After numerous test launches, North Korean scientists have already mastered long-range guidance and control capabilities, while a series of underground tests have demonstrated that the regime of Kim Jong-un has acquired nuclear weapons.
Energy tide turning in India, with cheaper renewables, and coal losing favour
Will India Ever Need Another Coal Plant?, The country’s energy infrastructure is changing rapidly as solar prices plummet. CityLab.com , KRUTIKA PATHI, @krutikapathi03, May 25, 2017
“…..over the last five months, the price of renewable energy has plummeted so low that analysts have hailed it as both “record-breaking” and “unsustainable” in the same breath. In fact, the pace of change in the country’s energy infrastructure has been so swift that even researchers are scrambling to keep a steady pulse on a constantly developing beat.
As China slowly cut down on its own coal infrastructure, the International Energy Agency in 2015 projected India to be the next coal center in the near future. It stated that “half of the net increase in coal-fired generation capacity worldwide [through 2040] occurs in India.” Nearly a year later, in July 2016, the nonprofit CoalSwarm put out a report that found 370 proposals for coal plants in the works across the country.
The findings revealed a pretty explosive conclusion: that India’s outsized plans for coal energy would wipe out climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. Merely a few months after the report, the researchers at CoalSwarm were surprised by a new twist.
In December 2016, the Central Authority of India (CAI) laid out an electricity plan that said no new coal plants, beyond those already under construction, are needed for at least the next decade. The CAI also put forth new renewable energy goals—a production of 275 gigawatts (GW) generated from solar, wind, and hydro by 2027.
This means that the majority of the plants that CoalSwarm tracked are now going to be shelved. It’s also a show of India’s push towards reforming its energy infrastructure: the country added more renewable power than thermal in the 2016 fiscal year.“It was hard to keep up,” says Christine Shearer, a senior researcher at CoalSwarm and lead author of the report. “The country is supposed to be at the heart of coal plant growth, but it’s interesting to see the tide go against what we often hear about China and India—that they’re going to keep building coal plants—when actually, they’re both stalling production.”…..
As prospects for India’s coal sector are falling, so is the price of renewable energy. In turn, the country’s future outlook, if all goes accordingly, is pretty good news for the planet. India first set a record-low price in February this year when a kilowatt-hour of solar energy was selling at Rs. 2.97 ($0.046 USD). This month, the country hit another record low—the price of solar dropped 12 percent further, currently selling at Rs. 2.62 ($0.041 USD) per kilowatt-hour. “To spell it out, new solar is 15 percent cheaper than existing domestic coal. No one, anywhere in the world, was expecting solar to get that cheap for at least a decade,” Buckley says, “and India just got there this year.” It’s a marked shift for India—which, in a matter of months, went from potentially thwarting global climate goals to possibly saving them.
The news of falling solar prices in India, and the country’s recent (but significant) efforts to divest from coal as the fundamental energy source, stands in contrast to the current scenario in the U.S. Analysts fear that President Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” will put the country behind China and India in the push to reinvigorate renewable solutions. “What gives me hope is that at a time when Trump is busy trying to destroy the Paris Agreement, the two most important countries in the world for the agreement are China and India,” says Buckley.
According to a study released last week by the Climate Action Tracker, India and China are on pace to “overachieve” their climate goals by 2030. ……
Solutions like off-grid solar panels are one kind of sustainable technology that could address the distribution problem, says Harish Hande, co-founder of SELCO, an enterprise that introduced off-grid solar energy in the Siddhi community in 2010. Within a year, 100 homes in the area were connected to power in the Western Ghats region. SELCO has been nationally awarded for its energy work in under-served households and areas—but, as Hande points out, a long-standing solution has to go beyond the mere mechanics of the supply chain. “It’s much larger than providing electricity,” he says, “and there have to be enough public-private partnerships that cross over education, health, and the bigger ecosystem for sustainable energy services to become more accessible.”https://www.citylab.com/tech/2017/05/will-india-ever-need-another-coal-plant/528111/
2 more nuclear reactors in Japan clear regulator’s safety review
The No. 3 (right) and 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi Nuclear Power Plant are seen in November 2016.
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Nuclear Regulation Authority formally confirmed Wednesday that two reactors on the Sea of Japan have met the country’s post-Fukushima safety standards, paving the way for their restart possibly this fall.
The authority gave its final approval to a screening report submitted by Kansai Electric Power Co. on the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors at Oi plant in Fukui Prefecture, bringing the number of reactors that have met the standards introduced after the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to 12 at six power stations.
