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India:  Union ministry of mines protects beaches from mining for thorium

Private firms jolted by beach sand mining ban, Times of India M K Ananth , 24 Feb 19,  MADURAI: Environmentalists fighting against rampant illegal   sand mining have hailed the gazette notification by the  Union ministry of mines changing the rules that earlier  allowed private companies to mine rare earth minerals found   on beach sand. They said the notification was much awaited and would help save the coastal treasures.
Activist Lal Mohan of Kanyakumari said rampant mining by  private players had led to erosion of the shores and many  sand dunes that acted as barriers during natural disasters  such as tsunami had disappeared. He accused private players of influencing officials and exploiting coastal minerals and  exporting monazite.
Stating that monazite on the coast   had high concentration of thorium that was considered an  atomic mineral, he said research was on to use it instead of uranium.  “It is to eliminate the use of uranium and the large reserve s of thorium in India. At many places, private companies  have exploited thorium and exported it to Australia, China and Russia, he said… .. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/private-firms-jolted-by-beach-sand-mining-ban/articleshow/68133578.cms

February 25, 2019 Posted by | environment, India, thorium | 1 Comment

India ‘Reluctant’ Nuclear Weapon State, Committed to No-first-use Policy

India ‘Reluctant’ Nuclear Weapon State, Committed to No-first-use Policy, Says Manmohan Singh

The former prime minister referred to today’s nuclear age ‘as an age of asymmetry, asymmetry in terms of doctrines, arsenals and technology’.

News 18 February 24, 2019, New proliferation risks and challenges can lead to “unintended escalations”, increasing the “likelihood” of a nuclear strike, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday, asserting that India is a “reluctant” nuclear weapon state.
He was speaking at the book launch of Observer Reserach Foundation’s ‘Nuclear Order in the Twenty First Century’ authored by former diplomat Rakesh Sood.
The existing nuclear global order is coming under strain with some of the old arms control agreements being consigned to history, Singh said. ……
“Many countries are modernising their nuclear arsenals with tactical and low yield weapons, increasing the likelihood of their use. The goal of nuclear disarmament seems to be receding,” Singh said……

The former prime minister referred to today’s nuclear age “as an age of asymmetry, asymmetry in terms of doctrines, arsenals and technology”.

It has to be ensured that the nuclear taboo that has prevented its use since 1945 continues to be preserved, Singh said. https://www.news18.com/news/india/india-reluctant-nuclear-weapon-state-committed-to-no-first-use-policy-says-manmohan-singh-2047101.html

February 25, 2019 Posted by | India, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons seen by North Korea as essential to its survival

North Korea sees nuclear weapons as key to its survival, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nukes-not-

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS

alliances-seen-by-north-korea-as-guarantor-of-survival/ BY KATIANA KRAWCHENKO FEBRUARY 22, 2019   CBS NEWSNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un sees nuclear weapons, not alliances, as the “ultimate guarantor” of survival, according to former top CIA analyst Jung Pak, who joined CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett for lunch on this week’s episode of “The Takeout.”That, she told Garrett, complicates the question of what “denuclearization” ultimately means, particularly ahead of President Trump’s summit with Kim beginning next Wednesday.

“The first summit produced very little in terms of how we were going to move toward North Korea denuclearization,” Pak said, adding that Kim has been “developing all of the ingredients for this recipe of mating the nuclear weapon on top of the ballistic missile that is shown to be able to fly across the world, to hit virtually any spot, frankly.”

Kim has been intent on showing us his capabilities, and he’s also been pretty clear about his intentions. He’s not going to unilaterally disarm, he said — unless the U.S., and frankly, the world give up its nuclear weapons.”

Trump administration officials say they do not know if North Korea has made the choice yet to denuclearize, but they’re engaged in these talks because they believe in the possibility.

President Trump himself has asserted that if North Korea does achieve verifiable “denuclearization,” which he simultaneously said he is now in “no rush” to achieve, the country could become a “tremendous economic power” due to their “unbelievable location” tucked in next to Russia, China and South Korea.

Pak believes “there is something to be said” for that point. But the North also sees its location as a real vulnerability, she told Garrett.

“They’re surrounded by the second, third and eleventh largest economies, and the only thing that sets them apart, and the only thing that makes them relevant is nuclear weapons.”

