US urges discussions with China on practical nuclear risk reduction steps
Reuters, January 19, 2024
WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) – The United States does not expect formal nuclear arms-control negotiations with China anytime soon, but does want to see a start of discussions on practical risk-reduction measures, a senior White House official said on Thursday.
Pranay Vaddi, the senior White House official for arms control and non proliferation, told a Washington think tank it had been important to have initial arms-control talks in November with China, but stressed the need for them to involve key Chinese decision makers or influencers on the country’s nuclear posture………………………..
The U.S. and China held their first talks on nuclear arms control in nearly five years on Nov. 6, amid growing U.S. concerns about China’s nuclear build up, but the meeting produced no specific results…………………………………………..
The U.S. and China held two days of military talks in Washington last week, their latest engagement since agreeing to resume military-to-military ties.
In its annual report on the Chinese military in October, the Pentagon said China has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads and will probably have over 1,000 warheads by 2030.
The U.S. has a stockpile of about 3,700 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,419 strategic nuclear warheads were deployed.
Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Sandra Maler, https://www.reuters.com/world/us-urges-discussions-with-china-practical-nuclear-risk-reduction-steps-2024-01-18/
Nuclear Continues To Lag Far Behind Renewables In China Deployments
China can’t scale its nuclear program at all. It peaked in 2018 with 7 reactors with a capacity of 8.2 GW. For the five years since then then it’s been averaging 2.3 GW of new nuclear capacity, and last year only added 1.2 GW between a new GW scale reactor and a 200 MW small modular nuclear reactor.
Michael Barnard 13 Jan 24, https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/
Since 2014 I’ve been tracking the natural experiment in China regarding the ability to scale nuclear generation vs renewables. My hypothesis was that the modularity and manufacturability of wind and solar especially meant that it would be much easier for them to scale up to massive sizes.
That hypothesis was strongly confirmed when I first published the results in 2019, and again in 2021 and 2022 when I updated them. In what is becoming a dog bites man annual article, here are the 2023 results. Once again, China’s nuclear program barely added any capacity, only 1.2 GW, while wind and solar between them added about 278 GW. Even with the capacity factor difference, the nuclear additions only mean about 7 TWh of new low carbon generation per year, while wind and solar between them will contributed about 427 TWh annually, over 60 times as much low carbon electricity.
As a note, there were no new hydroelectric dams commissioned in China, so that continued acceleration of deployment is solely due to wind and solar. That’s going to change when the absurdly massive Tibetan Yarlung Tsangpo river dam is commissioned, likely in the mid 2030s. That dam will generate three times the energy annually as the Three Gorges Dam, making it by far the biggest dam in the world by every measure.
A few points. First, what’s a natural experiment? It’s something which is occurring outside of a laboratory or research setting in the real world that coincidentally controls for a bunch of variables so that you can make a useful comparison. An often referenced example was of a specific region where half was without electricity for a few months. Researchers posited that the blackout region would have seen more pregnancies starting in that period, and sure enough, that’s what they found.
So why is China a natural experiment for scalability of wind and solar? Well, it controls for a bunch of variables. Both programs were national strategic energy programs run top down. I started the comparison in 2010 because the nuclear program had been running for about 15 years by then and the renewables program for five years, so both were mature enough to have worked out the growing pains.
One of the things that western nuclear proponents claim is that governments have over-regulated nuclear compared to wind and solar, and China’s regulatory regime for nuclear is clearly not the USA’s or the UK’s. They claim that fears of radiation have created massive and unfair headwinds, and China has a very different balancing act on public health and public health perceptions than the west. They claim that environmentalists have stopped nuclear development in the west, and while there are vastly more protests in China than most westerners realize, governmental strategic programs are much less susceptible to public hostility. And finally, western nuclear proponents complain that NIMBYs block nuclear expansion, and public sentiment and NIMBYism is much less powerful in China with its Confucian, much more top down governance system.