For the restart, Kansai Electric still has to pass on-site pre-operational checks by the authority and obtain approval from the Fukui prefectural government.
The utility said in a statement it will “make utmost effort for the early restart of nuclear plants whose safety has been confirmed by gaining the understanding of local residents.”
Although the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been promoting the restart of nuclear reactors, most of them remain offline amid safety concerns among local residents following the Fukushima disaster triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami.
The nuclear safety watchdog gave the green light to the restart of the reactors despite a pending lawsuit filed by local residents seeking to block the resumption of operations. Kansai Electric has appealed a Fukui District Court ruling in 2014 which banned it from running the two reactors due to safety concerns.
Seismologist Kunihiko Shimazaki, a former commissioner of the NRA, has warned that the authority may have underestimated quake hazards at the Oi plant.
Kansai Electric applied for the screening of the two reactors at the Oi plant in July 2013. With Wednesday’s approval, all of its seven nuclear reactors at three power stations for which the utility has sought screening have cleared the safety standards.
Of the seven, the No. 4 reactor at Takahama plant in Fukui restarted operation on May 17, while the No. 3 reactor of the same plant is expected to get back online in early June.
India’s fast growth in renewable energy
FT 23rd May 2017, Until recently, the answer was overwhelmingly coal, which accounts for about 60 per cent of Indian power generation. Coal capacity has almost tripled in the past decade to 192GW and a further 65GW is under construction.
The fastest growth, however, is coming from renewables. Significant amounts of hydro and wind generation have already pushed the share of green energy to about 30 per cent. This is now being supplemented by rapid expansion in solar power. A landmark was reached this May when an auction to supply 500MW of new solar capacity at a 10,000 hectare facility on the edge of the Thar desert secured a record low price of Rs2.44 ($0.04) per kilowatt-hour — down two-thirds from three years ago and, for the first time, cheaper than coal-fired generation.
Plummeting costs have spurred forecasts that Indian solar capacity could double this year to 18GW, which would be more than six times greater than when Mr Modi’s government took power three years ago…..https://www.ft.com/content/a106c468-3567-11e7-99bd-13beb0903fa3
China cancelling many coal mines, going all out for solar power
In September 2016, China’s cancelled more than 103 under-construction and planned coal-fired power plants, a total of 120 gigawatt hours (GWh) of capacity. In March this year, premier Li Keqiang announced that an additional 50GWh would be shut down or postponed. The coal power stopped in China so far is equivalent to the combined coal power capacity of the UK and Spain. China’s era of one coal-fired station a week is over.
China’s covering a Football field with Solar Panels Every Hour in Quest to End Coal,https://www.juancole.com/2017/05/chinas-covering-football.html | May. 10, 2017 By Janet Xuanli Liao | (The Conversation) | – –
China’s remarkable growth over the past three decades has elevated it to global superpower status. But its economic miracle has also attracted attention for the wrong reasons: the country is now the world’s largest energy consumer, oil importer, and CO₂ emitter. It led to the line that China builds a new coal-fired power station each week being faithfully and unquestioningly repeated. However, this is no longer a fair reflection of the country’s energy situation.
It’s true that China consumes around a quarter of the world’s total primary energy and more than half its coal. This was once a necessity. The “open door” policy to foreign investment that began in the late 1970s led to rapid economic growth and, in turn, a spectacular rise in energy demand. Electricity consumption in China rose from just 232 kilowatt hours (KWh) in 1978 to nearly 6,000 terawatt hours (TWh) today – that is, six thousand billion kilowatt hours – and to keep up with demand, China needed coal.
However, coal as a proportion of China’s energy mix peaked at 75% in the late 1980s and by 2016 it had fallen to 62%, the lowest since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. This was a result of Beijing taking serious measures in recent years to cut coal, in order to reduce domestic pollution and to tackle climate change.
One of these measures was the Top-1,000 Enterprises Energy-Saving Programme. Launched in 2006, the programme targeted the country’s largest energy-consuming firms in sectors like steel, petrochemicals, cement, and textiles. Together, these 1,000 enterprises accounted for a third of the nation’s energy consumption. The programme was quite effective and contributed towards China’s efforts to reduce its energy consumption per unit of GDP.
The government has also taken action to slow the country’s economic growth and set lower annual rate of GDP growth at 6.5% in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), against 9-10% in the previous three decades.
