nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Exasperation in South Korea as US-North Korea nuclear talks are failing

US-North Korea nuclear talks are sputtering. South Korea is furious.  “The US position has been really harmful,” said a senior adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in.  Vox, By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com  Sep 23, 2019,  SEOUL — The Trump administration likes to say that all is going well with its effort to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons. As long as Pyongyang doesn’t test long-range missiles or the bomb, negotiations remain mostly on track, President Donald Trump consistently claims.

But one country is clearly bristling at America’s management of the North Korea problem: South Korea.

That became immediately clear during my trip to Seoul this week, just days before South Korean President Moon Jae-in plans to meet with Trump at the United Nations. After chats with multiple government officials and experts, the sense in the capital is that the US proceeded with its own North Korea agenda without much thought for its staunch ally’s positions.

“We’re not at the negotiating table,” a top South Korean official told me on the condition of anonymity. “That bothers me.”

That’s not only making it harder for Washington to strike a nuclear deal with Pyongyang, these people say, but could also potentially doom Moon’s top project: improving inter-Korean ties……… https://www.vox.com/2019/9/23/20875380/south-korea-north-korea-usa-nuclear-negotiations-moon-unga

September 24, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, South Korea, USA | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s chilling nuclear warning to Iran

September 22, 2019 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Donald Trump keen to build a military partnership with Australia’s PM ‘man of titanium’

Donald Trump suggests China ‘a threat to the world’ while praising Scott Morrison as a ‘man of titanium’  US president signalled he would raise with Morrison a military contribution in Iran but then indicated he did not do so, Guardian,  Katharine Murphy Political editor

 @murpharoo, Sat 21 Sep 2019 Donald Trump has declared China is a threat to the world “in a sense” and raised the spectre of Australia joining a coalition of military action against Iran as he characterised his ally Scott Morrison, as a “man of titanium”.

Following a ceremonial welcome for Morrison on Friday Washington time attended by more than 4,000 guests, Trump praised Morrison’s personal fortitude, describing him as “a man of real, real strength, and a great guy”.

The American president signalled he would raise with Morrison a possible military contribution in Iran beyond the current freedom of navigation commitment in the Strait of Hormuz, but later in the day indicated he had not, in fact, raised the issue during a bilateral meeting at the White House.

The Australian prime minister made a point of praising the president’s restraint in relation to Iran to date and made no commitment beyond saying the government would consider any request from the administration on its merits. …….

Trump said he was interested in building a coalition for military action with Australian participation, but then told reporters at a subsequent press conference Iran wasn’t discussed, and Morrison then described Australia’s possible participation as “moot”…….. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/21/donald-trump-suggests-china-a-threat-to-the-world-while-praising-scott-morrison-as-a-man-of-titanium

September 22, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Embarrassing for Australia, Trump suggests they join USA in possibly nuclear war with Iran

Scott Morrison scrambles to contain political mushroom cloud after Trump raises nuclear option with Iran

The Australian press pack was hyperventilating when the US president made the suggestion Australia might be asked to join a coalition of the willing. Then collective amnesia set in, Guardian Katharine Murphy Political editor @murpharoo 21 Sep 2019 It seemed appropriate, albeit entirely surreal, to be inducted into the vagaries of the Trumpiverse by bearing witness, in the Oval Office, to the American president suddenly raising the spectre of using nuclear weapons against Iran.

Friday’s program in Washington ran like clockwork while everybody had a script. But once we’d cleared the pomp and circumstance of the ceremonial welcome for Scott Morrison on the South Lawn of the White House, once the Australian press pack tumbled out of the sparkling spring sunshine into the Oval Office – we discovered Trump in an expansive mood……..

The president then volunteered he intended to have a quiet word to Scott Morrison over the course of their meetings on Friday, Washington time, about potential military options in Iran, and whether Australia might be persuaded to join a new coalition of the willing. ….

Morrison maintained his best poker face as the president informed the hyperventilating press pack “I always like a coalition”…..

Before we could process the information that Australia might be off to war in Iran, things spiralled. The unheralded military action could be – wait for it – nuclear.

Trump noted America had renovated the arsenal and acquired new nuclear capability, and the rest of the military was “all brand new”……..