China’s central government has a 30 year track record of building massive infrastructure programs, so it’s not like it is missing any skills there. China has a nuclear weapons program, so the alignment of commercial nuclear generation with military strategic aims is in hand too. China has a strong willingness to finance strategic infrastructure with long-running state debt, so there are no headwinds there either.
Yet China can’t scale its nuclear program at all. It peaked in 2018 with 7 reactors with a capacity of 8.2 GW. For the five years since then then it’s been averaging 2.3 GW of new nuclear capacity, and last year only added 1.2 GW between a new GW scale reactor and a 200 MW small modular nuclear reactor.
So what’s going on? As I noted late in 2023, nuclear energy and free market capitalism aren’t compatible, but China isn’t capitalist, according to a lot of westerners. But it very definitely is a market and export capitalist economy, albeit with more state intervention and ownership, and the nuclear program is suffering as a result. That lone small modular reactor is a clear signal of that.
China’s CGN Halts Funding for UK’s Hinkley Nuclear Plant
- EDF may have to fund completion of £32.7 billion plant alone
- Britain took over CGN’s stake in a similar project last year
By Francois De Beaupuy, December 14, 2023
China General Nuclear Power Corp. has halted funding for the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear station in a fresh sign of tension between London and Beijing.
CGN skipped several installments in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. That means Electricite de France SA, which was building the £32.7 billion ($41 billion) plant with CGN, may have to pay for its completion alone, they said, asking not to be named,
because the information isn’t public.
The withdrawal of funding comes
after the UK took over CGN’s stake in a similar nuclear project in
Sizewell last year following concerns over national security. Back then,
the government didn’t rule out that it might intervene in other cases of
Chinese involvement in UK energy supply, arguing that it would need to
consider risks to security and energy independence.
CGN’s plan to build a
Chinese-designed atomic plant in Southeast England is also up in the air.
It’s unclear whether the funding halt is temporary or definite, some of
the people said, adding that the project will continue in any case. A
spokesperson for EDF declined to comment when reached by Bloomberg, and CGN
didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Bloomberg 14th Dec 2023
Chinese Nuclear Weapons and Canada: An Uncivil-Military Connection
The United States should take action to ensure that domestic and foreign actors are not boosting the nuclear programs of adversaries.
by Henry Sokolski, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/chinese-nuclear-weapons-and-canada-uncivil-military-connection-207727 6 Dec 23
For decades, the Defense Department made little or no connection between China’s civilian nuclear power program and its military nuclear weapons buildup. No longer.
For the last three years, the Pentagon has explicitly linked Beijing’s “peaceful” fast reactor power program to China’s ramped-up weapons plutonium efforts and the projection China will acquire more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030. In its latest annual China military power report, the Defense Department went further and revealed that China is using its civilian nuclear reactors to produce tritium to fuel its thermonuclear weapons.
China is doing this by placing lithium rods in power reactors and bombarding the rods with neutrons. This produces tritium, which subsequently is separated, much like how America makes its weapons tritium. It’s unclear if China uses all its power reactors—American, Canadian, Russian, French, or Chinese-designed—for this purpose.
The Pentagon report, however, notes that China uses a tritiated heavy water extraction process to cull tritium produced when hydrogen atoms absorb neutrons and become tritium atoms. The only reactors in China that use heavy water are located in Haiyan and operated by China National Nuclear Power Corporation (CNNC)—Beijing’s premier nuclear weapons contractor.
Canada supplied these reactors through Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Canadian government-owned firm. In addition, AECL agreed to work with CNNC on advanced heavy water reactors and related technologies. In 2011, AECL sold its heavy water reactor business to SNC-Lavalin Inc. (recently renamed AtkinsRealis). AtkinsRealis continues to collaborate with CNNC on its heavy water reactors.
However, Canada’s nuclear transfers to China aren’t limited to reactors. In late October, the Canadian firm Cameco, one of the world’s largest uranium suppliers, announced it had contracted to sell more than 97,500 metric tons of uranium to CNNC. Cameco says it will send the CNNC more than 12,700 metric tons annually for the next four years. 12,700 metric tons is roughly 200 to 300 metric tons more than China’s entire civilian sector consumes annually. The 200-to-300-ton surplus alone could fuel as many as 100 bombs each year.
