar Salehi, a U.S.-educated scientist who was a key player during the years of intense international diplomacy that led to Tehran’s now-tattered 2015 landmark nuclear deal with world powers.
Strategic Command Needs New Three-Way Deterrence Model, Deputy Commander Says
John A. Tirpak | Air Force Magazine
U.S. Strategic Command is struggling to find a deterrence model that will work for three comparably armed nuclear powers, but it is not seeking to match Russia’s new kinds of nuclear weapons, which aren’t covered under existing treaties, said Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere. The U.S. has “fairly coherent two-body deterrence models,” Bussiere said in a streaming seminar presented by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We have decades of experience” within the Pentagon and academia providing a foundation for deterrence between the U.S. and Russia. But as for a three-way Cold War that includes China, “that’s a dynamic I don’t think our nation has teased out,” he acknowledged.
Iran Hints Nuclear Talks May Not Resume Until November
Patrick Sykes | Bloomberg
Iran’s new government may not resume negotiations with world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal until late November, dashing hopes of a quick conclusion of talks that would allow Iranian oil back onto the market in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. “The other side understands that it’s ultimately a two- or three-month process for the new government to become well-established and plan for any sort of decision on this subject,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state TV in an interview late on Monday, without giving a specific date. Taking August 25 as the date when Amirabdollahian and most of his fellow ministers were confirmed in their posts, that means talks may not resume until October or November.
UN Team: Unclear if Fukushima Cleanup Can Finish by 2051
Mari Yamaguchi | Associated Press
Too little is known about melted fuel inside damaged reactors at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant, even a decade after the disaster, to be able to tell if its decommissioning can be finished by 2051 as planned, a U.N. nuclear agency official said Friday. “Honestly speaking, I don’t know, and I don’t know if anybody knows,” said Christophe Xerri, head of an International Atomic Energy Agency team reviewing progress in the plant’s cleanup. He urged Japan to speed up studies of the reactors to achieve a better long-term understanding of the decommissioning process.
Pakistan’s Nuclear Program Posed “Acute Dilemma” for U.S. Policy
National Security Archive
In January 1979, State Department officials monitoring Pakistan’s nuclear program were startled by fresh intelligence confirming that Islamabad had secretly initiated a uranium enrichment program using gas centrifuge technology. Among other discoveries, the U.S. Intelligence Community had uncovered a nascent enrichment facility at Kahuta that would eventually produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, and evidence that Pakistan was “moving more rapidly toward acquisition of [a] nuclear capability than we had earlier estimated,” according to an internal statement by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, published here for the first time by the National Security Archive. Today’s posting follows the recent admission by Pakistani President Arif Alvi that the country had already developed a “nuclear deterrent” by 1981, long before the underground nuclear tests of 1998.