UK taxpayers foot huge bill for the incompetence of The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA)
UK’s nuclear sites costing taxpayers ‘astronomical sums’, say MPs
Public accounts committee says ignorance, incompetence and weak oversight to blame, Guardian, Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington Fri 27 Nov 2020 The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has a perpetual lack of knowledge about the state and location of waste on the 17 sites it is responsible for making safe, a powerful committee of MPs has found.
This results from decades of poor record keeping and weak government oversight, the MPs said. Combined with a “sorry saga” of incompetence and failure, this has left taxpayers footing the bill for “astronomical sums”, they said.
The NDA acknowledges that it still does not have full understanding of the condition of its sites, including 10 closed Magnox stations from Dungeness in Kent to Hunterston in Ayrshire, the MPs report said.
The NDA’s most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years.
Since 2017, the NDA’s upper estimate of the cost of the 12-15-year programme just to get the sites to the ”‘care and maintenance” stage of the decommissioning process has increased by £3.1bn to £8.7bn. “Our past experience suggests these costs may increase further,” said the MPs’ report.
The lack of knowledge of the sites was a significant factor in the failure of a 2014 contract the NDA signed with a private sector company to decommission the Magnox sites. The government was forced to take back the contract in 2018 and the botched tender has now cost taxpayers £140m, the MPs found.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, deputy chair of the public accounts committee (PAC), said: “Although progress has been made since our [2018] report, incredibly, the NDA still doesn’t know even where we’re currently at, in terms of the state and safety of the UK’s disused nuclear sites. Without that, and after the Magnox contracting disaster, it is hard to have confidence in future plans or estimates.” ……….
The UK has eight operating nuclear power plants, with all but one due to retire in the next decade. Only one new plant is being built, at Hinkley Point in Somerset, and it is years behind schedule and billions over budget.
Despite recent speculation over another new plant being given the go-ahead at Sizewell in Suffolk, Boris Johnson failed to announce this in his green industrial revolution plan last week. The government’s new national infrastructure strategy, published on Wednesday, said: “The government is pursuing large-scale nuclear projects, subject to clear value for money for both consumers and taxpayers.”
In 2015, the government stripped another private consortium of a £9bn contract to clean up the nuclear waste site at Sellafield. The company had been heavily criticised for its executives’ expense claims which included a £714 bill for a “cat in a taxi”. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/27/uks-nuclear-sites-costing-taxpayers-astronomical-sums-say-mps#_=_
Architect of its nuclear programme assassinated – Iran vows retaliation
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was ambushed with explosives and machine gun fire in the town of Absard, 70km (44 miles) east of Tehran. Efforts to resuscitate him in hospital failed. His bodyguard and family members were also wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Israel was probably to blame, and an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed retaliation. “We will strike as thunder at the killers of this oppressed martyr and will make them regret their action,” tweeted Hossein Dehghan.
The killing was seen inside Iran as being as grave as the assassination by US forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in January.
Israel will face accusations that it is using the final weeks of the Trump administration to try to provoke Iran in the hope of closing off any chance of reconciliation between Tehran and the incoming US administration led by Joe Biden.
Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli Defence Force intelligence, said: “With the window of time left for Trump, such a move could lead Iran to a violent response, which would provide a pretext for a US-led attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.”…….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/27/mohsen-fakhrizadeh-iranian-nuclear-scientist-reportedly-shot-dead-near-tehran
The global energy revolution
RethinkX 25th Nov 2020, We are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most profound disruption of the energy sector in over a century. Like most disruptions, this one is being driven by the convergence of several key technologies whose costs and capabilities have been improving on consistent and predictable trajectories – namely, solar photovoltaic power, wind power, and lithium-ion battery energy storage.
Our analysis shows that 100% clean electricity from the combination of solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) is both physically possible and economically affordable across the entire continental United States as well as the overwhelming majority of other populated regions of the world by 2030.
Adoption of SWB is growing exponentially worldwide and disruption is now inevitable because by 2030 they will offer the cheapest electricity option for most regions. Coal, gas, and nuclear power assets will become stranded during the 2020s, and no new investment in these technologies is rational from this point forward.
