• How to Survive a Tactical Nuclear Bomb? Defense Experts Explain

    What would happen during a tactical nuclear bomb explosion, including the three stages of ignition, blast, and radioactive fallout? How one might be able to survive such an explosion?

  • Was That Explosion Chemical or Nuclear?

    If an underground explosion occurs anywhere in the world, there is a good chance that a seismologist can pinpoint it. However, they won’t necessarily be able to tell you what kind of explosion had occurred—whether it is chemical or nuclear in nature.  New PNNL research makes it easier to differentiate between the two.

  • Experts: North Korea's ICBMs Pose Preemption Challenges for US

    North Korea’s rapidly advancing ICBM capabilities pose a growing threat to the United States and its allies, especially as it will become increasingly difficult to destroy Pyongyang’s missiles prior to launch with preemptive strikes.

  • Accepting Reality: For the Foreseeable Future, Denuclearizing North Korea May Be Unattainable

    For two decades now, U.S. policymakers have sought North Korean denuclearization. In the early 2000s, it appeared to be a necessary goal, because a nuclear North Korea would threaten U.S. allies, spread nuclear weapons beyond the Korean Peninsula, damage the sanctity of the nuclear taboo, and eventually threaten U.S. territory. But the enemy gets a vote, and it is now clear that for the foreseeable future, there is nothing the United States can do, short of a direct military attack, to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

  • The Cold War Legacy Lurking in U.S. Groundwater

    In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed. ProPublica has cataloged cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed to fuel the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Even after regulators say cleanup is complete, polluted water and sickness are often left behind.

  • North Korea’s Nuclear Program Is Funded by Stolen Cryptocurrency. Could It Collapse Now That FTX Has?

    Kim Jong-un’s military operation hackers have been stealing cryptocurrency to support North Korea’s nuclear and missile program for several years. But with the general downturn in the crypto market, coupled with the recent FTX collapse and myriad other pitfalls, analysts estimate North Korea has probably lost most of its crypto haul. Can we expect its nuclear weapons development to come to a halt, or slow down? It seems unlikely.

  • Iran Building Nuclear Weapons

    Rather than a traditional nuclear weapons program, Iran threatens the world with a program ready to produce nuclear weapons “on-demand.” Its readiness program poses a difficult challenge to the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Understanding the pace of Iran building nuclear weapons matters, in particular, for designing strategies against Iran moving to construct them.

  • Iran Needs Only 4 Weeks to Produce Enough Material for 4 Nuclear Weapons

    Due to the current size of Iran’s 60 percent, 20 percent, and 4.5 percent enriched uranium stocks, Iran can now produce enough weapon grade uranium for four nuclear weapons in one month and make enough for a fifth weapon within the following month.

  • What Would Happen If a Nuclear Bomb Was Used in Ukraine?

    Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and meltdowns at the Chernobyl and Fukushima power plants clearly affected people’s health. But experts say it’s hard to predict the fallout from a nuclear war today.

  • Investigating Stockpile Stewardship Applications for World’s Largest Computer Chip

    The Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine is the largest computer chip in the world, containing 2.6 trillion transistors, 850,000 artificial intelligence cores. Researchers at Sandia and Los Alamos are accelerating advanced simulation and computing applications in support of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship mission.

  • Nuclear Weapons Use Will ‘End’ Kim Regime, US, South Korea Say

    The United States and South Korean defense leaders are warning Pyongyang that any use of nuclear weapons by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be the “end” of his regime.

  • Sixty Years After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear Threat Feels Chillingly Immediate

    Graham Allison, author of Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, talks about how Kennedy and Khrushchev stepped back from brink, and says that Western leaders are worried that Putin might not.

  • Pakistan Protests Biden Questioning of Safety of Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons

    Pakistan has formally protested to the United States over remarks by President Joe Biden questioning the safety of Islamabad’s nuclear weapons. Biden told a Democratic Congressional fundraiser Thursday night that Pakistan “may be one of the most dangerous nations in the world” for possessing “nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

  • How the Biden Administration Is Responding to Putin’s Threats to Go Nuclear

    Russia’s use of nuclear weapons would not necessarily be considered in contravention of Article 5 of the NATO treaty, whereby an attack on one is considered an attack on all and requires collective military defense. But experts say that a case could be made that if radiation from use of a nuclear warhead were to spill over into a NATO country, this could be construed as an attack.

  • Why the U.S. Nuclear Umbrella Underpins Non-Proliferation

    Early in the Cold War, forward-deployed nuclear weapons were focused on deterrence and warfighting, compensating for the numerical superiority of communist armies. As Soviet capabilities improved and more countries became nuclear powers, the purpose of the U.S. nuclear umbrella expanded to include non-proliferation. In essence, the U.S. preferred to protect key allies like Japan rather than risk them developing their own arsenals.