With vexed options now tumbling out of Trump’s mouth at a clip, it did seem prudent to check in with the prime minister at this point. What was his position on Australia joining military action in Iran?……

The politically vexed question about whether Australia would do more than protect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz was therefore moot. If any request was forthcoming, Australia would consider it on its merits, through the prism of national interest, Morrison said, before gathering his host, smiling at the cameras, and exiting, stage right. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/21/scott-morrison-scrambles-to-contain-political-mushroom-cloud-after-trump-raises-nuclear-option-with-iran

September 20, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Israel’s duplicity about its nuclear weapons

The Emperor’s New-Old Nuclear Clothes, Common Dreams ,  Helena Cobban September 18, 2019, by  The Lobe Log, 

Israel wants to keep leaders in Washington distracted and always a little off-balance, so they will end up without the bandwidth and the stamina needed to confront Israel over the continuation of colonial expansion in the lands occupied in 1967.byHelena Cobban

How is it still possible to write a lengthy article about the military/strategic dynamic among the triad of Israel, Iran, and the United States while making zero mention of Israel’s robust nuclear-weapons capability? New York Times staffers Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, and their editors at the Times magazine clearly think this is quite okay. In their recent lengthy article, “The Secret History of the Push to Strike Iran,” Bergman and Mazzetti looked at the U.S.-Israeli coalitional aspect of the past 17 years in the project to prepare for launching military or special-ops actions against Iran. They followed in the long tradition within the big corporate media of deliberately ignoring Israel’s nuclear capability, a factor that is central to any understanding of the forces at play in the Middle East and also, crucially, those at play in the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The authors’ omission of any mention of Israel’s nuclear capabilities—and the ability these capabilities have long given to the country’s leaders to exert strong, continuing nuclear blackmail on Washington—is one serious flaw in their narrative. Another is that they seriously downplay the importance of the fact that Israel’s military is incapable, on its own, of inflicting debilitating damage on Iran’s nuclear program using only “conventional,” that is non-nuclear, weapons. (The two lacunae could perhaps be linked, as we will see below.)

Early in the article, Bergman and Mazzetti set the scene for how they see the strategic dynamic among Israel, Iran, and Washington by citing an analysis provided by Ilan Goldenberg, who was an up-and-coming Pentagon official in the Obama administration………….

A few things about the nuclear dimension of the U.S.-Israel-Iran triangle have been clear to me for a long time. One is that the longstanding refusal of most members of the U.S. political elite (officials, legislators, think-tankers, corporate media, and so on) to even mention the fact of Israel’s own nuclear-weapons capabilities and to take full account of them in public discussions of strategic matters in the Middle East is extremely harmful. Among the harms inflicted by that refusal (and by the general political clout that Israel wields in Washington) is that Israel’s longstanding ability to wield a form of nuclear blackmail against Washington—as I have written about for more than 30 years now—is never mentioned. Nor is the fact that, while Iran has been a full member of the NPT and has submitted to a full range of inspections of its nuclear research facilities for many decades now, Israel is not a member and has never been subjected to any such inspections.

(Another thing that is almost never mentioned is that all journalists based in Israel—as Bergman is—are subject to the country’s rigorous censorship system. This censorship is particularly strict regarding all military issues.)

…………  so long as Iran does not break out of the NPT, Israel can quietly, behind the veil of its longstanding policy of “nuclear ambiguity”, continue to exert a form of “extreme-case” nuclear deterrence against Iran. (And to use the threat of a potential unveiling as a potent means of leverage against decision-makers in Washington.)

So why, then, do we have all the continual hullabaloo and endless navel-scratching in the Western corporate media (and the Western political system, more broadly) about the possibility—not yet anywhere close to a fact, but a possibility, some time in the future—that Iran may start to build a nuclear-weapons capability?

My conclusion is that a good part of this navel-scratching is a deliberate tactic of diversion: a way for the decision-makers in Israel and their supporters to keep leaders in Washington and elsewhere distracted and always a little off-balance, so they will end up without the bandwidth and the stamina needed confront Israel over the continuation of its project of colonial expansion in the lands occupied in 1967.