This should raise eyebrows. With poor domestic uranium resources, China insists it’s only building up its uranium reserves for future nuclear power use. Perhaps, but there is no agreed way to verify this. The same is true with tritium. Currently, there are no effective controls on either nuclear substance to assure their peaceful end-use. Both, however, are critical to making nuclear weapons, and CNNC, China’s top weapons vendor, controls these materials.
What should be done?
First, our government needs to name and shame firms exporting critical nuclear materials and technologies to America’s nuclear-armed rivals. This would require spotlighting Canada’s Cameco and AkinsRealis. It also would require listing France’s nuclear firm, EDF, which this spring announced it would work with CNNC in developing advanced spent fuel recycling, a process critical to producing weapons plutonium. Yet, another entity that deserves dishonorable mention is Rosatom, Russia’s prime nuclear weapons developer, in addition to firms in business with the company. The House has already spotlighted Rosatom as a bad actor, asking the White House to sanction it for assisting China’s fast reactor program.
To expose these entities further, the Departments of Defense and the Intelligence Community should produce an unclassified annual report clarifying which domestic and foreign firms might be transferring nuclear materials and technologies to hostile states’ nuclear weapons entities.
Second, the U.S. government should prohibit government purchases and subsidies to these firms. Congress and the White House may be reticent to sanction firms for trading with hostile states’ nuclear weapons entities. But our government should, at least, not buy goods from such firms or subsidize them.
Finally, the United States and other like-minded nations should call on the International Atomic Energy Agency to track and safeguard tritium and unenriched uranium to prevent their diversion to make bombs. Fortunately, there is little commercial demand for tritium. Most of what is produced is then extracted from reactors for occupational safety reasons and is accounted for.
Similarly, most uranium ore is used to fuel legitimate civilian reactors. Yet, it too is critical to make nuclear weapons, and it is not currently tracked or safeguarded. Given that the government already tracks and sanctions certain oil and gas transfers—a daunting task—it’s difficult to understand why we don’t do the same for uranium and tritium. In the lead-up to the next Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in 2026, the United States should close this gap.
Henry Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, Virginia, and the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (2019). He served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense during the George H.W. Bush administration.
In softening on China, the West may be trying to avoid a nuclear arms race
SCMP, Bob Savic 26 Nov 23
Why the West is suddenly softening on China: power grows out of nuclear warheads
- Weeks before Xi Jinping met various leaders in San Francisco, the US released an estimate of China’s nuclear stockpile
- Now, the EU and UK seem to be holding out an olive branch to China, especially with the surprise appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary
In a much-publicised report issued on October 19, the US Department of Defence estimated China’s stock of operational nuclear warheads to be at 500, and exceeding 1,000 by 2030. This contrasts with its 2020 report that estimated a stockpile “in the low-200s”, which would grow to about 400 by the end of the decade.
Beijing has consistently dismissed these reports, asserting they are used to serve Washington’s strategic interest of portraying China as a threat to global security.
Irrespective of whether the reports are accurate or fictional, the West has probably decided to err on the side of caution and accept the findings. There has been a discernible shift as Western governments actively seek areas of mutual cooperation with Beijing.
Ultimately, this turn of events probably reflects Western concern over a nuclear arms race fuelled by dangerously destabilising great-power rivalry between China and the United States, at a time when the West is grappling with so-called fatigue in its conflict with Russia over Ukraine.
Further, there is the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. The major Western powers’ failure to back a non-binding UN resolution calling for a truce, which was supported by China and the vast majority of non-Western states, has opened a yawning rift between the West and the Global South.
In any case, one cannot rule out both factors in the West’s approach to China. The most high-profile rapprochement with China was clearly reached when Chinese President Xi Jinping met US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Apec summit in San Francisco.
