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Biden to Bibi: ‘OK to continue Gaza genocide till after election’

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coaliton, Glen Ellyn IL, 27 Oct 24

On October 14, President Biden sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving Israel 30 days to allow more aid of food, water and medicine into Gaza’s 139 square miles being utterly destroyed by Israel for the past year. It’s noteworthy that the 30 day time limit ends 9 days after the US election. Biden’s letter is brilliant politics and grotesque governance. Biden, who has been funding, supporting and enabling the yearlong genocide in Gaza, desperately needs to appear peace loving ahead of the election. He knows a majority of his Democratic voters are horrified by his genocide enabling. They want him to end the so far 50,000 tons of weapons he’s already given Israel to demolish Gaza.

The letter, designed to promote his concern for the devastation he’s enabled, will do nothing to end the genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu has ignored every one of Biden’s pleas for supplying life sustaining aid there. The letter doesn’t even state Biden will cut off aid to Israel. It merely implies that if US demands aren’t met, the US might consider enforcing foreign assistance laws. Those laws forbid the US from sending weapons to any nation committing wholesale destruction of civilian populations. But not one word about actually cutting off those weapons destroying Gaza.   

Every day dozens, hundreds, even a thousand or more Palestinians die in Gaza, obliterated by Biden’s 2,000 lb. bombs, or killed more slowly from disease or starvation. Biden does not care. His toothless letter begging for more aid to the 2,300,000 Palestinians will do nothing to alleviate their suffering. But it may mollify his antiwar critics enough to help achieve Democratic victory Election Day.

Win or lose November 5, Biden is unlikely to do anything substantive to end the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It goes against everything he’s believed in and supported about Israeli colonial domination of Palestine for his entire 52 year governmental career. But it will ensure he descends into historical infamy for enabling the worst genocide of the 21st century. 

October 29, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Israel Kills Five Journalists in Sunday Gaza Attacks

Three journalists were among 9 civilians killed in a shelter

by Jason Ditz October 27, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/27/israel-kills-five-journalists-in-sunday-gaza-attacks/#gsc.tab=0

Israel has come under growing international criticism for its deliberate attacks on journalists. That doesn’t seem to be impacting Israeli policy, however, as five more journalists were reported killed today in attacks across the Gaza Strip.

The victims of today’s attacks included  Saed Radwan with Al-Aqsa TV, Hamza Abu Salmiya with Sanad News Agency, Haneen Baroud with Al-Quds Foundation, Abdulrahman Al-Tanani with Sawt Al-Shaab, and Nadia Al-Sayed, who works for multiple outlets.

Radwan, Salmiya and Baroud were all killed in an Israeli attack on a UN school in al-Shati refugee camp, where people were sheltering from the ongoing attacks. Nine civilians overall, including the three journalists, were slain in the attack. The other two were killed in separate attacks.

This brings the number of journalists killed in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip to at least 180. This toll is on top of those killed in other Israeli wars, including three Lebanese journalists who were killed in a deliberate Israeli attack on Friday.

Though Israel rarely offers specific comments on the individual assassinations, they have been making a concerted effort to brand a number of journalists as “terrorists.” Though this is being criticized by international press groups, it likely will reduce the specific questions about their eventual killing being an effort to silence reports on Israeli war crimes.

As with other civilians, many journalists are being forced to flee their homes as Israeli attacks approach. Israel has forbidden foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip to cover the war, and that means all the reports are coming from a shrinking number of local journalists who are still alive.

October 29, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Media Hawks Make Case for War Against Iran

This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).

What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment.

Gregory Shupak, FAIR, 25 Oct 24

The media hawks are flying high, pushing out bellicose rhetoric on the op-ed pages that seems calculated to whip the public into a war-ready frenzy.

Just as they have done with Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 10/10/24), prominent conservative media opinionators misrepresent Iran as the aggressor against an Israel that practices admirable restraint.

Under the headline, “Iran Opens the Door to Retaliation,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/1/24) wrote that Iran’s October 1 operation against Israel “warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets. This is Iran’s second missile barrage since April, and no country can let this become a new normal.”

The editors wrote:

After April’s attack, the Biden administration pressured Israel for a token response, and President Biden said Israel should “take the win” since there was no great harm to Israel. Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.

