U.S. Would Back a Rethink of Japan’s Plutonium Recycling Program: White House
Japan Times
The United States would back a change to Japan’s nuclear fuel reprocessing program because there are concerns it may lead to an increase in its ally’s stockpile of unused plutonium, a senior White House official said. If Japan were to change course “they would find the United States to be supportive,” Jon Wolfsthal, senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, said in a recent interview.
Would the U.S. Drop the Bomb Again?
Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin A. Valentino | Wall Street Journal
The White House’s recent announcement that President Barack Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima has sparked an intense debate among politicians and pundits over what he should or should not say there. The president’s advisers insist that he “will not revisit the decision” to use nuclear weapons on that city in August 1945. But the controversy has focused too narrowly on historical questions. We might instead ask whether the U.S., in similar circumstances today, would drop the bomb again. Our own research has found that the American public is surprisingly open to that prospect.
‘In-Depth’ Talks Needed for India’s Entry Into Nuclear Group: China
Hindustan Times
China on Monday called for “in-depth” talks to build consensus over India’s admission into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), days after Pakistan staked claim to join the 48-member grouping with purported backing from Beijing and just ahead of President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to that country. China also rebutted India’s assertion that France was included in the Nuclear Suppliers Group without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying France was a founder member of the elite group and so the issue of accepting its membership does not arise.
Abe to Issue Message in Hiroshima With Obama
Japan Times
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided that he will also issue a message calling for nuclear disarmament along with U.S. President Barack Obama when the two leaders visit Hiroshima on Friday, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. Abe will be accompanying Obama’s visit to the atomic-bombed city after attending the two-day Ise-Shima Group of Seven summit meeting starting Thursday in Mie Prefecture. It will be the first visit by an incumbent U.S. president to Hiroshima.
China to Help Sudan Develop First Nuclear Plant
World Nuclear News
The agreement was signed yesterday in Khartoum by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) chairman Sun Qin and Moataz Moussa, Sudan's Minister of Water Resources and Electricity. The signing of the framework agreement came during a three-day visit to Sudan by a Chinese delegation led by Nur Bekri, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission's National Energy Bureau.
In Iran, Dividends of Nuclear Deal Are Slow to Appear
Samia Nakhoul and Richard Mably | Reuters
Hopes that Iran would quickly reintegrate with world markets after its nuclear deal bringing investment and opportunities to a young population, are turning to frustration. An opaque business environment in Iran and political uncertainty in the United States are to blame. Tehran’s hotels are buzzing with businessmen keen for a slice of a big new emerging market, more industrially developed than most oil and gas-rich nations but isolated since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that turned Iran into a pariah state for most of the West and many of its Middle Eastern neighbors.