After a year of hyper-tense relations between Beijing and Washington – over then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and the Chinese “spy balloon” over mainland America – the Biden administration’s four-hour talks with Xi and senior Chinese officials signified a new strategy of constructive engagement.
As widely reported, the meeting concluded with an agreement to resume military-to-military communications, deemed vital in the context of increasingly knife-edge naval and air activities, by both sides, in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.
Also on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, Xi held talks with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the first time in a year…………………………………………………………………….
Other leaders, further afield, may also be seeking to offer Beijing an olive branch. In early November, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said a summit with the Chinese government would take place in China in December, the first in-person European Union-China summit in four years………………
Lastly, and in an even greater surprise, was the appointment of Britain’s former prime minister David Cameron as the new foreign secretary on November 13. There has been much speculation about why the current British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, would bring Cameron back into the cabinet after he spent several years outside politics.
Among those reasons is likely to be that Cameron made high-level international contact when in office, not the least of which was crafting the “golden era” of relations with China, even having a pint of beer with Xi at a British pub…………………………………..
the new Pentagon report on China’s substantial upscaling of its nuclear stockpile, no matter whether it is accurate or not, may have been all that was necessary to prompt Western decision-makers to act swiftly, and in concert, thus averting any escalation of geopolitical tensions that might imperil the West’s still dominant global position. https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3242540/why-west-suddenly-softening-china-power-grows-out-nuclear-warheads
Japanese and Chinese top envoys eye more talks on Fukushima row
Jsapan Times, BY JESSE JOHNSON, STAFF WRITER 26 Nov 23
Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa met her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on Saturday, with the top Japanese diplomat “strongly urging” Beijing to immediately remove its complete ban on seafood imports from Japan over Tokyo’s release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The Fukushima issue has bedeviled Sino-Japanese relations already facing tensions over issues such as China’s growing military assertiveness in the region. Despite this, both sides agreed to find a way to resolve the wastewater matter “through discussion and dialogue in a constructive manner,” Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.
Wang repeated China’s opposition to the discharge of “nuclear-contaminated water,” a move that he labeled as “irresponsible,” according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The two top diplomats also agreed to hold bilateral security talks “at an early date,”…………………………………………………………………………………………….
On Thursday, Wang met with Natsuo Yamaguchi, head of Komeito, the Liberal Democratic Party’s coalition partner in the ruling bloc, for talks in Beijing. China called for independent monitoring of the ongoing Fukushima discharge, according to Yamaguchi.
China’s seafood ban has hit Japanese exporters hard, with Chinese customs authorities reporting last week that imports of fish and shellfish from Japan in October dropped 99% from a year earlier to $332,000. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/11/25/japan/politics/japan-china-yoko-kamikawa-wang-yi/
The US and China re-engage on arms control. What may come next
Bulletin, By Daryl G. Kimball | November 15, 2023
For more than six decades, the United States has been worried about China’s regional influence, military activities—and its nuclear potential. For instance, in 1958, US officials considered using nuclear weapons to thwart Chinese artillery strikes on islands controlled by Taiwan, according to a document leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 2021. Now, as then, a nuclear conflict between the United States and China would be devastating for both sides and the world.
The United States has a decades-long experience of nuclear arms control and strategic stability talks with the Soviet Union, and later Russia. However, there has not been a sustained bilateral dialogue between Washington and Beijing on how to reduce the risk of conflict, nuclear escalation, and nuclear arms control and disarmament. Until recently, China had rebuffed US overtures for bilateral talks on nuclear risk reduction and arms control, and on other security issues.
Adding to the tensions, China has embarked since the early 2000s on a major buildup of its relatively smaller nuclear arsenal and has resisted calls for a global halt on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. In response, some current and former national security insiders, as well as many in Congress, suggest that the US arsenal “should be supplemented” to add more capability and flexibility to counter two “near-peer” nuclear adversaries. In other words, the potential for an unconstrained, three-way arms race is growing.