‘We need to escalate’

The New York Times‘ self-described “warmongering neocon” columnist Bret Stephens (10/1/24), in a piece headlined “We Absolutely Need to Escalate in Iran,” similarly filed Iran’s April and October strikes on Israel under “aggression” that requires a US/Israeli military “response.” And a Boston Globe editorial (10/3/24) wrote that Iran “launched a brazen attack,” arguing that the incident illustrated why US students are wrong to oppose American firms making or investing in Israeli weapons.

All of these pieces conveniently neglected to mention that Iran announced that its October 1 missile barrage was “a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah and Hamas” (Responsible Statecraft, 10/1/24). One of these assassinations was carried out by a bombing in Tehran, the Iranian capital. But we can only guess as to whether the Globe thinks those killings are “brazen,” Stephens thinks they qualify as “aggression,” or if the Journal believes any country can let such assassinations “become a new normal.”

Likewise, Iran’s April strikes came after Israel’s attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers (CBS, 4/14/24). At the time, Iran reportedly said that it would refrain from striking back against Israel if the latter agreed to end its mass murder campaign in Gaza (Responsible Statecraft, 4/8/24).

‘Axis of Aggression’

A second Stephens piece (New York Times, 10/8/24) claimed that “the American people had better hope Israel wins” in its war against “the Axis of Aggression led from Tehran.” The latter is his term for the coalition of forces resisting the US and Israel from Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, which refers to itself as the “axis of resistance.” Stephens’ reasoning is that, since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country has meant suffering for thousands of Americans: the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran; the diplomatsand Marines in Beirut; the troops around Baghdad and Basra, killed by munitions built in Iran and supplied to proxies in Iraq; the American citizens routinely taken as prisoners in Iran; the Navy SEALs who perished in January trying to stop Iran from supplying Houthis with weapons used against commercial shipping.

The war Israelis are fighting now—the one the news media often mislabels the “Gaza war,” but is really between Israel and Iran—is fundamentally America’s war, too: a war against a shared enemy; an enemy that makes common cause with our totalitarian adversaries in Moscow and Beijing; an enemy that has been attacking us for 45 years. Americans should consider ourselves fortunate that Israel is bearing the brunt of the fighting; the least we can do is root for it.

This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).

Given this background, suggesting—as the Journal, the Globe and Stephens do—that Iran is the aggressor against the US is not only untenable but laughable. Furthermore, as I’ve previously shown (FAIR.org, 1/21/20), it’s hardly a settled fact that Iran is responsible for Iraqi attacks on US occupation forces in the country. Stephens’ description of the Navy SEALs who died in the Red Sea is vague enough that one might be left with the impression that Iran or Ansar Allah killed them, but the SEALs died when one of them fell overboard and the other jumped into the water to try to save him (BBC, 1/22/24).

Stephens went on:

Those who care about the future of freedom had better hope Israel wins.

We are living in a world that increasingly resembles the 1930s, when cunning and aggressive dictatorships united against debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse democracies. Today’s dictatorships also know how to smell weakness. We would all be safer if, in the Middle East, they finally learned the taste of defeat.

What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment. More realistically, the “future of freedom” is jeopardized by the US/Israeli alliance’s invading the lands of Palestinian and Lebanese people and massacring them. These crimes suggest that, in the Journal’s parlance, it’s the US/Israeli partnership that is the “regional and global menace.” Or, to borrow another phrase from the Journal’s editorial, it’s Israel and the US who are the “dangerous regime[s]” from which “the civilized world” must be defended.

‘A global menace’

Corporate media commentators didn’t stop at Iran’s direct strikes on Israel, casting Iran as, in the Journal‘s words (10/1/24), “a regional and global menace”:…………………………………………………………………

Painting Iran as the mastermind behind unprovoked worldwide aggression helps prop up the hawks’ demands for escalation. But the US State Department said there was “no direct evidence” that Iran was involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, “either in planning it or carrying it out” (NBC, 10/12/23)…………………………………………………………………………………..

Propaganda goes nuclear

As usual, those who are itching for a war on Iran invoke the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Stephens (New York Times, 10/1/24) wrote:

This year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Even with the requisite fissile material, it takes time and expertise to fashion a nuclear weapon, particularly one small enough to be delivered by a missile. But a prime goal for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is plainly in sight, especially if it receives technical help from its new best friends in Russia, China and North Korea.

Now’s the time for someone to do something about it.

That someone will probably be Israel.

By “something,” Stephens said he also meant that “Biden should order” military strikes to destroy the “Isfahan missile complex.” “There is a uranium enrichment site near Isfahan, too,” Stephens wrote suggestively.