Pollution protests
With economic growth slowing and the heaviest polluters being forced to use less energy, coal generation was a natural choice to cut back. By this point, people in China were well aware of the problem with coal. And from the mid-2000s the pollution problem was becoming too serious to ignore, and civil society groups began to protest. Local authorities initially resisted the government’s “war on pollution” but last year brought about some of the worst smog ever recorded in China and the strongest response yet from the central authorities.
In September 2016, China’s cancelled more than 103 under-construction and planned coal-fired power plants, a total of 120 gigawatt hours (GWh) of capacity. In March this year, premier Li Keqiang announced that an additional 50GWh would be shut down or postponed. The coal power stopped in China so far is equivalent to the combined coal power capacity of the UK and Spain. China’s era of one coal-fired station a week is over.
A commitment to cutting emissions
Beijing’s long-standing opposition to international climate change obligations is well-known, at least prior to the 2015 UN conference in Paris. But things are changing. Though China’s coal capacity may yet increase slightly over the next few years, any growth will be dwarfed by planned investment in solar, wind and nuclear.
China is now the world’s largest backer of green energy, accounting for 17% of global investment in the sector. According to Greenpeace, it installed an average of more than one wind turbine every hour of every day in 2015. It also covered the equivalent of one soccer field with solar panels every hour, action that may allow China to meet its 2020 goals for solar installation two years ahead of schedule. By 2030 it is hoped that cleaner energy will help reduce China’s CO₂ emissions by 54% from 2010 levels.
This is good news because the inescapable fact is that efforts to mitigate climate change are doomed to fail if the Chinese do not get on board. Compared with other countries, China still has a long way to go. Britain, for instance, recently managed a day without coal for the first time in more than 130 years, while other countries have drastically cut their carbon footprint.
However, energy policy is, as with most aspects of Chinese life, more complicated and more susceptible to internal and external pressures than many observers believe. The reaction of the Chinese leadership to these pressures gives us hope that the country can free itself of dirty coal, and that this day may come sooner rather than later.
Janet Xuanli Liao, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Energy Security Studies, University of Dundee
Study: S. Korean nuclear disaster would hit Japan the hardest
The projected spread of radioactive cesium-137 from a disaster at the No. 3 reactor’s spent fuel pool of the Kori nuclear plant in Busan, South Korea (Provided by Kang Jung-min)
A serious nuclear accident in South Korea could force the evacuation of more than 28 million people in Japan, compared with around 24 million in the home country of the disaster.
Japan would also be hit harder by radioactive fallout than South Korea in such a disaster, particularly if it occurred in winter, when strong westerly winds would blow radioactive substances across the Sea of Japan, according to a simulation by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based think tank.
The simulation, based on a scenario of an unfolding crisis at the Kori nuclear power plant in Busan, South Korea, was led by Kang Jung-min, a South Korean senior researcher of nuclear physics, and his colleagues.
At events in Japan and South Korea, Kang, 51, has repeatedly warned about East Asia’s vulnerability to a severe nuclear accident, saying the region shares the “same destiny” regardless of the location of such a disaster.
The Kori nuclear complex is home to seven of the country’s 25 commercial reactors, making it one of the largest in South Korea. Its oldest reactor–and the first in the country–went online in 1978.
Spent nuclear fuel at the Kori plant is cooled in on-site storage pools next to reactors.
But the operator of the plant has ended up storing spent fuel in more cramped conditions than in the past because waste keeps accumulating from the many years of operations.
An estimated 818 tons of spent fuel was being stored at the pool of the Kori No. 3 reactor as of the end of 2015, the most at any reactor in the country.
That is because the No. 3 pool has also been holding spent fuel from the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors since their fuel pools became too crowded.
Storing spent fuel in such a manner greatly increases the risk of a nuclear accident, Kang warned.
Kang’s team simulated the series of likely events that would follow if the No. 3 reactor lost power in a natural disaster or an act of terrorism.
With no power, the spent fuel at the No. 3 reactor could not be cooled. The cooling water would evaporate, exposing the fuel rods to air, generating intensive heat and causing a fire.
Hydrogen gas would then fill up the fuel storage building, leading to an explosion that would result in the release of a large amount of vaporized cesium-137 from the spent fuel.
Assuming that the catastrophe occurred on Jan. 1, 2015, the researchers determined how highly radioactive cesium-137 would spread and fall to the ground based on the actual weather conditions over the following week, as well as the direction and velocity of winds.
To gauge the size of the area and population that would be forced to evacuate in such a disaster, the team took into account recommendations by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, a private entity, and other organizations.
The results showed that up to 67,000 square kilometers of land in Japan–or much of the western part of the country–would fall under the evacuation zone, displacing a maximum of 28.3 million people.