But things started to change on November 6 with the meeting in Washington between US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Mallory Stewart and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director-General of Arms Control Sun Xiaobo.
A modest yet important breakthrough. The US-Chinese discussion on arms control—the first of its kind since 2018—was described by the US side as a “candid and in-depth discussion on issues related to arms control and nonproliferation.” According to the State Department’s readout of the meeting, “the United States highlighted the need to promote stability, help avert an unconstrained arms race, and manage competition so that it does not veer into conflict.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s readout also said the “[t]he two sides had an in-depth, candid and constructive exchange of views” on nuclear weapons matters, as well as an exchange on “regular arms control.”
Several participants told me that the meeting was “wide-ranging” and “positive in tone,” but that it did not involve much substantive exchange of views on the issues, which is not surprising. Tangible progress will require time and sustained give-and-take from both sides.
The next step, ideally, will be for Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, who are set to meet this week, to direct their teams toward concrete nuclear risk reduction and arms control measures that enhance mutual security.
More nuclear capabilities imply more responsibilities.……………………………………………….
China’s arsenal is not only growing (it had less than 200 nuclear warheads in 2000), but it is also diversifying and modernizing. It is now well-documented that China has started to deploy new solid-fueled missiles that can be launched more quickly than its older liquid-fueled missiles. …………………………………………………………………………..
Of course, China’s nuclear arsenal is still modest by comparison to the US and Russian arsenals, each of which are about nine times larger than China’s. But China’s nuclear modernization efforts could have significant strategic implications that make it even more important for the “Big Three” (the United States, Russia, and China) to pursue meaningful progress on nuclear arms control to avoid a destabilizing and dangerous nuclear arms race.
Toward a more serious, sustained dialogue. In response to China’s nuclear buildup, US officials—Republicans and Democrats alike—have prioritized engagement with China in talks to identify measures to reduce nuclear risks and prevent destabilizing and costly strategic weapons competition………………………….
Sullivan’s June 2 address provides some important clues about the types of issues the US side likely raised in the arms control talks. Sullivan suggested that the United States and China, along with the other NPT nuclear-armed states, could engage in new nuclear arms control and risk reduction efforts such as establishing more robust crisis communications channels and “formalizing a missile launch notification regime” for all five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France. “It’s a small step that would help reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation in times of crisis,” Sullivan added.
These suggestions don’t happen in a vacuum: The United States and Russia have a ballistic missile launch notification agreement already in place, and Russia and China have their own bilateral agreement too.
In his remarks, Sullivan also called for talks on “maintaining a ‘human-in-the-loop’ for command, control, and employment of nuclear weapons” to reduce the risk of miscalculation in a crisis. This would require that the US and China—and other nuclear-armed states—agree to pursue technical discussions designed to reach common understandings on how the use of artificial intelligence, particularly high-risk, cutting-edge deep learning models, can be banned or at least limited so the use of nuclear weapons is effectively kept under human control. This proposal seems to have reached the highest level with Presidents Biden and Xi reportedly discussing limits on the employment of artificial intelligence in the control and deployment of nuclear weapons.
In future meetings, US and Chinese diplomats should go one step further and set out a process for formulating a joint understanding that cyberwarfare capabilities will not be used to try to interfere with other states’ nuclear command and control systems, which could also severely alter decision-making in a crisis……………………………………………………..
From talks to concrete actions. Further down the road, an even more ambitious approach that might be considered in the multilateral, nuclear-five setting would be for Washington and Moscow to propose that China, France, and the United Kingdom freeze the size of their nuclear stockpiles so long as the United States and Russia maintain the current limits on their strategic arsenals—even after New START expires—and make good faith efforts to negotiate deeper verifiable reductions in their stockpiles…………………………………………………………………
With US-Russian relations at rock bottom, the Kremlin still wedging its war on Ukraine, and the last remaining treaty limiting US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals set to expire in early 2026, the risk of nuclear escalation and a nuclear arms race with Russia is already too high. That makes it all the more important for Xi and Biden to direct their team to work harder and more steadily to reduce tensions and head off the possibility of a costly, dangerous, unconstrained three-way nuclear race that no one can win.
