US, ROK and Japan Hold Nuclear Bomber Drills after North Korean Missile Launch
Shreyas Reddy | NK News
The U.S., South Korea and Japan staged joint aerial drills featuring a nuclear-capable bomber on Tuesday, following a North Korean ballistic missile launch earlier in the day. The allies’ first trilateral aerial exercise this year included U.S. B-52H strategic bombers and F-16 fighters, ROK F-15 fighters and Japanese F-2 fighters, Seoul’s defense ministry said in a press release. The joint drills in the overlapping ROK and Japanese air defense identification zones near South Korea’s Jeju Island came after North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on Tuesday morning. Fired from the Pyongyang area, the missile flew around 370-400 miles (600-650 km) before landing in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), according to South Korean and Japanese estimates. The launch came a few weeks after North Korea tested a solid-fuel engine for a hypersonic IRBM.
IAEA Completes Nuclear Security Mission at Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station
IAEA
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team of experts completed a nuclear security mission at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station (KKNPS) in Japan today, which was carried out at the request of the country’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The nine-day mission, conducted from 25 March to 2 April 2024, aimed to assess the enhancement of the physical protection measures at the KKNPS, Japan’s largest nuclear facility with seven reactors, and to provide further advice as necessary to the facility's operator.
U.S. Nuclear Costs, Projections Continue to Rise
Xiaodon Liang | Arms Control Association
The Biden administration’s $850 billion defense budget request for fiscal year 2025 would increase spending for Defense Department nuclear weapons programs by 31 percent over the current year and projects sharply rising future costs for some key nuclear modernization programs. The request for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons-related activities is 4 percent higher than appropriated by Congress for fiscal year 2024. In all, the budget request, unveiled on March 11, calls for $69 billion for nuclear weapons operations, sustainment, and modernization, including $49 billion for Pentagon programs and the rest for the NNSA. The combined budgets would be 22 percent higher than last year.
Sevmash Completes Upgrades to Build Russia’s Next-gen Nuclear Subs
Maxim Starchak | Defense News
Russia’s leading manufacturer of submarines said it completed the large-scale modernization of its electroplating workshop, charged with applying a particular coating to metallic products…“By the turn of the 2010-2020s, Sevmash seems to have managed to achieve a more or less stable rate of submarine production. The construction and testing cycle now takes about seven years,” Pavel Luzin, a military expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., told Defense news. “At the same time the plant is working on eight to 10 submarines at different stages of construction. By creating a new production facility, Sevmash strives to increase its commercial efficiency.”...“Given the closure of access to Western technologies and equipment, when the entire chain of cooperation involved in the creation of submarines suffers from sanctions, it is difficult to predict how effective the modernization of Sevmash will be,” he said.
Why Russia Is Protecting North Korea From Nuclear Monitors
David E. Sanger | The New York Times
On Thursday, Russia used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council to kill off a U.N. panel of experts that has been monitoring North Korea’s efforts to evade sanctions over its nuclear program for the past 15 years. Russia’s discomfort with the group is a new development. Moscow once welcomed the panel’s detailed reports about sanctions violations and considered Pyongyang’s nuclear program to be a threat to global security.
Oppenheimer’s Second Coming
Gregory Kulacki | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The world’s third largest movie market was curiously excluded from participating in the social, cultural, and economic excitement surrounding this award season’s most acclaimed product: director Christopher Nolan’s biographical film about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. That ended when Universal Pictures finally decided to release Oppenheimer to theaters in Japan. The film’s local distributors declined requests for comment on the unusually long delay. It is reasonable to assume their patience was connected to concerns about how Japanese movie-goers might respond to a biopic about the “American Prometheus” who made the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possible. The film opens today in Japanese theaters.