That colonial project in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and in Golan is what all Israeli leaders since 2001 have cared about most deeply. And they all knew that one great way to head off any efforts a U.S. president might make to challenge the project was to raise a hubbub about Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“Why do you keep talking to us about human rights or international law issues in the Palestinian territories?” was the essential message such efforts sent to decision-makers in Washington. “Stop worrying about those. We will handle them as we see fit, and you should butt out. But meantime, keep looking at all those shiny objects over there in the Iranian nuclear program! And by the way, keep your aid money flowing to our military. Otherwise, just imagine what havoc we could create for you in the Gulf…”

Helena Cobban is a writer and researcher on global affairs. She is a Contributing Editor of Boston Review, and writes weekly news analysis on Middle East affairs for Inter-Press service. Her blog can be enjoyed at Just World News.    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/18/emperors-new-old-nuclear-clothes

September 19, 2019 Posted by | Israel, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA’s new National Security Adviser – out of the Bolton nuclear frying pan, into the Kupperman nuclear fire?

Trump’s Acting National Security Adviser Said Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable
Questioning “mutual assured destruction,” Charles Kupperman called nuclear conflict “in large part a physics problem.” Huffington Post, By Nick Robins-Early , 16 Sept 19,  President Donald Trump’s acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that “nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.”Kupperman’s suggestion that the U.S. could triumph in a nuclear war went against dominant theories of mutually assured destruction and ignored the long-term destabilizing effects that such hostilities would have on the planet’s health and global politics.

Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war “in the classical sense,” and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives. 

His argument was that with enough planning and civil defense measures, such as “a certain layer of dirt and some reinforced construction materials,” the effects of a nuclear war could be limited and that U.S. would be able to fairly quickly rebuild itself after an all-out conflict with the then-Soviet Union.

“It may take 15 years, but geez, look how long it took Europe to recover after the Second World War,” Kupperman said. Referring to the Japanese city on which the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945, he also claimed that “Hiroshima, after it was bombed, was back and operating three days later.”

At the time,Kupperman was executive director of President Ronald Reagan’s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. He made the comments during an interview with Robert Scheer for the journalist’s 1982 book, “With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War.”

The National Security Council did not immediately respond to questions on whether Kupperman, 68, still holds the same views of nuclear conflict as he did in the early 1980s. Kupperman’s seemingly cavalier attitude toward the potential death of millions of people was criticized at the time both by Democratic politicians and arms control experts.

It seems reasonable to suggest the crazies are in charge of the nukes,” Jeremy Stone, president of the Federation of American Scientists, wrote about Kupperman and his colleagues in 1984.

Contemporary nuclear experts similarly criticize Kupperman’s beliefs as wrongheaded and dangerous.

“Kupperman’s comments might as well have come straight from the script of (the film) ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ He was part of a group of defense analysts at the time who weren’t shy about sharing such views,” said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, who first noted Kupperman’s views in a Twitter post in January when Kupperman was hired as the deputy national security adviser.

“The simple fact is that a nuclear war can’t be won and must never be fought,” Reif said.

But rather than being sidelined as a relic of Cold War hubris, Kupperman now holds one of the most powerful positions in the White House. Although his role is temporary, civil rights groups have also already called on him resign over his extensive ties to the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim think tank founded by conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.

Gaffney is a prominent anti-Muslim activist who repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theories that members of President Barack Obama’s administration were working to enforce Islamic law in the U.S., that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated top levels of government and that Obama was secretly Muslim himself. Kupperman served on the board of directors for Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy between 2001-2010.

“CSP has continuously promoted Islamophobic conspiracy theories, and anyone, like Mr. Kupperman, who has so closely associated with them for so long is ― at the very least ― complicit in their brand of anti-Muslim bigotry and should not be entrusted with one of the highest-ranking security roles in the United States,” Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad said Tuesday.

Before joining the NSA, Kupperman served as an informal adviser to Bolton and worked as a defense industry executive at Boeing and Lockheed Martin. He was a critic of the Iranian nuclear deal and in 2017 co-signed a letter to Trump backing Bolton’s plan to withdraw from the agreement.

Here are excerpts of Kupperman’s comments from his interview with Scheer: ……..https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/charles-kupperman-nuclear-war-trump-nsa_n_5d7b9809e4b03b5fc88212fd

September 17, 2019 Posted by | politics, politics international, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Rick Perry to Discuss Nuclear Sharing Agreement With Saudi Arabia

September 14, 2019 Posted by | marketing of nuclear, politics international, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

Amazingly Trump told the truth about nuclear weapons and Libya

DONALD TRUMP JUST ADMITTED THAT IT MAKES SENSE FOR AMERICA’S ENEMIES TO GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS    https://theintercept.com/2019/09/13/trump-nuclear-weapons-libya-north-korea/   Jon Schwarz September 14 2019,

ON THURSDAY, PRESIDENT Donald Trump did something truly shocking: He told the truth.