The LA Times published two guest op-eds in less than two weeks urging attacks on Iran based on its alleged nuclear threat. Yossi Klein Halevi (10/7/24) wrote:…………………………………..

‘Threshold’ is a ways away…………………………………………………….

Recent history shows that Iran has been willing to “stop itself” from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran abided by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal, under which Iran limited its nuclear development in exchange for a partial easing of US sanctions. It stuck to the deal for some time even after the United States unilaterally abandoned it.

Just before President Donald Trump ripped up the agreement in 2018, the IAEA reported that Iran was “implementing its nuclear-related commitments” under the accord. The year after the US abrogated the agreement, Iran was still keeping up its end of the bargain.

‘Provocative actions’ from US/Israel

Iran subsequently stopped adhering to the by then nonexistent deal—often advancing its nuclear program, as Responsible Statecraft (5/7/24) noted, “in response to provocative actions from the US and Israel”:

In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief.

In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021.

However, situating Iranian policies in relation to US/Israeli actions like these would get in the way of the Journal’s campaign, which it articulated in another editorial (10/2/24), to convince the public that “If Mr. Biden won’t take this opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the least he can do is not stop Israel from doing the job for its own self-preservation.”

Of course, the crucial, unstated assumption in the articles by Stephens, Halevi, Heilman and the Journal’s editors is that Iran’s hypothetical nuclear weapons are emergencies that need to be immediately addressed by bombing the country—while Washington and Tel Aviv’s vast, actually existing nuclear arsenals warrant no concern. https://fair.org/home/media-hawks-make-case-for-war-against-iran/

October 29, 2024 Posted by | Iran, media | Leave a comment

‘You couldn’t make this up’: Expert pans Ontario nuclear option

SMH, By Bianca Hall and Nick O’Malley, October 28, 2024

Ontario subsidises its citizens’ electricity power bills by $7.3 billion a year from general revenue, an international energy expert has said, contradicting the Coalition’s claim that nuclear reactors would drive power prices down in Australia.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has repeatedly cited the Canadian province as a model for cheaper power prices from nuclear.

“In Ontario, that family is paying half of what the family is paying here in Perth for their electricity because of nuclear power,” Dutton said in March. “Why wouldn’t we consider it as a country?”

In July, Dutton said Canadian consumers paid about one-quarter of Australian prices for electricity.

Professor Mark Winfield, an academic from York University in Canada who specialises in energy and environment, on Monday said the reaction among people in Ontario to the comparison had ranged from disbelief to “you couldn’t make this up”.

Ontario embarked on a massive building spree between the 1960s and the 1990s, Winfield told a briefing hosted by the Climate Council and the Smart Energy Council.

In the process, he said, the provincial-owned utility building the generators “effectively bankrupted itself”. About $21 billion in debt had to be stranded to render the successor organisation Ontario Power Generation economically viable.

In 2015, the Canadian government approved a plan to refurbish 10 ageing reactors, but Winfield said the refurbishment program had also been beset by cost blowouts.

“The last one, [in] Darlington, east of Toronto, was supposed to cost $C4 billion and ended up costing $C14 [billion],” Winfield said.

“And that was fairly typical of what we saw, of a cost overrun in the range of about 2.5 times over estimate.”

In Melbourne, Dutton said while he respected new Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s opposition to nuclear, he would work with “sensible” premiers in Queensland, South Australia and NSW on his plan, if he was elected………………………………………………..

Winfield said household bills were kept artificially low under the Ontario model, despite the high cost of refurbishing ageing nuclear facilities.

“There’s a legacy of that still in the system that we are effectively subsidising electricity bills to the tune of about $C7.3 billion a year out of general revenues. That constitutes most of the provincial deficit; that’s money that otherwise could be going on schools and hospitals.”

Dutton’s comments came as a parliamentary inquiry into the suitability of nuclear power for Australia continued in Canberra. Experts provided evidence on how long it would take to build a nuclear fleet, and the potential cost and impact on energy prices compared with the government’s plan to replace the ageing coal fleet with a system of renewables backed by storage and gas peakers.

……………………………………………………….. In its annual GenCost, CSIRO estimated earlier this year that a single large-scale nuclear reactor in Australia would cost $16 billion and take nearly two decades to build, too late for it to help meet Australia’s international climate change commitments, which requires it to cut emissions 43 per cent by 2030. It found renewables to be the cheapest option for Australia.