February 23, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Wind and solar power in China – fast outstripping nuclear power

Wind & Solar In China Generating 2× Nuclear Today, Will Be 4× By 2030,  Clean Technica, February 21st, 2019 by Michael Barnard, Close to five years ago I published an assessment of nuclear scaling vs wind and solar scaling using China as the proving ground in the CleanTechnica article “Wind Energy Beats Nuclear & Carbon Capture For Global Warming Mitigation.” Today, the China example is more clear proof that wind and solar are the better choice for global warming mitigation than nuclear generation.China’s example is meaningful because it disproves several arguments of those in favor of increased nuclear generation. It’s not suffering under regulatory burden. It’s mostly been using the same nuclear technologies over and over again, not innovating with every new plant. It doesn’t have the same issues with social license due to the nature of the governmental system. The government has a lot of money. The inhibitors to widespread deployment are much lower.

Yet China has significantly slowed its nuclear generation rollout while accelerating its wind and solar rollout. Even strong industry insiders accept this, ones such as former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd, writing in Nuclear Engineering International in 2017.

Kidd estimates that China’s nuclear capacity will be around 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, well below previous expectations. Forecasts of 200 GW by 2030 were “not unusual only a few years ago,” he writes, but now seem “very wide of the mark.” And even the 100 GW estimate is stretching credulity ‒ nuclear capacity will be around 50 GW in 2020 and a doubling of that capacity by 2030 won’t happen if the current slow-down sets in.

Why is China slowing its nuclear rollout so drastically? Because nuclear is turning out to be more expensive than expected, new nuclear designs are proving to be uneconomical, and new wind and solar are dirt cheap and much easier to build.

Recently I published an assessment of the potential for wind and solar to massively exceed US CO2 reductions from nuclear in the CleanTechnica article US Could Achieve 3× As Much CO2 Savings With Renewables Instead Of Nuclear For Less Money. As usual, many of the comments from nuclear advocates related to the relative success of China, its speed of deployment compared to other jurisdictions and similar things.

In the discussion threads, I attempted to find apples-to-apples comparisons of China’s nuclear, solar, and wind generation compared, but none seemed to exist. As a result, I developed a model spanning 2010 to 2030, core years for all three programs. The charts are generated from the model

As I noted in 2014, the wind generation program had started much later than the nuclear program yet had been able to build much more capacity much more quickly, roughly six times more real wind energy capacity than nuclear per year over the years of 2010 through 2014. At the time, I used best of breed capacity factors for both wind and nuclear. One of the arguments against this at the time and on an ongoing basis is that China is curtailing wind and solar generation and achieving lower capacity factors. However, China is also experiencing less than best of breed capacity factors with its nuclear fleet, averaging 80% instead of 90%. This would have put the real world generation in the range of 3–4 times better for wind than for nuclear.

It doesn’t really matter as even with the diminished capacity factors for wind and solar currently experienced, they generated more than double the electricity generated by nuclear in 2018. Wind and solar each generated more electricity last year than nuclear did. By 2030, the ratio is very likely to be 4:1 in favor of wind and solar. And as Lazard has shown, wind and solar are much, much cheaper than nuclear, so China will be getting a lot more electricity at a lower cost point.

The chart above uses the capacity factors being experienced for wind, solar and nuclear to date in China and projects that all three will improve over the coming decade as operational efficiencies and grid connections improve………….

The quote from Kidd above suggests China might achieve only 100 GW of nuclear capacity by 2030. That’s an overestimation according to the actual data. Nuclear reactors in construction today only bring Chinese nuclear capacity to 55 GW by 2023. Reactors scheduled to start construction in the next three years only bring that number to 66 GW. Reactors planned but not scheduled at all are only likely to see 88 GW by 2030. There is no planned capacity that achieves even 100 GW, never mind the heady days when 200 GW was thought to be possible.

And to be clear, even if 200 GW of nuclear had been realized, it still would have been less actual generation than wind and solar.

