• France: Iran Could Have Nuclear Weapon within One to Two Years

    French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has warned that Iran could have nuclear weapons in one or two years if Tehran continues to violate a landmark nuclear accord with world powers. Before the nuclear deal between Iran and the leading world powers was signed in October 2015, Iran’s “dash-to-the-bomb” break-out time was estimated to be between two and five months. The various clauses of the nuclear deal had increased Iran’s break-out time to 12-18 months – and the deal would have kept Iran’s nuclear program in that state until 2030. Since the U.S, withdrew from deal on 8 May 2018, Iran has systematically, if carefully and slowly, breached more and more of the restrictions imposed on its nuclear program in 2015.

  • 2020 Conflicts: The Most Likely, and Most Damaging to U.S.

    The Council on Foreign Relations has asked policy experts to rank thirty ongoing or potential conflicts based on how likely they are to occur or escalate in the next year, and their possible impact on U.S. interests. For the second year in a row, a highly disruptive cyberattack on critical infrastructure, including electoral systems, was the top-ranked homeland security–related concern. A mass-casualty terrorist attack was a close second. A confrontation between the United States and Iran, North Korea, or with China in the South China Sea remain the biggest concerns overseas.

  • Iran's Attacks on U.S. Assets Could Encourage N. Korea's Nuclear Ambitions: Experts

    Iran’s attacks on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops as Tehran announced it will no longer comply with restrictions on uranium enrichment may encourage North Korea to perfect its nuclear and missile technologies, experts said.

  • Iran Abandons 2015 Nuclear Deal

    Iran says it is no longer limiting the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium— a virtual abandonment of the 2015 nuclear deal. But the Sunday statement did not make any explicit threats that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon — something Iran has always denied it wants to do. Its statement said Iran will still cooperate with the International Atomic Agency. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out in 2018.

  • Helping Keep U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Safe from Radiation

    Advanced modeling speeds up weapons research, development and qualification. It also lets researchers model changes in experimental conditions that increase the total radiation dose, change how fast a device gets that dose, and mix and match destructive elements like neutrons, energy and heat in environments that cannot be recreated in experimental facilities.

  • Understanding Iran’s Nuclear Escalation Strategy

    Iran is back in the nuclear game. Eric Brewer and Ariane Tabatabi write that the United States and the remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal must prepare for what may be a significantly more challenging year ahead with additional Iranian nuclear escalatory measures. “By withdrawing from the agreement and already firing its most potent rounds (i.e., oil and banking sanctions), the United States is limited in its ability to deter further Iranian nuclear advances. Iran, on the other hand, still has more chips it can play,” they write.

  • The Nexus Between Nuclear Energy & Nuclear Security

    Despite the plentiful and relatively cheap energy available in the upper-income countries, nearly one billion people worldwide have no consistent access to electricity, with another one billion having reduced access to healthcare due to energy poverty and a further 2.7 billion relying on biomass as their primary source of energy. Any program hoping to ameliorate these challenges would almost certainly require a radical expansion in global electricity generation. While renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, will inevitably play a role in any low-carbon future, any genuinely sustainable energy future would also require a massive investment in nuclear energy.

  • Today, Everyone’s a Nuclear Spy

    There was a time when tracking nuclear threats was the domain of secret agents, specialists at high-powered government intelligence agencies, and think-tank experts. Not anymore. Amy Zegart writes that today, the world of new nuclear sleuths looks like the Star Wars bar scene. What has empowered these nuclear detectives and made their work possible is the fact that in the last 15-20 years, commercial satellites have become common – and their capabilities, although not at the level of spy satellites, are not too far behind. Open-source amateur nuclear sleuthing comes with risks, but Zegart says that despite these risks, the democratization of nuclear-threat intelligence is likely to be a boon to the cause of nonproliferation.

  • Worry: Iran Said It Will Continue to Enrich Uranium Beyond Radioactive Isotopes Level

    Tehran sent a letter to the UN Thursday saying that it was “determined to resolutely continue” enriching uranium. This came following an EU letter criticizing the Iranian government’s decision, and a Russian firm suspending cooperation in Iran’s uranium enrichment program at the underground Fordo facility.

  • How the Nation’s Hydrogen Bomb Secrets Disappeared

    Given a choice of items to lose on a train, a top-secret document detailing the newly developed hydrogen bomb should be on the bottom of the list. In January 1953, amid the Red Scare and the Korean War, that’s exactly what physicist John Archibald Wheeler lost.

  • Fourth Spy Unearthed in U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

    The United States detonated world’s first atomic bomb on 16 July 1945. Four years later, in August 1949, the Soviet Union detonated a nearly identical device in Central Asia – an event which stunned the U.S. military and scientific communities, which did not believe the Soviet Union had the scientific and technical know-how to do so. By 1950s, it became clear that the Soviet quick march to the bomb was aided by spies that the USSR managed to place in Los Alamos – three of them were identified early on. The identity of the fourth has just been revealed.

  • The U.S. Wants to Bury SC’s Plutonium Stockpile Forever. Its New Home Isn’t Sure It Wants It.

    How long will it take for weapons-grade plutonium stockpile, temporarily stored at the South Carolina’s Savanah River nuclear weapons complex, to decay, that it, to have its radioactivity reduced to a level at which it will no longer pose radiation risks or turned into nuclear weapons? About seven billion years, or a little more than double the age of planet Earth. The government’s plutonium plan calls for expanding a nuclear waste burial ground located inside an abandoned salt mine near Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP. But New Mexico objects.

  • Dealing with the Soviet Nuclear Legacy

    On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union conducted their first nuclear test. Over a 40-year period, they conducted 456 nuclear explosions at Semipalatinsk, in eastern Kazakhstan — 116 aboveground and 340 underground. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the scientists and military personnel abandoned the site and fled the country, leaving behind large quantities of nuclear materials, completely unsecured. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has been quietly helping Kazakhstan deal with the Soviet nuclear legacy.

  • Would Terrorists Set Off a Nuclear Weapon If They Had One? We Shouldn’t Assume So

    For decades, the nightmare of nuclear terrorism has haunted the corridors of power in Washington and the imagination of Western popular culture. While this was true even before September 11, 2001, in the days since, a consensus has formed from which few dare deviate: Terrorist organizations are trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and if they are successful, they will use them in an attack as soon as possible. But how valid is this “acquisition-use assumption,” Christopher McIntosh and Ian Store ask.

  • Iran’s Nuclear Weapons “Breakout” Time Getting Shorter: Experts

    The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, and the administration’s “maximum pressure” policy, are failing to yield the desired results, as Iran, pursuing a methodical “creep-out” strategy, is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. In 2015, Iran’s “breakout” time, that is, the amount of time Iran would need to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon, was three months. The 2015 agreement, by imposing serve technical restrictions and intrusive monitoring, increased Iran’s breakout time to about twelve months. Experts now say that since the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty, Iran’s breakout time has been reduced to 6-10 months. “The breakout time will decrease further as Iran increases its stock of enriched uranium and installs more centrifuges,” the experts say.