Dutton has so far refused to be drawn on the costs of his nuclear policy. Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the Coalition would release costings before the next federal election, which must be held by May.

O’Brien told this masthead “expert after expert” had provided evidence that nuclear energy placed downward pressure on power prices around the world. ……………. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/you-couldn-t-make-this-up-expert-pans-ontario-nuclear-option-20241028-p5klx1.html

October 29, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Canada, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Climate Goal “Will Be Dead Within a Few Years” Unless World Acts, UN Warns

The world is well on track to blow past a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius that many countries have put at the center of their climate efforts

By Sara Schonhardt & E&E News

Climate Goal “Will Be Dead Within a Few Years” Unless World Acts, UN
Warns. The world is well on track to blow past a goal of limiting global
warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius that many countries have put at the center
of their climate efforts. I

f current trends continue, “there is virtually
no chance” of limiting global warming over the past 170 years to 1.5
degrees, according to the latest emissions gap report from the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Even in the most optimistic
scenarios, where all countries deliver on their emission-cutting pledges,
“there remains about a 3-in-4 chance that warming will exceed 1.5C,” it
adds.

 Scientific American 25th Oct 2024, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-goal-will-be-dead-within-a-few-years-unless-world-acts-un-warns/

October 29, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Are Royal Navy nuclear deterrent submarines being re-supplied mid-patrol?

 Navy Lookout 25th Oct 2024

A recent article in The Sun newspaper suggests that submariners were almost “starved’ while on an epic six-month patrol because the boat could not be resupplied with food as planned. Here, we briefly consider the implications of this report.

As we first reported, Vanguard-class submarines have been conducting increasingly lengthy Patrols with HMS Vigilant completing a record 195-day patrol in September 2023 and at least one other boat also came close to repeating the feat in 2024. This was due to a number of factors, including the delayed refit of HMS Vanguard and the unavailability of the shiplift in Faslane to conduct urgent maintenance.

The Sun may be dismissed by many as mostly disreputable rag but the journalists who wrote this piece have a good track record and this is a credible story. Under the superb headline “The Hunt for Bread October”, the tabloid reports that the boat ran so low on food that the crew were forced to ration meals. Personal supplies of sweets and nutty were handed in to be shared equally and the small tuckshop on board ran out of supplies and was closed. Of deeper concern, the report says medics on board feared a serious loss of life from fatigue and concentration lapses, although the RN denies there was any danger of starvation. The report does not reveal the kind of quality and frequency of meals being served towards the end of the patrol but does raise questions about the true endurance of nuclear boats.

Able to produce their own power, make freshwater, produce oxygen and remove excess CO2, nuclear submarine endurance is theoretically almost indefinite, only subject to machinery reliability. The limiting factor is the mental endurance of the people on board and their food supply. Even modern AIP conventional submarines will eventually have to return to port to take on diesel fuel so their chain of command do not have the option to extend patrols in the same way……………………………………………………………………..

The Vanguards were originally designed to conduct patrols of around three months, possibly extended to around four months at a push. The storerooms and freezers may have been subsequently modified to support even longer patrols but space is at a premium, even on a large SSBN. There is also the issue of waste disposal, SSBNs are not supposed to eject gash as it potentially could provide a clue to their presence. Imagine how much waste is generated by 130 people during six months at sea. There is also the mundane but important issue of toilet paper. Finding room for an adequate supply of bulky loo rolls can be a problem even on more spacious surface ships. It is difficult to believe that a Vanguard boat can stay at sea unsupported for 6 months, even if it began the patrol with extra food crammed into absolutely every available space.

The most critical line in the Sun article is that “plans to resupply at sea were scrapped”. It is speculation, but it would appear that in order to stay at sea for 6-months, the expectation is that the boats will be resupplied by a ship mid-patrol. This would mean surfacing somewhere and rapidly taking on food and offloading gash. This would need to be done as discreetly as possible, probably at night and in a sheltered location where the resupply can be done quickly and safely. The vessel involved may have been specially equipped for the task as coming alongside a submarine in open water is not easy. Alternatively, a helicopter could VERTREP supplies onto the casing. Either way, if this is the case, it would break a key principle of the nuclear deterrent that is never supposed to surface, potentially exposing it to detection.