China’s Misunderstood Nuclear Expansion
How U.S. Strategy Is Fueling Beijing’s Growing Arsenal
Foreign Affairs, By M. Taylor Fravel, Henrik Stålhane Hiim, and Magnus Langset Trøan, November 10, 2023
Among the many issues surrounding China’s ongoing military modernization, perhaps none has been more dramatic than its nuclear weapons program. For decades, the Chinese government was content to maintain a comparatively small nuclear force. As recently as 2020, China’s arsenal was little changed from previous decades and amounted to some 220 weapons, around five to six percent of either the U.S. or Russian stockpiles of deployed and reserve warheads.
Since then, however, China has been rapidly expanding and modernizing its arsenal. In 2020, it began constructing three silo fields to house more than 300 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). A year later, it successfully tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that traveled 21,600 miles, a test that likely demonstrated China’s ability to field weapons that can orbit the earth before striking targets, known as a “fractional orbital bombardment system.” Simultaneously, the Chinese government has accelerated its pursuit of a complete nuclear triad—encompassing land-, sea-, and air-launched nuclear weapons—including by developing new submarine- and air-launched ballistic missiles. By 2030, according to U.S. Defense Department estimates, China will probably have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads—a more than fourfold increase from just a decade earlier…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
writings and analysis since 2015 suggest that China’s nuclear expansion is less a shift in Chinese intentions than a response to what Beijing perceives as threatening changes in U.S. nuclear strategy, reflecting an acute security dilemma. Chinese analysts are worried that the United States has lowered its threshold for nuclear use—including allowing for limited first use in a Taiwan conflict—and that the U.S. military is acquiring new capabilities that could be used to destroy or significantly degrade China’s nuclear forces. Thus, many Chinese experts have concluded that China needs a more robust arsenal.
Given Chinese and U.S. fears about each other’s nuclear programs, increased communication may help to break the spiral. Based on Chinese fears, the United States should understand how changes in its nuclear capabilities and doctrine play a critical role in shaping China’s threat perceptions and perceived force requirements. Going forward, China will continue to respond to U.S. advances that are viewed as weakening China’s nuclear deterrent.
Similarly, Beijing should understand that the lack of transparency surrounding its rapid nuclear expansion has fueled worst-case assessments by the United States. Continued lack of transparency will lead to even greater U.S. suspicion—and feed an intensifying arms race between the two countries……………………………………………………………………………….
the 2018 review increased Chinese fears that the United States might engage in limited nuclear first use during a conventional conflict with China, most likely over Taiwan. According to Chinese arms control expert Li Bin, the document suggested that “the United States would use its nuclear weapons to respond to nonnuclear Chinese aggressions.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas-misunderstood-nuclear-expansion
China agrees to nuclear arms-control talks with US -WSJ
Reuters, November 2, 2023
China and the United States will discuss nuclear arms control next week, the first such talks since the Obama administration, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday after a visit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Washington that the two countries would hold “consultations on arms control and non-proliferation” in the coming days, as well as separate talks on maritime affairs and other issues.
Those arms talks would be led on Monday by Mallory Stewart, a senior State Department official, and Sun Xiaobo, the head of the arms-control department at China’s Foreign Ministry, the Wall Street Journal report said.
The U.S. State Department and China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment on the timing or format of the talks.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in 2021 that the Chinese and U.S. presidents had agreed to “look to begin to carry forward discussion on strategic stability”, a reference to Washington’s concerns about Beijing’s nuclear weapons build-up.
But the White House was quick to say at the time that the discussions would not resemble formal arms reduction talks, like those the U.S. has had with Russia.
Since then, U.S. officials had expressed frustration that China showed little interest in discussing steps to reduce nuclear weapons risks.