New comic book investigates the dilemma about France’s nuclear wastes
Mediapart 26th Nov 2020, What to do with nuclear waste? Bury them. Or ? Where the population is reluctant to dispute. For example, in Meuse. But how to convince the last recalcitrant? By watering the municipalities with subsidies. What if they resist? There remains repression. This mind-boggling story is that of a new comic book investigative book: One hundred thousand years.
Comprehensive research now shows that irradiated areas near Chernobyl have fewest mammals
Scientific American (accessed) 26th Nov 2020, More than 30 years after the Chernobyl nuclear plant’s meltdown, an 18-mile
radius around the site remains almost entirely devoid of human
activity—creating a haven for wildlife. But scientists disagree over
lingering radiation’s effects on animal populations in this region, called
the Exclusion Zone.
A new analysis, based on estimating the actual doses
animals receive in various parts of the zone, supports the hypothesis that
areas with the most radiation have the fewest mammals. “The effects we
saw are consistent with conventional wisdom about radiation,” says
University of South Carolina biologist Timothy Mousseau, co-author of the
new study in Scientific Reports. “What’s surprising is that it took this
long to start looking at this in a rigorous, comprehensive way.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chernobyl-exclusion-zone-radiation-doses-reanalyzed/
Corruption investigation into AREVA’s sale of Nigerian uranium
British MP’s continue to botch in the ever more costly saga of Britain’s “old” nukes and “new” nukes
Times 27th Nov 2020, The NDA doesn’t really know because, as it told MPs, it “still does not have full understanding of the condition of the 17 sites”. It’s a point it proved with the meltdown of the £3.8 billion Magnox clean-up contract wrongly awarded to the Cavendish Fluor Partnership in 2014. That fiasco saw a High Court judge rule that the losing bidder, Energy Solutions and its partner, Bechtel, should have won the 14-year contract to bring the plants to a state of “care and maintenance”. The upshot? The government terminated the contract at a cost to the taxpayer of £142 million.
And now it’s back in the hands of the NDA, which is telling MPs that even that bit of work will now cost up to £8.7 billion and take another “12 to 15 years”. As the committee notes: “Past experience with the NDA suggests even these estimates will soon be out of date and costs may increase further”.
Isn’t that the story of everything to do with nuclear? True, you’d expect new-build plants to be better managed than Magnox and less
tricky to decommission than the Sellafield complex. The NDA also rejects the committee’s “suggestions that we may not understand the safety of our sites”. And the taxpayer-fleecing cost of the electricity coming from the £22.5 billion Hinkley Point C is meant to cover the clean-up bill.
Yet before Boris presses the go button on more nukes, including Rolls-Royce’s modular type, shouldn’t there be a debate about the waste? The government’s big idea is to bribe some local authority into housing a nice toxic dump, prettily dressed up as a “geological disposal facility”. Copeland in Cumbria is the closest to volunteering. But a deal is a long way off and the plan’s been vetoed before by Cumbria county council.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/nuclear-clean-up-bill-needs-scrutiny-h7c3xcz27
Fukushima nuclear reactor no.1 – debris prevented from falling into fuel storage pool
Tokyo Electric Power Company on Thursday released footage showing precautions it had taken to keep a broken crane from falling into the pool.
The crane, weighing 161 tons, has been hanging over the pool since a hydrogen explosion hit the building in March 2011. The pool is still holding nuclear fuel.
The video shows a platform being moved on rails to a spot directly under the broken part of the crane. A bag on the platform is then filled with mortar and fixed to the crane to hold it in place.
The entire process was done remotely due to high levels of radiation in the reactor building.
TEPCO plans to install a cover over the whole building before starting the removal of fuel from the pool as early as fiscal 2027.
Survey finds that most Fukushima evacuees do not intend to return
65% of Fukushima evacuees have no intention of returning home: survey https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/11/675982b84707-65-of-fukushima-evacuees-have-no-intention-of-returning-home-survey.html
KYODO NEWS Osaka, Sixty-five percent of the people who evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture after the March 2011 nuclear disaster have no intention of returning, according to a recent survey conducted by a Japanese university.