When asked why he fired John Bolton, his former national security adviser, Trump said:

He made some very big mistakes. When he talked about the Libyan model for Kim Jong Un, that was not a good statement to make. You just take a look at what happened with Gaddafi.

Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, said that Trump “is not ‘siding with Kim Jong Un’ when he points out, correctly, that Bolton’s surrender model of negotiations is a complete nonstarter for North Korea.” Trump’s statement has a deep significance, one that the Americans should consider carefully.

September 14, 2019 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

North Korea willing to resume negotiations, wants USA to take a fresh approach

North Korea willing to resume US nuclear talks, senior diplomat says, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/north-korea-us-pyongyang-trump-kim-jong-un    Meeting could be held in late September at mutually agreed location, deputy foreign minister tells state news agency.

North Korea is willing to restart talks with the United States in late September over its nuclear programme, but warned that chances of a deal could end unless Washington takes a fresh approach.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, agreed in a 30 June meeting with Donald Trump to reopen working-level talks stalled since their failed February summit in Hanoi, but this has yet to happen despite repeated appeals from Washington.

n a statement carried by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, the deputy foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, said Pyongyang was willing to have “comprehensive discussions” with the United States in late September at a time and place agreed between both sides.

Asked for comment, a US state department spokeswoman said: “We don’t have any meetings to announce at this time.”

On Sunday, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said he hoped to return to denuclearisation talks with North Korea in the coming days or weeks.

But Choe highlighted that Washington needed to present a new approach or the talks could fall apart again.

“I want to believe that the US side would come out with an alternative based on a calculation method that serves both sides’ interests and is acceptable to us,” Choe said.

“If the US side toys with an old scenario that has nothing to do with the new method at working-level talks which would be held after difficulties, a deal between the two sides may come to an end.”

In April, Kim set a year-end deadline for the United States to show more flexibility in talks, which broke down in February over US demands for North Korea to give up all of its nuclear weapons and Pyongyang’s demands for relief from punishing US-led international sanctions.

The end-of-September timeframe would coincide with the annual United Nations general assembly in New York, which Pompeo is due to attend. North Korea’s mission to the United Nations said last week that the foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, would not attend “due to his schedule”.

North Korea has demanded that Pompeo be replaced with a “more mature” person in the US negotiating team, while lauding the rapport built between Kim and Trump in three meetings since June 2018.

The US special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, led working-level talks with North Korea in the run-up to the failed Hanoi meeting.

September 10, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international | Leave a comment

UN urges Iran to co-operate with UN regulatory agency

Time is of the essence’ in Iran co-operation: UN nuclear watchdog Channel News Asia, 8 Sept 19, 

VIENNA: The acting head of the UN nuclear watchdog on Monday (Sep 9) called on Iran to “respond promptly” to the agency’s questions regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Cornel Feruta was addressing the quarterly board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a day after meeting high-level Iranian officials in Tehran.

He said that in his meetings he “stressed the need for Iran to respond promptly to Agency questions related to the completeness of Iran’s safeguards declarations”, adding: “Time is of the essence.”

Earlier Monday, the IAEA confirmed that Iran was installing advanced centrifuges, a move that puts further pressure on the troubled 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The IAEA’s latest statements come a day after Tehran hit out at European powers, saying they had left Iran little option but to scale back its commitments under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)…….

Iran has said that notwithstanding its reduction of commitments under the JCPOA, it will continue to allow access to IAEA inspectors who monitor its nuclear programme…….  https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/-time-is-of-the-essence–in-iran-co-operation–un-nuclear-watchdog-11888270

September 10, 2019 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

France pledges to press Iran to comply with nuclear deal

France pledges to press Iran to comply with nuclear deal    https://nypost.com/2019/09/07/france-pledges-to-press-iran-to-comply-with-nuclear-deal/ By Sara Dorn, France will continue pressuring Iran to comply with the 2015 nuclear deal, a top official said Saturday.

“We must do everything we can to contribute to ease tensions with Iran and to ensure navigation safety,” French defense minister Florence Parly said during a joint press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper in Paris.

