• With Redesigned “Brains,” W88 Nuclear Warhead Reaches Milestone

    The W88 nuclear warhead entered the stockpile in late 1988 and is deployed on the Navy’s Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile system onboard Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines. The weapon was beyond its original design life, and several updates were required to address aging issues and to maintain its current state of readiness.

  • 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.

  • Investigating Materials for Safe, Secure Nuclear Power

    A longstanding interest in radiation’s effects on metals has drawn Michael Short into new areas such as nuclear security and microreactors.

  • New Weapons Testing Capability Produces Richer Data, Saves Time, Cost

    A team of Sandia National Laboratories engineers developed a new testing capability in support of the lab’s nuclear weapons mission. The new weapons testing capability produces richer data, and saves time and cost. “Superfuge” test combines multiple environments on a full-scale weapons system.

  • U.S. Concerned About Report China is Expanding Missile Silos

    Using images provided by the satellite imaging company Planet, researchers found that China is building 119 silos in the desert of the northwestern province of Gansu.The expansion of the number of launch silos for China’s arsenal of intercontinental range ballistic missiles raises fears that nuclear weapons will become a new issue of contention between Washington and Beijing.

  • 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.

  • Researchers Look at Nuclear Weapon Effects for Near-Surface Detonations

    Researchers have taken a closer look at how nuclear weapon blasts close to the Earth’s surface create complications in their effects and apparent yields. Attempts to correlate data from events with low heights of burst revealed a need to improve the theoretical treatment of strong blast waves rebounding from hard surfaces.

  • 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.