While the survey, conducted by a research facility at Kwansei Gakuin University, only received responses from 522 of 4,876 people to whom questionnaires were sent, it provided a rare insight into how former residents see the reconstruction of their former home.
The government of the northeastern prefecture has not carried out such surveys in recent years. There were over 36,900 evacuees within and outside the prefecture as of October, according to the prefectural government.
Among the 522 respondents who resided in the prefecture at the time of the nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant triggered by the massive quake and ensuing tsunamis, 341 people said they do not intend to return.
According to the survey conducted between July and September, 138 people said they plan to go back and 43 people did not answer or offer a valid response.
In response to a multiple-choice question asking why they have not returned to their homes, 46.1 percent said they still fear contamination of the environment, followed by 44.8 percent who said they have settled down in places they currently live.
Russia claims to have successfully tested an “unstoppable” nuclear missile
Russia tests ‘unstoppable’ nuclear missile after worrying threat to the US
Russia claims to have successfully tested an “unstoppable” nuclear missile, with state media saying it has the ability to hit US cities in minutes. news.com.auAlly Fosterallyjfoster 27 Nov 20,
The Russian military has claimed to have successfully tested an “unstoppable” nuclear missile, with the weapon almost reaching speeds of 10,000km/h.
The hypersonic weapon, known as the Mach 8 Zircon or Tsirkon, has been touted as President Vladimir Putin’s “weapon of choice”, with Russian media even claiming it could destroy prominent US locations within five minutes.
The Russian Ministry of Defence recently performed a test launch of the nuke in the White Sea, with officials claiming to have successfully hit a target located 450km away in the Barents Sea.
In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed the missile reached speeds of more than 8 March, or about 9878 km/h.
It reportedly took just over four minutes to reach its target.
Though Russia has continually claimed success in testing and creating these nuclear missiles, the country has also recently been reminded of the dangers such weapons can pose if something goes wrong.
On August 8, 2019, an explosion at a weapons testing range in Nyonoksa killed seven people and injured multiple others.
Intelligence officials quickly came up with multiple theories about the cause of the deadly explosion, with some believing a test of a new nuclear powered missile had gone wrong and others claiming a nuclear reactor blew up.
………Russian officials remained tight lipped about the incident, simply claiming the explosion was the result of a failed test of an “isotope power source for a liquid-fuelled rocket engine”.
The country’s weather agency later confirmed the blast ejected radioactive material into the air.
Reports claimed radiation levels temporarily soared to 20 times above the normal level in Severodvinsk, a city about 30 km from the weapons testing site in Nyonoksa. https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/russia-tests-unstoppable-nuclear-missile-after-worrying-threat-to-the-us/news-story/6dfc0365ac9fcd29d22c3bb5157455e1
A mock B61-12 nuclear bomb dropped for the first time.
Christina Macpherson’s websites & blogs
n.b This will be illegal under international law, as of January 22
By Greg Waldron27 November 2020 The Lockheed Martin F-35A has operated a flight test involving the dropping of a mock B61-12 nuclear bomb.The work took place at the Tonopah Test Range, and was conducted by Sandia National Laboratories. It was the first in a series of tests to assess the type’s ability to drop the weapon.
The aircraft, travelling faster than the speed of sound, dropped the inert weapon from 10,500ft. The weapon hit the designated target area 42s later.
“We’re showing the B61-12’s larger compatibility and broader versatility for the country’s nuclear deterrent, and we’re doing it in the world of Covid-19,” says Sandia executive Steven Samuels.
“We’re not slowing down. We’re still moving forward with the B61-12 compatibility activities on different platforms.”
This was the first time a B61-12 was dropped from the internal weapons bay of a fighter. It was also the first time the weapon was released at a speed greater than Mach 1.
The work follows other tests involving the Boeing F-15E Strike Eagle and Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
Sandia designs and produces non-nuclear components for the USA’s nuclear stock pile.