In South Korea, up to 54,000 square kilometers would need to be vacated, affecting up to 24.3 million people.
The simulation also found that 18.4 million Japanese and 19 million Koreans would remain displaced for even after 30 years, the half-life of cesium-137, in a worst-case scenario.
Radioactive materials from South Korea would also pollute North Korea and China, according to the study.
Nineteen reactors in South Korea are located in the coastal area facing the Sea of Japan, including those at the Kori nuclear power plant.
Kang said the public should be alerted to the dangers of highly toxic spent fuel, an inevitable byproduct of nuclear power generation.
One ton of spent fuel contains 100,000 curies of cesium-137, meaning that 20 tons of spent fuel would be enough to match the estimated 2 million curies of cesium-137 released in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
An average-size light-water reactor produces about 20 tons of spent fuel in one year of operation.
East Asia is home to one of the world’s largest congestions of nuclear facilities, Kang said.
Japan, China and South Korea, which have all promoted nuclear energy as state policy for decades, together host about 100 commercial reactors.
A number of nuclear-related facilities are also concentrated in North Korea, particularly in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
If a severe accident were to occur in China, the pollution would inevitably spill over to South Korea and then to Japan.
“That is why people should take serious interest in not just their own country’s nuclear issues, but also in neighboring countries,” Kang said. “Japan, China and South Korea should cooperate with each other to ensure the safety and security of spent fuel and nuclear facilities.”
He said the risks of a fire would be reduced if spent fuel were placed at greater intervals in storage pools.
“Ideally, spent fuel should be moved to sealed dry casks and cooled with air after it is cooled in a pool for about five years,” he said.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201703300001.html
Breakthrough for North Korea’s missile test – re-entry to Earth’s atmsophere
North Korea missile passes re-entry test in breakthrough for nuclear programme, Telegraph, in Tokyo 20 MAY 2017
The ballistic missile launched by North Korea on May 14 successfully re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, according to analysts, a significant breakthrough for Pyongyang’s missile programme.
Defence officials in South Korea and the US have confirmed that the launch of the liquid- fuel Hwasong-12 was a success.
North Korea claimed that the weapon reached an altitude of 2,111.5 km (1,312 miles) and travelled a distance of 489 miles before breaching Japan’s Air Defence Identification Zone and splashing down in the Sea of Japan……..
As a result of the latest North Korean test, US authorities have decided to extend the deployment of the USS Carl Vinson and its strike group in the Sea of Japan. The fleet – described as an “armada” by President Donald Trump – was due to depart from the region after the USS Ronald Reagan, another aircraft carrier, completed a refit at the US naval base at Yokosuka, Japan.
The USS Ronald Reagan put to sea on May 16 and the two strike groups are now scheduled to carry out manoeuvres with South Korean warships in the coming weeks…http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/20/northkorea-missile-passes-re-entry-test-breakthrough-nuclear/
North Korea’s vast military capabilities, even without nuclear weapons
How much damage could North Korea unleash even without nuclear weapons?, ABC News By Michael Collett, 21 May 17, There’s been a lot of focus on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and specifically, its hopes of developing a missile that could deliver a nuclear strike on the United States.
But what can be lost in the discussion of the country’s recent missile tests is the vast military capabilities the country already has.
This morning, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said any military solution to the North Korea crisis would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale”.
This is why a diplomatic solution is widely seen as the only solution.
What do we know about North Korea’s military?
Nick Bisley, executive director of La Trobe Asia and editor-in-chief of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, says the military is the second most important institution in North Korea behind the Kim dynasty.
“The whole economy and the purpose of the state is organised around ensuring that the military has vast capacity,” he said.
So despite North Korea having an estimated population of about 25 million — not much more than Australia — it has the second biggest military in Asia behind China……..
North Korea has vast artillery capabilities that are targeted on Seoul, which has a population of 10 million and is less than an hour’s drive from the DMZ……..
Ultimately, it’s all about regime security.
“Yes, there’s a paranoid streak in North Korean thinking, but it’s not unfounded. There is someone who’s out to get them,” Professor Bisley said…… http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-20/what-can-north-korea-already-do-without-nuclear-weapons/8543532
China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) wanting to take over Britain’s Moorside nuclear project?
Times 21st May 2017 A Chinese state-owned power giant has set its sights on the £15bn nuclear plant planned for the Cumbrian coast. State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) is considering investing in Toshiba’s troubled NuGen
project at Moorside — risking a collision with Theresa May and her new interventionist approach to foreign takeovers.
