Edition

Proliferation News 8/27/24

IN THIS ISSUE: Iran’s Supreme Leader Opens Door to Negotiations with United States over Tehran’s Nuclear Program, UN Nuclear Chief Visits Russia's Kursk Atomic Plant Near Front Line, U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos Need Modernizing, but Fixes Aren’t Coming Soon, AI's Insatiable Energy Demand is Going Nuclear, Ukraine Successfully Tests its First Ballistic Missile, Global Race for Nuclear Weapons at Record High, Warns UN

Published on August 27, 2024

 JON GAMBRELL | Associated Press

Iran’s supreme leader opened the door Tuesday to renewed negotiations with the United States over his country’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, telling its civilian government there was “no barrier” to engaging with its “enemy.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s remarks set clear red lines for any talks taking place under the government of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian and renewed his warnings that Washington wasn’t to be trusted. But his comments mirror those around the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran’s nuclear program greatly curtailed in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Reuters

U.N. nuclear agency chief Rafael Grossi arrived on Tuesday at the Kursk nuclear power plant which Moscow says has been repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian forces that are just 40 km (25 miles) away after carving out a slice of Russian territory…Grossi, who has repeatedly warned of a nuclear disaster if nuclear plants continue to be attacked, was shown on Russian state television speaking to Russian nuclear officials at the plant.The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief said before his trip that the only way to assess the plant's security and validate the information it was receiving was to visit the site, which is owned by Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom.

Doug Cameron | Wall Street Journal 

The price tag for upgrading the nation’s land-based nuclear missiles is rising, but support for the project isn’t. The Pentagon has revised the projected cost of refurbishing hundreds of nuclear missile silos to $141 billion, a $30 billion increase from an estimate provided in January. The U.S. Air Force project, known as Sentinel, includes replacing the Cold War-era intercontinental ballistic missiles inside the silos with newer models.

Rachelle Akuffo | Yahoo Finance 

Amazon (AMZN) is ubiquitous in today’s world, not just for being one of the biggest and most established online marketplaces but also for being among the largest data center providers. What Amazon is far less known for is being the owner and operator of nuclear power plants. Yet that’s exactly what its cloud subsidiary, AWS, did in March, purchasing a $650 million nuclear-powered data center campus next to a nuclear power plant from Talen Energy in Pennsylvania.

VERONIKA MELKOZEROVA | Politico 

Ukraine has tested its first ballistic missile, and the result was "positive," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday. The development comes three days after Ukraine announced it successfully launched its first missile-drone, Palyanytsia. “What other developments are there in Ukraine? I thought it was too early to talk about it, but… There was a positive test of the first Ukrainian ballistic missile. I congratulate our military production complex on this,” Zelenskyy said at a presser in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Malcolm Moore, Andrew England and Ben Hall | Financial Times

The world’s nuclear non-proliferation regime is under greater pressure than at any time since the end of the cold war, as “important” countries were openly debating whether to develop atomic weapons, the head of the UN’s watchdog has warned. Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Financial Times that tense relations between the US, Russia and China, as well as the conflict in the Middle East were putting unprecedented strains on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty signed in 1968 that aimed to limit the development of the world’s atomic arsenal. “I don’t think in the 1990s you would hear important countries say, ‘well, why don’t we have nuclear weapons too?’” he said.


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