“The latest test is a critical piece in the F-35A and B61-12 programme,” adds Samuels. “Aboard the newest fighter, the B61-12 provides a strong piece of the overall nuclear deterrence strategy for our country and our allies.”
Beware the “madness of militarism” – Biden likely to appoint war-loving Michèle Flournoy as Defense Secretary
Hey Joe, Where You Going With That Pentagon in Your Hands? https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/11/23/hey-joe-where-you-going-pentagon-your-hands
The pernicious and lucrative aspects of military madness are personified in the favorite to be Biden’s Defense Secretary. by Norman Solomon,
Warning and petitioning Biden to dissuade him from a Flournoy nomination probably have scant chances of success. But if Biden puts her name forward, activists should quickly launch an all-out effort to block Senate confirmation.
As the Biden administration takes office, progressives have an opportunity to affirm and amplify the position that Martin Luther King Jr. boldly articulated when he insisted that “I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism.” In the present day, the pernicious and lucrative aspects of that madness are personified in the favorite to be Biden’s Defense Secretary.
Days ago, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) published a detailed analysis under the headline “Should Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense?” The well-documented answer: No.
Citing “extensive defense industry ties,” POGO provided an overview of Flournoy’s revolving-door career. When she wasn’t oiling the war machine in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Flournoy was profiteering from servicing that machine:
- “In 2002 she went from positions in the Pentagon and the National Defense University to the mainstream but hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is largely funded by industry and Pentagon contributions.”
- “Five years later, she co-founded the second-most heavily contractor-funded think tank in Washington, the highly influential Center for a New American Security. That became a stepping stone to her role as under secretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration.”
- “From there she rotated to the Boston Consulting Group, after which the firm’s military contracts expanded from $1.6 million to $32 million in three years. She also joined the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm laden with defense contracts. In 2017 she co-founded WestExec Advisors, helping defense corporations market their products to the Pentagon and other agencies.”
Running parallel to Flournoy’s financial conflicts of interest was her long record of advocacy for military conflicts.
“Flournoy was widely considered to have been one of Obama’s more hawkish advisers and helped mastermind the escalation of the disastrous war in Afghanistan,” Arwa Mahdawi pointed out in a Nov. 21 Guardian piece. “She has called for increased defense spending, arguing in a 2017 Washington Post op-ed that Trump was ‘right to raise the need for more defense dollars.’ She has complained that Obama didn’t use military force enough, particularly in Syria. She supported the wars in Iraq and Libya. . .”
The president-elect is hardly in a position to hold such a record against prospective appointees. He has never fully acknowledged, much less renounced, his own roles in advocating for disastrous U.S. wars — most notably and tragically, the war in Iraq.
Biden hasn’t gotten his story straight or come clean about supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. His specious claims that he didn’t really support the invasion have been gross misrepresentations of the historical record. Actually, Biden was the Democrat in the Senate who exerted the most leverage in support of the Iraq invasion, and he did so with public enthusiasm.
The foreseeable dangers of picking Flournoy to run the Pentagon are compounded by Biden’s selection of Antony Blinken to be Secretary of State. It was Blinken who, 18 years ago, served as staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while its chairman, Joe Biden, oversaw the pivotal and badly skewed two-day hearing in summer 2002 that greased the congressional skids for approving an invasion of Iraq.
Blinken, along with Flournoy, co-founded WestExec Advisors, which the Washington Post’s breaking-news coverage of the Blinken nomination gingerly described as “a political strategy firm.” It was a nice euphemism, in contrast to how POGO describes the WestExec Advisors mission — “helping defense corporations market their products to the Pentagon and other agencies.” The term “war profiteering” would be even more apt.
If past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, there are ample reasons for apprehension about the top of the military and foreign-policy team that Biden has begun to install for his presidency. But realism should not lead to fatalism or passivity.
Extricating the United States from the grip of the military-industrial complex will require massive and sustained organizing. With that goal in mind, a grassroots campaign to prevent Michèle Flournoy from becoming Secretary of Defense would be wise.