Industry sources said a delegation from SNPTC and its parent, State Power Investment Corporation, was due in London. Eight senior officials will meet executives from NuGen and Britain’s atomic power trade body, the Nuclear Industry Association, on Tuesday.
It is unclear whether the election hiatus will hinder meetings with Whitehall officials. The talks underline China’s ambitions in nuclear power after another state-owned giant, China General Nuclear, bankrolled the £18bn Hinkley Point plant in Somerset. CGN took a 33% stake in Hinkley but its ultimate ambition is to build a power station, fuelled
with its own home-grown reactors, at Bradwell in Essex.
Sources said SNPTC could seek to power NuGen with its own reactor — a derivative of Westinghouse’s AP1000 model, which is planned for the site. SNPTC could not be reached for comment. NuGen said it was exploring a “universe of
options” for investment. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/chinese-eye-rescue-of-nuclear-plant-qlj09k5wn
A nuclear accident in South Korea could contaminate Western Japan, more eriously than South Korea
South Korean nuclear power plant accident would heavily taint western Japan: simulation http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/21/national/science-health/nuclear-accident-south-korean-plant-leave-western-japan-massively-contaminated-study/#.WSJ_W5KGPGg
KYODO A nuclear accident at a power plant in South Korea could cause wider radiation contamination in western Japan than on its home soil, a study by a South Korean scientist has shown.
If a cooling system fails at the spent-fuel storage pools at the Kori power plant’s No. 3 reactor in Busan, massive amounts of cesium-137 would be released that could potentially reach western Japan, according to a simulation by Jungmin Kang of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S. think tank.
In the worst-case scenario, up to 67,000 sq. km of Japanese soil would be contaminated and 28.3 million people would be forced to evacuate, the study said, though the fallout’s spread would depend on the season.
As for South Korea, an accident at the plant could taint more than half of the nation by contaminating up to 54,000 sq. km, it said.
A total of 818 tons of spent nuclear fuel were stored in pools at the site as of the end of 2015, Kang said. He said an accident could be triggered not only by natural disasters but by terrorism or a missile from North Korea.
Environmental pollution from North Korea’s underground nuclear tests a concern for China
China fears NK nuke leaks, Korea Times, By Oh Young-jin, 2017-05-21 China fears environmental contamination and earthquakes that may be triggered by North Korea’s underground nuclear tests, possibly bringing Beijing to the breaking point of its patience with its blood-sealed but increasingly defiant ally, a Chinese scholar said during an interview Friday.
“Chinese people in the northeast region that borders North Korea are fearful that they will fall victim to contaminated water and seismic disruptions from its nuclear blasts,” Professor Zhu Feng of Nanjing University told The Korea Times. The interview was held before his lecture on the Korea-China-U.S. relationship, sponsored by the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies.Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province, which has served as the site for four of the five nuclear tests and will certainly accommodate a sixth, is within hundreds of kilometers of population centers in northeastern China. It is also quite close to Mt. Baekdu, a volcanic mountain that some experts fear may have another big eruption after the one in 946…….https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/05/120_229715.html
North Korea defiant on nuclear missile testing
North Korea links nuclear advances to ‘hostile’ U.S. policy, Globe and Mail, EDITH M. LEDERER AND MATTHEW PENNINGTON, The Associated Press, May 19, 2017 The U.S. defence chief warned Friday that a military solution to the standoff with North Korea would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale,” while the North vowed to rapidly strengthen its nuclear-strike capability as long as it faces a “hostile” U.S. policy.
North Korea is a nuclear state. We have to live with that
Stephen Rademaker: North Korea is a nuclear state. We have to live with that, and here’s how Stephen Rademaker, Washington Post | May 19, 2017 Last Sunday, North Korea successfully demonstrated for the first time that it could strike U.S. territory in the Pacific. After more than 25 years of wrestling with the North Korean nuclear threat, it’s time to recognize that North Korea is not merely seeking to gain bargaining leverage against us. Rather, it is determined to possess nuclear weapons, and we need to develop a realistic strategy for containing, defending against and deterring what will be a persistent and growing nuclear threat.
There’s every reason to continue pursuing sanctions and diplomacy, but we should not premise our policy on the expectation that such efforts are going to succeed in persuading North Korea to change course. We must also recognize that there is no acceptable military solution to the problem.
Even before the North produced its first nuclear weapon, the United States calculated that the potential cost for any military strike was too great for America and South Korea. Now that North Korea has nuclear weapons, as well as missiles that can reach Guam and beyond, this logic is even more compelling.