As I indicated in the recent article on US ability to decrease carbon load, nuclear is much lower carbon per MWh than either coal or gas generation, as well as being free of chemical and particulate pollution. However, wind is still quite a bit lower than nuclear in CO2e per MWh and solar is around the same. Given the speed of deployment per GW of capacity and the much lower price per MWh of wind and solar, nuclear as part of the mix doesn’t make a lot of sense in most places…………https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/21/wind-solar-in-china-generating-2x-nuclear-today-will-be-4x-by-2030/

February 23, 2019 Posted by | China, renewable | 1 Comment

Robot claw grasped bits of molten nuclear Fuel in Fukushima reactor

Claw Game Japan Sends Robot Into the Nuclear Hell of the Fukushima Reactor https://futurism.com/japanese-spacecraft-hayabusa2-bullet-asteroid   It’s like a Roomba — for nuclear waste. Dan Robitzski, February 20th 2019

Nuclear Probe

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) just sent a robot into one of the reactors of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was destroyed by a tsunami back in 2011.

The robot made contact with the melted fuel, picking it up and putting it back down to determine whether it was solid enough to cart away during a future mission, according to Ars Technica.

The Claw

Fukushima won’t be fully decommissioned for another 30 to 40 years. But this robotic mission is the first step toward determining how other robots will go about cleaning it up.

In this case, the robot was able to pick up small chunks of the radioactive fuel at five of the six test sites, all of which were located inside one of the power plant’s three damaged reactors. TEPCO published a video of the process taken by the robot’s built-in camera, in which you can see a robotic claw position itself around and pick up small pieces of fuel.

Catch And Release

None of the radioactive fuel left the reactor along with the robot when the mission was over. But that wasn’t the plan. Rather, this mission marks the first time that a robot has been able to physically examine Fukushima’s fuel.

The team hopes to start retrieving some of the deadly fuel in 2021, now that they know it can be physically lifted. READ MORE: Japanese utility makes first contact with melted Fukushima fuel [Ars Technica]

February 23, 2019 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

With escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, could India consider a pre-emptive nuclear strike?

February 23, 2019 Posted by | India, politics international, South Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

An end-of-war declaration would be the first step towards denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula begins with a peace declaration, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By David Kim, February 14, 2019 During his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump announced that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the end of the month to continue a “historic push” for peace on the Korean Peninsula. If one statement stood out from Trump on North Korea, it’s that “much work remains to be done” to achieve complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

Last year’s summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim was historic not for what it achieved on denuclearization, but for what it signaled to the world: Both countries, through the top-down, personality-driven diplomacy of their leaders, are ready to transform their relationship by seeking permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula. The central question moving forward isn’t whether Kim is willing to give up his nuclear weapons; rather it’s whether the United States and North Korea can transform their relationship to a point where Kim and his elites begin to believe their regime can survive without nuclear weapons. More than any other measure, an end-of-war declaration between the two countries would represent the beginning of this transformation. As the State Department’s special representative for North Korea, Stephen Beigun, said in a speechat Stanford University, “President Trump is ready to end this war. It is over. It is done.” Both sides appear ready to make that statement a reality.

Denuclearization is a long-term goal. While some Trump administration officials have suggested otherwise, complete denuclearization isn’t a realistic short- or medium-term goal. After the Singapore summit, President Trump tweeted that North Korea no longer poses a “nuclear threat.” In fact, experts believe that tweet is a decade or more away from being true. It now seems that Trump may have adjusted his views on this point. In a recent tweet, Trump said he looks forward to “advancing the cause of peace” at the next summit in Vietnam, suggesting he accepts that peace and a new relationship should undergird any real denuclearization agreement with North Korea.

Trump should understand that by agreeing to a peace declaration with the North, he won’t necessarily speed up the denuclearization timeline; rather, he’d be laying the foundation for a formal peace regime, an institutional set-up to allow both the United States and North Korea to work toward that goal.  At Stanford, Biegun said the United States is prepared to take parallel steps with North Korea by “simultaneously look[ing] for ways to advance a more stable and peaceful, and ultimately, a more legal peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” one that can “advance denuclearization.” This is a much more subtle formulation than the previous all-or-nothing approach taken by many US policymakers, the idea that North Korea had to abandon all its weapons first before the United States took any steps such as sanctions relief.

Kim wants an end to the Korean War. Ever since the days of Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung’s regime, North Korea has sought a formal peace regime ending the Korean War. The country has repeatedly raised its strong desire for an end-of-war declaration as the next step towards permanent peace. A report on the regime’s state-run news agency, for instance, stated last year “that the issue of the end-of-war declaration should have been resolved a half a century ago.” Trump appears to agree. He reportedly told Kim in Singapore that he’d sign a declaration. Such a peace declaration may serve as a preliminary security guarantee, or litmus test, to see how serious Kim is about denuclearizing.

Unlike a formal peace treaty, an end-of-war declaration, or peace declaration, is a legally non-binding instrument. Getting to a declaration won’t involve difficult negotiations. The document, rather, would represent a symbolic end to a war that has actually been over since 1953. Without abandoning the goal of a peace treaty, Trump could use a declaration to signal to Kim that the United States is serious about negotiating with his regime. As some experts also point out, an end-of-war declaration could be a “game changer” for North Korea because it could help “neutralize the hardliners” within Kim’s regime, creating the breathing space to allow further progress towards denuclearization. It would also counteract the frequent propaganda narrative in North Korea of foreign encroachment………. https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/denuclearization-of-the-korean-peninsula-begins-with-a-peace-declaration/?utm_source=Bulletin%20Newsletter&utm_medium=iContact%20email&utm_campaign=PeaceDeclaration_02152019

February 23, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, South Korea | Leave a comment

Closing down Yongbyon nuclear facility to be up for discussion at US-North Korea summit

Closing nuclear facility on table as US-NKorea summit nears, BY ERIC TALMADGE News and Observer, ASSOCIATED PRESS, FEBRUARY 22, 2019 TOKYO 

The future of a key North Korean nuclear facility is on the table as leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump prepare to meet in Vietnam next week.

The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, the heart of the North’s nuclear development and research, is Kim’s biggest carrot as he tries to win security guarantees and free his country from the U.S.-backed trade sanctions that are hobbling its economy.

The North Korean leader has suggested he’s ready to talk about closing the facility, capping the amount of fissile material it produces or possibly allowing international inspections. Trump, meanwhile, says he is going into the summit in no hurry to push the North to denuclearize, as long as Kim isn’t conducting nuclear or missile tests.

But time may be of the essence.

As talks drag on, North Korea is believed to have produced enough weapons-grade nuclear fuel to make an estimated half a dozen or so more bombs in 2018 alone.

Here’s the latest on what’s going on at Yongbyon and why it’s so important:

HEDGED BETS

The North has taken steps to disable or dismantle some nuclear and missile facilities since the first Trump-Kim summit last June in Singapore but it has also been hedging its bets.

Using open-source satellite imagery of the Yongbyon complex, a team of experts led by Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who has visited the Yongbyon facility several times, estimate the North made enough weapons-grade material to boost its stockpile from an estimated 30 nuclear weapons at the end of 2017 to 35-37 by the end of last year.

“North Korea unsurprisingly continued to operate and, in some cases, expand the nuclear weapons complex infrastructure,” they wrote in a report published this month by the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation.

The authors note that Kim isn’t violating any agreements with Trump or shocking any military strategists by building up the North’s stockpile — that’s to be expected in an arms negotiation process. But the stepped up activity underscores how important it is for Washington to push for a deal on Yongbyon……..https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article226619924.html

February 23, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

For the 5th time, a court rules the Japanese govt liable for the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe

Japan gov’t, Fukushima operator told to pay over nuclear disaster https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/02/20/19/japan-govt-fukushima-operator-told-to-pay-over-nuclear-disaster, Agence France-Presse, TOKYO- A Japanese court Wednesday awarded nearly $4 million in fresh damages to scores of residents forced to flee their homes after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown.

The Yokohama district court ordered the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) to pay 419.6 million yen ($3.8 million) to 152 local residents, a court spokeswoman told AFP.

The verdict was the fifth time the government has been ruled liable for the disaster in eastern Japan, the world’s most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Presiding judge Ken Nakadaira said the government and TEPCO “could have avoided the accident if they had taken measures” against the tsunami that sparked the disaster, according to public broadcaster NHK.

In March last year, a court in Kyoto, western Japan, ruled both the government and TEPCO were responsible and ordered them to pay 110 million yen to 110 residents.

However, in a separate case in September 2017 in Chiba near Tokyo, the court ruled that only the operator was liable.

Around 12,000 people who fled after the disaster due to radiation fears have filed various lawsuits against the government and TEPCO.