With three boats back in the patrol cycle it is hoped that patrol lengths will fall slightly and these epic patrols can be avoided in future. The First Sea Lord, government ministers and His Majesty the King have all been to Faslane/Coulport in recent months to say a personal “thank you” to the crews of these boats who have clearly gone above and beyond in making personal sacrifices to maintain the continuous at-sea deterrent. The ‘super patrols’ might be tolerable on a couple of occasions but cannot be sustainable as it puts undue mental stress on people and risk the credibility and safety of the deterrent force. https://www.navylookout.com/are-royal-navy-nuclear-deterrent-submarines-being-re-supplied-mid-patrol/

October 29, 2024 Posted by | health | Leave a comment

MP seeks answers on Submarine Dismantling Project in Rosyth

26th October, By Ally McRoberts

THE UK Government have been asked what steps they’re taking to keep West Fife safe and mitigate the “potential risks” posed by the Submarine Dismantling Project.

Radioactive waste is being removed from old nuclear subs at Rosyth Dockyard and Babcock have just applied for permission for more hazardous material to be taken out in the next stage.

Christine Jardine, Lib Dem MP for Edinburgh West, submitted a question at Westminster: “To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey), what steps his department is taking to (a) ensure the safety of and (b) mitigate potential risks posed by the decommissioning of nuclear submarines at Rosyth Royal Dockyard for surrounding residential areas.”

 On Mr Healey’s
behalf, Maria Eagle, Minister for Defence Procurement, replied: “All the
submarines currently stored at Rosyth have already been de-fuelled, which
has significantly reduced overall potential risk. “Further, steps include
contractual requirements with Babcock International around safety and
environmental factors. “These include regular sampling of surrounding
waters and beaches, and dismantling one boat as a demonstrator to determine
the safest methods before starting on other boats.

 Dunfermline Press 26th Oct 2024, https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/24679595.mp-seeks-answers-submarine-dismantling-project-rosyth/

October 29, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The non-proliferation considerations of nuclear-powered submarines

Alexander Hoppenbrouwers |Research Intern at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP) 28 Oct 24  https://europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/the-non-proliferation-considerations-of-nuclear-powered-submarines/

Since its announcement in late 2021, the AUKUS security partnership has sparked heated debate about its impact on global security. Critics of the partnership argue that it would provide nuclear-powered submarines fuelled with high-enriched uranium to Australia, a non-nuclear weapon state under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Non-nuclear weapon states can conclude a so-called Article 14 arrangement in such situations, which means that routine safeguard measures by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure that the fuel is not diverted for the production of nuclear material for a weapons programme would temporarily not be applied. Some states have called this a nuclear proliferation risk.

The political and legal considerations in Article 14 arrangements have been, and continue to be, extensively discussed. Relatively little attention has been paid to the technical factors related to the nuclear-powered submarine programme that would influence an Article 14 arrangement. Exploring technical issues shows that the main potential proliferation risks associated with an Article 14 arrangement are located outside of the actual use of nuclear material to fuel the submarine, and that the IAEA will need to ensure that classification concerns do not stand in the way of adequate verification measures during this period.

Article 14 and diversion

Article 14 refers to a standard part of the safeguards agreement that non-nuclear weapon states must conclude with the IAEA. Under an Article 14 arrangement, routine safeguards procedures are not applied to nuclear material to be used in non-proscribed military activities (as opposed to the proscribed use as nuclear explosives) since applying them would reveal classified military information. They are replaced by other measures that allow the IAEA to provide credible assurance that this nuclear material is not diverted. When evaluating the risk of diversion, much of the current literature focuses on the scenario where a state uses the non-application of safeguards as an opportunity to covertly remove the nuclear material from the submarine.

Looking at technical issues shows the challenge associated with such diversion. In the case of AUKUS, to remove nuclear material, the metal submarine hull designed to withstand tremendous water pressure would need to be cut open with heavy machinery. The submarine’s fuel would then be extracted from the reactor, requiring specialised facilities. Fuel for a nuclear submarine, however, cannot easily be used for the production of nuclear material for a weapons programme: it comes in the form of fuel rods surrounded by metal or ceramic cladding rather than the uranium or plutonium metal form used in weapons programmes. The uranium in this fuel would need to be chemically separated from other materials before it could be used to produce nuclear material for a weapons programme. All the above steps cannot be carried out quickly enough to outpace international reaction, so it would have to be done in covert facilities without alerting other states to the fact that a submarine worth billions of euros had disappeared and an underground weapons programme had been launched. Hatches in the hull can provide easier access to the nuclear material, but the fuel used by submarines with hatches consists of uranium that is lower enriched – and thus less proliferation-sensitive – than the uranium AUKUS submarines will use.