“We can only confirm our goal, which is to bring Iran to fully respect the Vienna deal,” Parly said.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials said Saturday the country has begun using centrifuges to enrich uranium, a key ingredient for nuclear weapons.

Iran ramped up its nuclear activity in July in response to President Trump’s reinstatement of sanctions that were nixed during the nuclear deal made with Iran and world leaders in Vienna in 2015.

Iran has said it would come back into compliance with the pact if Europe helps the country work around the US sanctions to sell crude oil on the international marketplace.

September 8, 2019 Posted by | France, Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Iran’s President Rouhani talks with Emmanuel Macron, warning on reducing nuclear commitments

Rouhani Warns Macron Iran Will Take Next Nuclear Step  September 01, 2019  Radio Farda   

President Hassan Rouhani spoke with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron Saturday, warning him Iran would take the next step in reducing its nuclear commitments unless Europe lives up to its own undertakings.

Macron has been leading efforts to de-escalate tensions between Tehran and Washington, aiming at arranging a face-to-face meetings between President Donald Trump and Rouhani.

But Rouhani has downplayed the likelihood of that happening unless the United States first lifts crippling sanctions that it has slapped on Iran since pulling out of the deal.

“If Europe cannot operationalize its commitments, Iran will take its third step to reduce its JCPOA commitments,” Rouhani reportedly told Macron in the phone call.

However, “this step, just like the other ones, will be reversible,” he added, quoted on the Iranian government’s website……https://en.radiofarda.com/a/rouhani-warns-macron-iran-will-take-next-nuclear-step/30139759.html

September 1, 2019 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

Tensions between India and Pakistan, as India contemplates abandoning its No First Use policy on nuclear weapons

August 31, 2019 Posted by | India, Pakistan, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump’s friendliness with Putin makes it hard for NATO to do anything about Russia’s weapons tests and radioactive explosion

Russia’s nuclear weapons tests were linked to a radioactive explosion. Trump’s friendliness with Putin makes it hard for NATO to do anything about it. Business Insider, MITCH PROTHERO, AUG 29, 2019   

A radioactive explosion in Nyonoksa, Northern Russia, is widely understood in defence circles to have been a botched test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
NATO has been notably muted in its response, sources told Insider, despite being sure of what happened.
Frustrated officials cite Trump’s friendly overtures to readmit Russia to the G7 group of nations as confounding its ability to properly condemn President Vladimir Putin.
“Shooting nuclear reactors into the sky at Mach 8 poses a danger to everyone, not just Russian scientists,” a source told Insider……..
Trump’s recent suggestion to reinstate Russia to the G7 group of developed economies has hobbled NATO’s ability to respond robustly. The US is NATO’s single largest partner and funder, so NATO officials feel cowed at the idea saying anything that might look like criticism of Trump’s friendliness toward Russia.

“Putin wants back in the G8 but he’s testing wildly irresponsible weapons systems that are essentially limited to offensive capability,” said another NATO official based in a western European capital.

All three said they were moved to speak by the apparent reluctance by political leaders in NATO member states to strongly condemn the failed test and demand answers about the program from Putin.

“At each turn with Putin, each time he pushes the West with a test like this – or an assassination in Berlin as we are seeing today – the response from NATO is either soft or superficial,” said the Brussels-based official.

(The Berlin incident the official referred to is still under investigation, but many suspect ties to the Russian state. Russia has denied involvement.)

He continued: “But to follow this disastrous aggression with Trump suggesting reinstatement with the G-8 means that Putin doesn’t need to fear new sanctions and even with tests like this he might get old sanctions lifted.”

“The current leadership of the West appears to be OK with ignoring this incident in favour of focusing on other concerns. But shooting nuclear reactors into the sky at Mach 8 poses a danger to everyone, not just Russian scientists.”

The US considered developing a similar nuclear-powered system to deliver nuclear weapons in the 1960s but the project was abandoned because of the dangers of testing. The system was also deemed irrelevant as a deterrent for a country that already can deploy thousands of nuclear warheads.

Insider contacted NATO’s press office for an on-the-record comment on its handling of the Russian explosion, but has yet to receive a response.  https://www.businessinsider.com.au/nato-not-calling-out-russia-nyonoksa-blast-because-trump-sources-2019-8?r=US&IR=T

August 31, 2019 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Russia fears fatal consequences if the NEWSTART nuclear arms treaty is allowed to lapse

August 26, 2019 Posted by | politics international, Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »