Mari Yamaguchi | Associated Press
Japan’s nuclear watchdog said Wednesday it is scrapping the safety screening for two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan, after its operator was found to have fabricated data about earthquake risks. It was a setback to Japan’s attempts to accelerate nuclear reactor restarts… The Nuclear Regulation Authority said it started an internal investigation last February, after receiving a tip from a whistleblower that the utility had for years provided fabricated data that underestimated potential seismic risks.
Mark Trevelyan | Reuters / Yahoo
Even at the height of their Cold War nuclear rivalry, the United States and the Soviet Union thrashed out a series of treaties to keep the arms race from spiraling out of control… Now the last U.S.-Russia nuclear treaty, New START, is just weeks away from expiring on February 5, and what comes next is uncertain. The two countries, preoccupied by the war in Ukraine, have not held any talks on a successor treaty.
Rajesh Kumar Singh | Bloomberg
India’s state-run power producer NTPC Ltd. is scoping at least 30 locations across the country where it could build nuclear power projects, part of a plan to expand its clean energy portfolio, according to people familiar with the matter… NTPC sharpened its ambitions as part of a national goal to reach 100 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity by 2047, aiming to install 30% of that target
Tong Zhao | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The United States’s attack on Venezuela has raised questions about domestic checks on power and signaled a challenge to international law and longstanding norms of sovereignty and the use of force… Many international analysts argue that illiberal states already disregard international law, so U.S. norm-breaking has little effect on their behavior. A close reading of Chinese expert analyses and Beijing’s existing security mindset suggests otherwise.
Davis Winkie, Ramon Padilla, Stephen Beard, Karina Zaiets, and Carlie Procell | USA Today
Picture hundreds of underground silos across remote areas of the country as the pores of a massive sponge. Enemies – who can spot the silos by satellite – must destroy them in an attack against the United States or risk being hit by American missiles, according to U.S. experts… USA TODAY partnered with nuclear weapons historian Alex Wellerstein to adapt a Cold War-era model known as WSEG-10 for this story to illustrate what would happen if an enemy struck the silos in the nuclear sponge.
Davis Winkie | USA Today
The Sentinel program, slated to build more than 650 new missiles and more than 400 new silos, will cost U.S. taxpayers more than $140 billion, according to the Pentagon’s latest estimate… Nuclear weapons experts who favor disarmament or arms control argue that the Sentinel upgrade to the land leg of the nuclear triad is costly and unnecessary… Defense experts who support maintaining the land leg believe it’s necessary for the triad, and it represents a key piece of the nuclear stability equation.