• Future Solutions for Spent Nuclear Fuel

    Nuclear technology has been used in the United States for decades for national defense, research and development, and carbon-free electric power generation. Nuclear power is a key element of the U.S. response to climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, nuclear energy, as an essential form of electricity production, generates radioactive waste in the form of spent nuclear fuel. Spent nuclear fuel must be handled, stored, and ultimately disposed of in a manner that won’t harm the environment.

  • Iran's Uranium Metal Production Concerns U.S.

    Report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna to member nations noted inspectors have confirmed Iran produced 200 grams of uranium metal enriched up to 20 percent. Uranium metal can be used to build the core of a nuclear bomb.

  • International Nuclear Forensics Group Examines Nuclear Security Challenges

    The Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group (ITWG) was established in 1995 when nuclear materials were being smuggled out of the former Soviet Union and into Europe. Last month the ITWG held its annual meeting virtually.

  • Iran “10 Weeks Away” from Weapon-Grade Uranium

    Israel’s defense Minister Benny Gantz to foreign diplomats that Iran is now only ten weeks away – if it decided to move forward – from enriching sufficient quantities of uranium to weapon-grade level, so that it would have available the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon.

  • Iran’s Strategic Challenge to Israel

    In a report prepared for the newly elected president of Israel, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) highlights the main strategic challenges facing Israel and policy recommendations for addressing those challenges.

  • Iran Says It Foiled “Sabotage Attack” on Nuclear Building

    State media said the attack occurred near Karaj, some 40 kilometers west of Tehran. Iran has experienced a series of suspected sabotage attacks targeting its nuclear program in recent months.

  • Reflections on Iran’s Production of 60% Enriched Uranium

    As of about June 14, Iran had reportedly produced 6.5 kg 60% enriched uranium (hexafluoride mass) or 4.4 kg uranium mass only. Iran has produced 60% enriched uranium at an average daily rate of 0.126 kg/day since May 22. Iran’s activity must be viewed as practicing breakout to make enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

  • The Cold Comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction

    Decades after the end of the Cold War, scholars have begun to cast doubt on what has been taught about nuclear weapons in graduate schools – especially the notion of “nuclear revolution,” that is, that the condition of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would promote stability among the great powers. If nuclear weapons-based deterrence is not robust, but rather delicate, then “This is a book that the field of security studies will need to grapple with, since it overturns much of what scholars believe about nuclear deterrence,” Jasen Castillo writes.

  • Global Nuclear Arsenals Grow as States Continue to Modernize

    A new report finds that despite an overall decrease in the number of nuclear warheads in 2020, more have been deployed with operational forces. The nine nuclear-armed states together possessed an estimated 13 080 nuclear weapons at the start of 2021, a decrease from the 13 400 at the beginning of 2020, but the estimated number of nuclear weapons currently deployed with operational forces increased to 3825, an increase from 3720 last year.

  • IAEA Warns on North Korea and Iran

    IAEA Director Rafael Grossi issued dire warnings, saying Pyongyang may be reprocessing plutonium and that Iran’s lack of compliance is hurting prospects for salvaging the JCPOA (the 2015 nuclear deal). Pyongyang has continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions since that time and detonated its last nuclear device in 2017, while working with Iran was “becoming increasingly difficult.”

  • Iran Nuclear Inspection Deal with UN Watchdog Extended by One Month

    Iran and the UN’s nuclear watchdog say they have agreed to extend by one month an agreement to monitor Tehran’s nuclear activities, a move that will give more time for ongoing diplomatic efforts to salvage the country’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

  • Syrian Missile Explodes Near Israel’s Dimona Nuclear Reactor

    A Syrian missile landed and exploded about forty miles from Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. The IDF described the incident as unintentional: A Russia-made SA-5 was launched by a Syrian air defense unit, aiming at an IDF aircraft attacking Syrian military targets near Damascus. It appears that the Syrian missile had missed its target, and continued its flight trajectory which carried it all the way to the Negev desert, about 300 kilometers south of Damascus. There is unease in Israel over the fact that the missile managed to evade Israel’s robust anti-missile defenses.

  • U.S. Should Make Monitoring and Detecting Nuclear Threats a Higher National Priority

    To address current and evolving nuclear threats, the U.S. needs a higher prioritized and more integrated program for monitoring, detecting, and verifying nuclear test explosions, nuclear weapon stockpiles, and the production of fissile material, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences.

  • Iran Says 60 Percent Enrichment “Under Way” at Natanz Site

    Iranian officials say the country has begun enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity, higher than it has ever done before, despite ongoing talks between Tehran and world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Under the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had committed to keep enrichment to 3.67 percent. Recently it has been enriching up to 20 percent, saying the deal was no longer enforceable. Enriching uranium to 60 percent would be the highest level achieved by Iran’s nuclear program, it is still short of the 90 percent purity needed for military use.

  • Natanz Attack Sets Back Iran’s Nuclear Operations

    The Israeli Sunday sabotage operation against Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz destroyed a well-protected electrical substation housed 40 to 50 meters underground.Iranian officials said that thedestruction of the power supply led to the damage or destruction of “thousands of centrifuges” by causing them to slow down too rapidly.