It is indeed true, as the Trump administration has concluded, that China has the wherewithal to compel North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons. But China is a great power that has had plenty of time to think through its policy. It is concerned, but clearly not panicked. More important, it perceives plenty of downsides to overreacting, including the potential collapse and absorption of its ally, North Korea, into America’s ally, South Korea.
So great is our dependence on China that, like hostages held by a kidnapper, all previous administrations developed a sort of Stockholm syndrome, coming to believe that China was doing everything it could to help solve the problem, when it manifestly could do more. After 25 years, we should not assume that more hectoring, promises or threats will persuade China to act in ways it believes contrary to its interests…….http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/stephen-rademaker-north-korea-is-a-nuclear-state-we-have-to-live-with-that-and-heres-how
Chinese fighter jets buzz US ‘nuclear sniffer’ plane over East China Sea
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/chinese-fighter-jets-buzz-us-nuclear-sniffer-plane-over-east-china-sea/article/2623592 by Travis J. Tritten | May 19, 2017, Two Chinese fighter jets intercepted a U.S. surveillance plane in the East China Sea on Wednesday amid larger diplomatic efforts over North Korea, the Air Force said.
The service said the crew members of the WC-135 nuclear-sniffing aircraft determined the Chinese pilots of the Su-30 jets were being “unprofessional.” The encounter was still under investigation.
“The issue is being addressed with China through appropriate diplomatic and military channels,” Pacific Air Forces spokeswoman Lt. Col. Lori Hodge said in a released statement.
The WC-135 Constant Phoenix is capable of detecting nuclear weapons activity and was deployed last month to Kadena Air Base on Japan’s far southern island of Okinawa as the North Koreans were ramping up missile testing.
Since then, the Trump administration has been looking to China to pressure the regime of Kim Jong Un to give up its ambitions for a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland.
However, there is deep friction between China and the U.S. over that country’s territorial claims in the East China Sea, which includes the Korean peninsula and Japan.
Cyber war a more likely threat than nuclear war? North Korea has expertise in this
With the attention of the United States and its allies at present focused on North Korea’s nuclear activity, North Korea potentially has greater latitude to act aggressively in the cyber realm, especially against the private sector.
North Korea, Iran, and the Challenges of Dealing With Cyber-Capable Nuclear States https://www.lawfareblog.com/north-korea-iran-and-challenges-dealing-cyber-capable-nuclear-states, By Luke McNamara, May 18, 2017 North Korea’s successful missile launch last Sunday has further sharpened the world’s focus on the country’s growing nuclear capabilities. But in remarks last month, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly commented that North Korea poses a more likely cyber threat than it does a nuclear concern.
India diverts ‘peaceful’ nuclear materials to weapons development
India Has Been Diverting Nuclear Materials to Make Weapons: Pakistan News .com May 18, 2017, Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday alleged that India has been diverting nuclear materials it had obtained for peaceful purposes under the NSG waiver to make weapons.
Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria told reporters that Pakistan has been underscoring for decades the risks of diversion by India of imported nuclear fuel, equipment and technology, received pursuant to civil nuclear cooperation agreements and the 2008 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) waiver.
“The concerns over diversion are neither new nor unfounded. India enjoys the rare distinction of diverting nuclear material, obtained on its peaceful use commitment, to its nuclear weapons programme,” he said.
“The past and potential misuse of nuclear materials by India entails not only serious issues of nuclear proliferation but also carry grave implications for strategic stability in South Asia and national security of Pakistan.”
He said media reports and papers substantiate an otherwise largely “ignored fact” that India’s nuclear weapons programme is the fastest growing in the world.
Talking about a paper recently released by Harvard Kennedy School, he said that this paper and other several reports corroborate growing concerns related to the use of nuclear material acquired by India from abroad in its existing and future unsafeguarded nuclear reactors, plants and facilities for development of nuclear weapons.
“The recent Belfer paper inter alia concludes that India has accumulated nuclear material for over 2600 nuclear weapons,” he said.
He said that NSG states have a responsibility to take into account these well-founded concerns while considering transfer of nuclear material to India and its NSG membership bid.
He claimed that many international nuclear experts, think tanks and media reports in the past years have consistently raised concerns over the lack of transparency, absence of international safeguards, and the potential for diversion of unsafeguarded nuclear material for nuclear weapons in India…….http://www.news18.com/news/world/india-has-been-diverting-nuclear-materials-to-make-weapons-pakistan-1405687.html
1 This Month
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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