Cases have revolved around whether the government and TEPCO, both of whom are responsible for disaster prevention measures, could have foreseen the scale of the tsunami and subsequent meltdown.

Dozens of class-action lawsuits have been filed seeking compensation from the government.

Triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake, the tsunami overwhelmed reactor cooling systems, sending three into meltdown and sending radiation over a large area.

February 21, 2019 Posted by | Japan, legal | Leave a comment

North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons, says former diplomat

North Korea won’t give up nuclear weapons, former diplomat says, Thomas Maresca,   USA TODAY Feb. 19, 2019 SEOUL – North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons, a former North Korean diplomat warned ahead of next week’s summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

“No money in the world will convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons,” said Thae Yong Ho, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, at a news briefing here Tuesday.

Thae fled his post in 2016 and is the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea.

The former diplomat said North Korea has been following a long-term strategy to pressure the United States to offer a peace agreement and begin lifting sanctions while not requiring that Pyongyang fully denuclearize.

He said Kim has followed the path of Pakistan, a de facto nuclear state which argued the military threat posed by nuclear-armed India justified the need for its own weapons.

“North Korea’s policy was to escalate the crisis of war to justify its nuclear weapons,” Thae said.

He said that Trump unwittingly played into the hands of Kim, by threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea at a 2017 speech to the U.N. General Assembly speech.

Raising the real possibility of war was “a real strategic mistake,” Thae said, claiming there was never a genuine threat of conflict between the U.S. and North Korea. “I believe, unfortunately President Trump fell into this trap.”…….https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/02/19/north-korea-wont-give-up-nuclear-weapons-ahead-trump-kim-summit/2913031002/

February 21, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

TEPCO sat by idly on reports of fires, glitches at nuclear plants

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Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant

February 14, 2019
Tokyo Electric Power Co. ignored reports on fires and other problems from its nuclear power plants and didn’t even bother to share the information in-house or consider precautionary measures, the nuclear watchdog revealed.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority decided Feb. 13 it will investigate the failure by TEPCO’s headquarters to tackle the problems reported by its three facilities: the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture and the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants, both in Fukushima Prefecture.
A TEPCO official said that the company put off tackling the problems because the deadline for dealing with such matters “was not clearly stated.”
NRA safety inspectors visited the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant from November through December last year.
They found that the division at company headquarters in charge of dealing with safety issues and sharing that information neglected reports of four problems that had occurred at the plant.
They cited 17 cases at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant; five cases at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and seven problems at the headquarters itself.

February 18, 2019 Posted by | Japan | , | Leave a comment

Unit 2 of Genkai NPP will be decommissioned.

Unit 3 and 4 of Genkai are still operating.
n-genkai-b-20190214-870x618.jpg
Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it will scrap No. 2 reactor at its Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture, seen in the forefront left of this photo taken in January
Feb 13, 2019
FUKUOKA – Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has decided to scrap its aging No. 2 reactor at its Genkai nuclear plant in Saga Prefecture.
The utility abandoned a plan to restart the unit, which has an output of 559 megawatts, in the face of the huge costs involved in enhancing the safety of the reactor that is already near the end of its 40-year operating life.
The reactor, which started operating in March 1981, has been idled since a routine checkup shortly before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster that triggered the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
The Genkai plant consists of four units. The utility already decided in 2015 to scrap its aging No. 1 unit, which had the same output capacity as the No. 2 reactor. Decommissioning work at the No. 1 reactor started in July 2017 and is expected to continue through fiscal 2043.
There have been a number of operational problems at the Genkai power plant. In May last year, pumps installed to control the circulation of cooling water at the No. 4 unit suffered malfunctions, following a steam leak from a pipe at the No. 3 reactor just a week after it was reactivated in March.
Some local residents have sought to stop operation of the Nos. 3 and 4 units with a temporary injunction, with doubts about the safety measures taken and citing the risk of volcanic eruptions in the region. Their case is pending at the Fukuoka High Court.