The main potential proliferation risks associated with an Article 14 arrangement are located outside of the actual use of nuclear material to fuel the submarine. Alexander Hoppenbrouwers

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This suggests that two other technical issues will decide the diversion risks of an Article 14 arrangement. Firstly, how easy it is to use the fuel in question to produce nuclear material for a weapons programme. In addition to the ease of separating uranium from other materials mentioned above, this ease is determined by the enrichment of uranium. This refers to the percent of the total material that is fissile. Nuclear-powered submarines make use of uranium enriched to levels between around five and 97 percent, while weapons programmes generally require enrichment of 90 percent or higher. Secondly, how much access the state has to the type of nuclear facilities needed for the production of nuclear material for a weapons programme. Enrichment and reprocessing facilities play a key role in this regard.

The ability of the IAEA to carry out verification related to these two technical issues may be limited by classification concerns. Knowing the technical specifications of submarine fuel can help outsiders deduce what the submarine’s capacities, such as speed or operational range, might be. To avoid this, states may try to limit verification measures that could reveal technical specifications, such as routine safeguards. This could also apply to activities outside of the fuel’s use in the submarine, for example when the fuel is being fabricated.

What diversion risks should Article 14 discussions focus on?

Considering the above technical concerns, three main diversion risks present themselves. First, a state could use an excuse to remove nuclear fuel from the submarine when it returns to port. For instance, the state could claim that the submarine is undergoing maintenance unrelated to the nuclear material, which would reveal classified information if observed. A believable excuse may allow the state to gain a head start in the lengthy process of removing nuclear material described earlier by reducing international scrutiny.

Second, a state could attempt to divert nuclear material that is still in the fuel cycle. If it successfully argues that safeguards should not be applied to some nuclear facilities, reduced oversight offers an opportunity: for instance, the state could try to divert nuclear material being converted into fuel.

Third, a state could use the nuclear-powered submarine programme as an excuse to develop its nuclear capabilities. If a state domestically produces fuel for a submarine that requires high-enriched uranium, it has a chance to build a reserve of nuclear material—not yet converted into submarine fuel—that could be diverted before the international community has an opportunity to respond.

These diversion risks suggest that an Article 14 arrangement should pay close attention to four key measures:

  • There should be minimal and ideally no non-application of safeguards outside of the use of fuel in the submarine.
  • Oversight should be given over the transportation of nuclear material, and its presence in facilities should be verified, including in a classified form.
  • Verification measures should be carried out when nuclear material is placed in and removed from the submarine.
  • The nuclear material’s presence in the submarine should regularly be verified.

Furthermore, discussions on Article 14 arrangements should consider a submarine programme’s impact outside the arrangement itself. In this context, any potential increase in a state’s ability to produce nuclear material for a weapons programme should be met with increased international monitoring.

TThe negotiations of the document on which Article 14 is based gives the IAEA solid arguments to apply safeguards to nuclear material when it is not used as fuel in the submarine, including during transportation between facilities. Alexander Hoppenbrouwer

What could the IAEA’s approach to Article 14 negotiations be?

The closer verification measures get to the finished form of the fuel and to the submarine, the more a state will object to them due to their potential to reveal information about the submarine’s operational capacity. When the IAEA pursues its goal of providing credible assurance that nuclear material is not diverted, the main obstacle it will encounter is the need to balance its objective with Article 14’s enshrinement of the protection of classified knowledge.

The IAEA can insist on at least the first three of the four points laid out above. The negotiations of the document on which Article 14 is based clearly established that the non-application of safeguards does not extend to activities that are not intrinsically military, specifically naming enrichment and reprocessing. While the status of fuel fabrication activities is less clear, this gives the IAEA solid arguments to apply safeguards to nuclear material when it is not used as fuel in the submarine, including during transportation between facilities. It also suggests that the IAEA should be able to verify that fuel has entered an intrinsically military activity, namely when it is installed in the submarine. Regarding the fourth point, it is unlikely that the IAEA will regularly be able to carry out verification measures in or around the submarine. However, seeing the submarine in operational use would confirm the presence of nuclear material on board. The IAEA could, therefore, seek to ensure that it can carry out some verification measures whenever the submarine returns to port for longer-than-usual periods of time, adjusted based on how long the extraction of nuclear material from the submarine is estimated to take.

The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions

October 29, 2024 Posted by | safety | Leave a comment