Canada’s environmental groups join to oppose experimental Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)
Canadian environmental groups oppose experimental small modular nuclear reactors, https://blackburnnews.com/midwestern-ontario/midwestern-ontario-news/2020/11/24/canadian-environmental-groups-oppose-experimental-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/ By Janice MacKay November 24, 2020 A number of groups have joined together to ask the federal government to halt its plans to fund experimental new small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).
The Federal Government is preparing to launch the federal government’s SMR ” Action Plan” within weeks.
The SMR Action Plan is expected to include a strategy to fund and support the development of experimental nuclear reactors by private sector companies, the majority based in the US and UK.
In a media release, dozens of organizations from coast to coast have called the proposed new nuclear reactors a dirty, dangerous distraction from tackling climate change. They include Greenpeace Canada, Friends of the Earth Canada, Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, Équiterre, the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and Northwatch..
The Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Green Party all oppose the government’s “small” modular nuclear reactor plan.
On November 13, Monique Pauze from the Bloc Québécois stated: “The Bloc Québécois denounces the intention of Ottawa to invest in nuclear energy to the benefit, once again, of the Ontario industrial sector, instead of financing the transition towards clean electricity. The Bloc calls for the abandonment of the anticipated deployment of small modular nuclear reactors. The Federal government is leading Canada towards a wall by betting on nuclear energy that is absolutely not clean.”
NDP natural resources critic Richard Cannings said in a statement: “Many Canadians have concerns about impacts of nuclear energy. When it comes to energy generation there are better ways forward. We have options that are cheaper and safer and will be available quicker. I think we should be supporting the development of energy storage solutions to help roll out renewables like solar and wind on a larger scale instead.”
On November 10, all three Green Party of Canada caucus members issued a statement and signed a letter to Minister O’Regan and Minister Navdeep Bains saying that: “Small nuclear reactors (SMRs) have no place in any plan to mitigate climate change when cleaner and cheaper alternatives already exist. The federal government must stop funding the nuclear industry and instead redirect investments towards smarter solutions. Nuclear fails on many grounds, including on the economics.”
Prof. Susan O’Donnell from the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick said: “Building new nuclear reactors does not belong in a climate action plan. Leading researchers have shown that investing in renewable energy is the best path to net zero and that adding nuclear energy to the mix actually hinders rather than helps.”
Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Director of Programs at Greenpeace Canada, said: “The Liberal government is throwing good money after bad. Hypothetical new nuclear power technologies have been promising to be the next big thing for the last forty years, but in spite of massive public subsidies, that prospect has never panned out.”
The release pointed out the proposed reactors are still on the drawing board and will take a decade or more to develop. If built, their power will cost ten times more than wind or solar energy. The most advanced SMR project to date in the US has already doubled its estimated cost – from $3B to over $6B.
The federal government announced its first SMR grant of $20 million to Terrestrial Energy on October 15.
The environmental groups said they are shocked that the government is funding new nuclear energy development with no parliamentary review, while trying to avoid public scrutiny and debate. They called the consultation process leading to date on the SMR Action Plan a sham. Individuals and groups could only comment on the plan if they first signed on to a statement of principles supporting SMR technologies. They say nuclear power and uranium mining will always be dirty and dangerous. Radioactive waste will have to be kept out of the environment for tens of thousands of years, and there is no known means of achieving that.
Destructive potential of over a million tons of radioactive water into the Pacific
Almost Unnoticed Nuclear Pandemic Is Spreading in Japan, https://indepthnews.net/index.php/the-world/asia-pacific/3967-almost-unnoticed-nuclear-pandemic-is-spreading-in-japanBy Manlio Dinucci, MONTREAL (IDN) 4 Nov 20, – It was not Covid-19, therefore the news went almost unnoticed: Japan will release over a million tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea. The catastrophic incident in Fukushima was triggered by the Tsunami that struck the north-eastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, submerging the power plant and causing the core of three nuclear reactors to melt.The power plant was built on the coast just 4 meters above sea level with five-meter-high breakwater dams, in a tsunami-prone area with waves 10-15 meters high. Furthermore, there had been serious failures by the private company TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company) managing the plant, in the control of the nuclear plant: the safety devices did not come into operation at the time of the Tsunami.