February 18, 2019 Posted by | Japan | , , | Leave a comment

Japan’s Nuclear Authority investigated Tepco’s failure to report fires, glitches at nuclear plants

  TEPCO sat by idly on reports of fires, glitches at nuclear plants, By YUSUKE OGAWA/ Staff Writer, Asahi Shimbun 14th Feb 2019 , Tokyo Electric Power Co. ignored reports on fires and other problems from its nuclear power plants and didn’t even bother to share the information in-house or consider precautionary measures, the nuclear watchdog revealed.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority decided Feb. 13 it will investigate the failure by TEPCO’s headquarters to tackle the problems reported by its three facilities: the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture and the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants, both in Fukushima Prefecture.

A TEPCO official said that the company put off tackling the problems because the deadline for dealing with such matters “was not clearly stated.” TEPCO’s safety regulations stipulate that blazes, glitches in air-conditioning and other problems at nuclear plants must be dealt with by the main office of the operator.
ttp://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201902140054.html

February 18, 2019 Posted by | incidents, Japan | Leave a comment

South Korea says that Kim Jong Un is ready to accept nuclear-plant inspections

Kim Ready to Accept Nuclear-Plant Inspections, South Korea Says, Bloomberg, By Youkyung Lee, February 16, 2019,

·          South Korea presidential adviser sees Trump path to compromise

·          Trump says ‘I’m in no rush for speed’ in talks with Kim regime

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was ready to accept the dismantlement and inspection of a high-profile nuclear plant, a South Korean presidential adviser said, suggesting a possible point of compromise in upcoming talks with President Donald Trump.

Moon Chung-in, a special adviser for foreign affairs and national security, said in an interview Friday that the verified destruction of the regime’s Yongbyon nuclear complex was an achievable goal during Trump’s planned Feb. 27-28 summit with Kim. Moon said it was his “understanding” that South Korean President Moon Jae-in got Kim’s personal assurance on that when they met in Pyongyang in September.

………..Moon Chung-in said the U.S. should agree to allow economic projects between the two Koreas to proceed in exchange for inspections of Yongbyon — something the U.S. has so far been reluctant to do. Kim has railed against the international sanctions regime choking his moribund economy and called for resuming the projects, including a industrial park and a mountain resort.

“Those will be doable,” Moon Chung-in said. Such an exchange would advance talks, “without undermining the overall sanctions regime by the UN Security Council, yet giving some kind of incentives to North Korea in a way the U.S. can come up with some sort of compromise,” he said.

Moon Chung-in, a strong advocate of South Korea rapprochement with North Korea, said the success of the Hanoi summit hinges on how North Korea proceeds with its nuclear arms program. Satellite-imagery analysis and leaked American intelligence suggest that North Korea has been churning out rockets and warheads as quickly as ever.

If North Korea continues to produce nuclear materials even after the Hanoi summit, I would say that’s the most important indicator that the Hanoi summit failed,” Moon Chung-in said. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/kim-ready-to-accept-inspection-of-nuclear-plant-adviser-says

 

February 16, 2019 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, South Korea | Leave a comment

The real nuclear crisis: danger of India-Pakistan nuclear war

Billions Dead: That’s What Could Happen if India and Pakistan Wage a Nuclear War, This is the real nuclear crisis the world is missing. National Interest, by Zachary Keck 14 Feb 19, Armed with what they believe is reasonable intelligence about the locations of Pakistan’s strategic forces, highly accurate missiles and MIRVs to target them, and a missile defense that has a shot at cleaning up any Pakistani missiles that survived the first strike, Indian leaders might be tempted to launch a counterforce first strike.

With the world’s attention firmly fixated on North Korea, the greatest possibility of nuclear war is in fact on the other side of Asia.

That place is what could be called the nuclear triangle of Pakistan, India and China. Although Chinese and Indian forces are currently engaged in a standoff, traditionally the most dangerous flashpoint along the triangle has been the Indo-Pakistani border. The two countries fought three major wars before acquiring nuclear weapons, and one minor one afterwards. And this doesn’t even include the countless other armed skirmishes and other incidents that are a regular occurrence.

At the heart of this conflict, of course, is the territorial dispute over the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the latter part of which Pakistan lays claim to. Also key to the nuclear dimension of the conflict is the fact that India’s conventional capabilities are vastly superior to Pakistan’s. Consequently, Islamabad has adopted a nuclear doctrine of using tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces to offset the latter’s conventional superiority………https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/billions-dead-thats-what-could-happen-if-india-and-pakistan-wage-nuclear-war-44682

February 16, 2019 Posted by | India, Pakistan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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