As I wrote on June 23rd, the IAEA Board of Governors referred Syria to the UN Security Council over allegations, proven-ish, that it had covertly built a plutonium production reactor which the Israelis then destroyed in 2007. And, because Damascus has continued to block IAEA efforts to return to the Dair Alzour site to gather […]
Journalist R. Jeffrey Smith has a piece in today's Washington Post which publicizes a letter released by Abdul Quadeer Khan, Pakistani proliferation raconteur, and imaginary nuke trader (the West made it up, you see) to former British Journalist Simon Henderson which ” support(s) his claim that he personally transferred more than $3 million in payments […]
After nearly seven years of negotiations, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, formed ironically in response to India’s diversion of civilian nuclear technology to nuclear weapons production, issued more stringent guidelines for transfer of enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies. The new guidelines, approved during its June 23-24 meeting in the Netherlands, strengthens the conditions under which a […]
We’re on a slippery slope, which we first stepped onto in April 1986 when President Reagan ordered a fighter raid on Colonel Gaddafi’s Tripoli compound, in retaliation for a Libyan-inspired terrorist attack on a nightclub in Berlin. Though Gaddafi survived, one of his children died– which rather stuck in the craw, even as one cheered […]
That’s what I call Joe Cirincione, Ploughshares President – behind his back, of course. He is the closest thing the arms control community has to a celeb – always camera-ready, always posed and always well-informed. And hey, he’s friends with Michael Douglas. But, in all seriousness, Joe has worked tirelessly for nuclear disarmament over the […]
Over at the CSIS Proliferation Prevention Program, program staff have helpfully culled useful articles and such on things nuclear that they are reading. They have separated the wheat from the nuclear chaff. Good stuff. The main page is here. The archives are found at Delicious.
Another interview, this one from the guy who continues to shirk responsibility for establishing the most destructive proliferation network in history and helping to arm Syria, North Korea and Iran, to name a few: Abdul Qadeer Khan. In his latest sit down, this one with Der Spiegel via e-mail, Khan actually makes the following, laughable […]
Former Director General of the IAEA and former UNSCOM head Hans Blix sat down with The Economist online in a segment they call “Tea with The Economist”. In it, Blix talks about the Global Zero campaign, how practical nuclear disarmament really is and how we should deal with ne’er do well countries like North Korea. […]
In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, little-noticed radioactive nuggets which are used for everything from examining welds to providing medical therapies were suddenly the rage. The rage, that is, to account for, gather up, and secure. Sources like Strontium-90, Cobalt-60, Iridium-192 and Americium-241 all became household words – or the closest […]
I wrote in a previous post that the IAEA Board of Governors was preparing to finally make a decision regarding referral of Syria to the UN Security Council for continuing to stonewall the IAEA and preventing safeguards inspectors from having a look at Dair Alzour. You will recall that this was the site of an […]
Global Zero, the international movement pressing for the phased and verifiable elimination of all nuclear weapons, has issued a report estimating that the 8.5 nuclear weapons states–North Korea is rated halfway there–will spend about $1 trillion dollars in this decade upgrading, expanding and maintaining their atomic arsenals. The study, which has received some notice in […]
Beware CTBT Cheaters! We have a Garmin and we know how to use it! In addition to finding your way home and locating enemy targets, researchers at The Ohio State University have found another use for our little Garmin: detecting clandestine nuclear tests. The Global Security Newswire reports today on the work of Ralph Von […]
In the context of all the Iranian nuke news, Reuters has run a couple of basic, layperson-accessible FAQs, or “Factboxes”, on uranium enrichment and how uranium ore becomes civilian nuke fuel. They are reasonably accurate.
Longtime nuke journalist and now Senior Associate at Carnegie Mark Hibbs has written an update on the ongoing saga regarding the Dair Alzour site in Syria. Readers will recall that the site was bombed four years ago by the Israeli military because it believed, along with the U.S., that the Syrians were hiding a DPRK-supplied […]
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, will speak about promoting nonproliferation at the Japan Society in New York on May 31st. Details below. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2011 Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General to the United Nations, to Speak on Promoting Nonproliferation NEW YORK— Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General, will speak on Tuesday at the conference: […]