China has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal and will probably have over 1,000 warheads by 2030, the Pentagon said in October. But Beijing has long argued that the U.S. already has a much larger arsenal. The arms talks would occur before a likely meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November, although a senior Biden administration official said on Tuesday important details have yet to be hammered out…………………………………more https://www.reuters.com/world/china-agrees-nuclear-arms-control-talks-with-us-wsj-2023-11-01/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
China-Russia in a nuclear sub counter to AUKUS
China’s Type 096 nuclear submarine draws on Russian tech and expertise and once operational will bring US mainland into closer missile range
Asia Times, By GABRIEL HONRADA, OCTOBER 23, 2023
China is making new quiet nuclear submarines with Russia’s expert assistance, an answer to the AUKUS alliance and the latest sign of the two powers’ converging strategic interests against the United States and its Pacific allies
The project could make it harder for the US and its allies to track China’s submarines in crucial theaters including the South China Sea and represents a direct challenge to US undersea dominance in the Pacific.
This month, Reuters reported that China is producing a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, citing evidence that its Type 096 nuclear ballistic missile (SSBN) submarine will be operational before the end of the decade. The report said that breakthroughs in the submarine’s quietness have been aided partly by Russian technology……………………………………..more https://asiatimes.com/2023/10/china-russia-in-a-nuclear-sub-counter-to-aukus/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
China rejects Pentagon report that claimed China was starting a nuclear arms race
US says China likely to have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 China said the report is ‘filled with prejudice and distorts face’
Namita Singh https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/china-nuclear-weapons-pentagon-report-india-b2433066.html 21 Oct 23
China has rejected a US Pentagon report claiming that the Asian country has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal and will probably have over 1,000 by 2030.
China said the report was “filled with prejudice and distorts face”, as it clarified that it has no intention of indulging in a nuclear arms race.
The statement came a day after the Pentagon released its annual report on the Beijing military. In the wide-ranging report, the Pentagon said China’s more than 500 warheads as of May 2023 were on track to exceed projections.
In a previous report, the Pentagon estimated that Beijing had more than 400 operational nuclear warheads in 2021.
“We see the PRC (People’s Republic of China) continuing to quite rapidly modernize and diversify and expand its nuclear forces,” a senior US official told reporters during a briefing on the report.
However, on Friday, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson issued a statement rejecting the US claims.
“First of all, the United States report, like similar reports before it, ignores the facts, is full of prejudice and spreads the theory of the threat posed by China,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing in response to a question about the US report.
“China firmly adheres to a nuclear strategy of self-defence and defence, we have always maintained our nuclear forces at the lowest level required for national security, and we have no intention of engaging in a nuclear arms race with any country,” Mr Mao said.
The report reiterated concern about pressure by Beijing on self-ruled Taiwan, an island China sees as a breakaway province.
“As long as any country does not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against China, it will not be threatened by China’s nuclear weapons,” Mr Mao said.
Relations between China and the United States have been tense, with friction between the world’s two largest economies over everything from Taiwan and China’s human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.
But Washington has been eager to revive military-to-military communications with China.
Last week the Pentagon said it had accepted an invitation to attend China’s top annual security forum in late October, the latest sign of potentially warming ties between the two countries’ militaries. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
China highlights marine radiation monitoring in draft law revision
China Daily, Xinhua 2023-10-20
BEIJING — China is considering strengthening its monitoring of radiation in the marine environment in the latest draft revision to the Marine Environment Protection Law, a spokesperson said Thursday.
Scheduled for its third deliberation at a session of the country’s top legislature in late October, the draft revision states that departments of the State Council in charge of environmental issues should set out emergency plans for radiation monitoring and organize its implementation.
The draft stresses improving the capacity of monitoring and managing the marine environment by raising the technological and informatization level, and requires efforts to enhance comprehensive, coordinated and regular monitoring, according to Yang Heqing, a spokesperson for the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, at a press briefing.