Water has been pumped through the reactors for years to cool the molten fuel. The water became radioactive and was stored inside the plant in over a thousand large tanks, accumulating 1.23 million tons of radioactive water. TEPCO is building other tanks, but they will also be full by mid-2022.
TEPCO must continue pumping water into the melted reactors and has decided to discharge, in agreement with the government, the water accumulated so far into the sea after filtering it to make it less radioactive (however, to what extent it is not known) with a process which will last 30 years. There is also radioactive sludge accumulated in the decontamination filters of the plant, stored in thousands of containers, and huge quantities of soil and other radioactive materials.
As TEPCO admitted, the melting in reactor 3 is particularly serious because the reactor was loaded with Mox, a much more unstable and radioactive mix of uranium oxides and plutonium.
The Mox for this reactor and other Japanese ones was produced in France, using nuclear waste sent from Japan. Greenpeace has denounced the danger deriving from the transport of this plutonium fuel for ten thousand kilometres.
Greenpeace also denounced that Mox favours the proliferation of nuclear weapons, since plutonium can be extracted more easily and, in the cycle of uranium exploitation, there is no clear dividing line between civilian and military use of fissile material.
Up to now, around 240 tons of plutonium for direct military use and 2,400 tons for civil use (nuclear weapons can however be produced with them), were accumulated in the world (according to 2015 estimates), plus about 1,400 tons of highly enriched uranium for military use. A few hundred kilograms of plutonium would be enough to cause lung cancer to 7.7 billion inhabitants of the planet, and plutonium remains lethal for a period corresponding to almost ten-thousand human generations.
A destructive potential has thus accumulated, for the first time in history, capable of making the human species disappear from the face of Earth. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the more than 2,000 experimental nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, at sea and underground; the manufacture of nuclear warheads with a power equivalent to over one million Hiroshima bombs; the numerous accidents involving nuclear weapons and those involving civilian and military nuclear plants, all this has caused radioactive contamination that has affected hundreds of millions of people.
A portion of approximately 10 million annual cancer deaths worldwide – documented by WHO – is attributable to the long-term effects of radiation. In ten months, again according to the World Health Organization data, Covid-19 caused about 1.2 million deaths worldwide.
This danger should not be underestimated, but it does not justify the fact that mass media, especially television, did not inform that over one million tons of radioactive water will be discharged into the sea from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, with the result that it will further increase cancer deaths upon entering in the food chain.
President Joe Biden will have just 16 days from Inauguration Day to rescue the New START Treaty
Biden May Have 16 Days to Stave Off a Nuclear Arms Race, Preserving the New START treaty with Russia will be one of his earliest missions, Bloomberg, By Peter Coy , 25 Nov 20,
If New START is allowed to expire, a nuclear arms race could break out. Retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, wrote in a Bloomberg Opinion column on Oct. 30, that a stop to New START would allow both sides to deploy more nukes of current designs as well as make more advanced systems, “all of which would be very destabilizing.”
Some pressure, right? For insight into what Biden and his team will do, I interviewed Jon Wolfsthal, who served from 2014 to 2017 as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council. He was also a senior adviser to Vice President Biden on nuclear security and nonproliferation from 2009 to 2012.
Some pressure, right? For insight into what Biden and his team will do, I interviewed Jon Wolfsthal, who served from 2014 to 2017 as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council. He was also a senior adviser to Vice President Biden on nuclear security and nonproliferation from 2009 to 2012.
Wolfsthal says he’s optimistic about Biden’s chances of staving off a fresh nuclear arms race……….
Biden and his team will have a long list of nuclear weapons problems to deal with, including the rapid growth of China’s
………… Wolfsthal says New START, which went into effect in 2011, is flawed but shouldn’t be left to expire, because
Nuclear arms control doesn’t get as much attention as other priorities for Biden’s first 100 days, but nothing is more
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