Pollution prevention and control in rivers flowing into the sea should also be strengthened in coordinated efforts to ensure the water quality at the mouths of the rivers meets the relevant standards, Yang said citing the draft revision
The sixth session of the 14th NPC Standing Committee will be held from Oct. 20 to 24. The NPC Standing Committee completed two readings of previous versions of the draft revision to the Marine Environment Protection Law in December last year and June……..
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202310/20/WS6531db77a31090682a5e9b28.html #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
China expanding nuclear arsenal much faster than predicted, US report says
Guardian, 20 Oct 23
Pentagon report also says Beijing is intensifying pressure on neighbours to push back on US efforts to contain it.
A Pentagon report on China’s military power says Beijing is exceeding previous projections of how quickly it is building up its nuclear weapons arsenal and is “almost certainly” learning lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine about what a conflict over Taiwan might look like.
The report released on Thursday also warns that China may be pursuing a new intercontinental missile system using conventional arms that, if fielded, would allow Beijing “to threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States, Hawaii and Alaska.”
The China report comes a month before an expected meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
The annual report, required by Congress, is one way the Pentagon measures the growing military capabilities of China, which the US government sees as its key threat in the region and America’s primary long-term security challenge.
But after Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, the US has been forced again to focus on the Middle East, instead of its widely promoted pivot to the Pacific to counter China’s growth. The US is rushing weapons to Israel while continuing to support and deliver munitions to Ukraine in its 20-month struggle to repel Russia’s invasion.
Still, the Pentagon’s national defense strategy is shaped around China remaining the greatest security challenge for the US, and that the threat from Beijing will determine how the US military is equipped and shaped for the future.
The Pentagon report builds on the military’s warning in 2022 that China was expanding its nuclear force much faster than US officials had predicted, highlighting a broad and accelerating buildup of military muscle designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass US global power by midcentury.
Last year’s report warned that Beijing was rapidly modernizing its nuclear force and was on track to nearly quadruple the number of warheads it has to 1,500 by 2035. The US has 3,750 active nuclear warheads.
The 2023 report finds that Beijing is on pace to field more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, continuing a rapid modernization aimed at meeting Xi’s goal of having a “world class” military by 2049.
After the previous report, China accused the US of ratcheting up tensions and Beijing said it was still committed to a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon has seen no indication that China is moving away from that policy but assesses there may be some circumstances where China might judge that it does not apply, a senior US defense official said without providing details. The official briefed reporters on Wednesday on condition of anonymity before the report’s release
The US does not adhere to a “no first use” policy and says nuclear weapons would be used only in “extreme circumstances.”………………………………………. more https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/china-expanding-nuclear-arsenal-much-faster-than-predicted-us-report-says #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Half of China’s people are worried about Fukushima water release: poll
Japan Today Oct. 11 TOKYO
About half of Chinese respondents to a recent survey expressed concern about the release of treated radioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, according to the results released Tuesday, amid a row between the two Asian neighbors over the issue.
According to an annual joint poll by Japanese nonprofit think tank Genron NPO and the China International Communications Group on public views in both countries on bilateral ties, 22.1 percent of 1,506 Chinese surveyed said they are “very worried” and 25.5 percent are “worried to some extent” about the water discharge.
In the poll, conducted in China in 10 cities from Aug. 18 to Sept. 1, 8.0 percent answered they are “not worried at all” about the water release and 18.7 percent said they are “not very worried,” with 25.0 percent replying they “currently cannot judge.”………………………………………………………………….. https://japantoday.com/category/national/about-half-of-chinese-worried-about-fukushima-water-release-poll #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants
A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine has sunk with the loss of 55 sailors
#nuclear #anti-nuclear #nuclear-free #NoNukes The nuclear submarine sank after it was caught in a trap intended for American and British vessels, leaked intelligence reports disclose. China has six Type 093 attack
submarines, which have a displacement of 6,096 tonnes and are armed with
553mm torpedoes. The nuclear-powered submarines, designed to be quieter
than previous models, entered service in the past 15 years.
Times 4th Sept 2023
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