nuclear-news

Macron names next $11.5 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ‘France Libre’ as a symbol of independence

“a symbol of national independence“?

At $11.5 billion, it looks more like capture of the French government by the nuclear lobby

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday named France´s next
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the France Libre (“Free France”), framing
it as a symbol of national independence and a push to strengthen the
country´s naval forces, whose presence in the Middle-East region has been
significant since the start of the Iran war. Macron unveiled the warship´s
name during a visit to the shipyard in the Western town of Indret, where
its two nuclear reactors are to be built. The France Libre, which is to
enter service in 2038, will have a capacity for 30 Rafale fighter jets and
2,000 sailors, for an estimated cost of 10 billion euros ($11.5 billion).

Daily Mail 18th March 2026, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15658609/Macron-names-nuclear-powered-aircraft-carrier-France-Libre-symbol-independence.html

March 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France officially enters Nuclear Arms Race

4 March 2026

In what can only be called a worst case scenario, the burgeoning nuclear arms race has officially broken its bounds and will now include the world’s fourth largest nuclear superpower, France. (Counting only nuclear weapons actively deployed, France ranks third, behind the US and Russia, as less than 5% of China’s nuclear stockpile is actually deployed.)

Without offering precise numbers, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday that France would increase its nuclear stockpile, currently estimated to include 290 nuclear warheads.

Macron also announced plans to build a second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that would, like the currently deployed Charles de Gaulle, be capable of launching nuclear armed Rafale fighter jets.

In addition, Macron announced that some nuclear-capable Rafale jets might be temporarily deployed to allied European countries, naming Britain, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. This move expands France’s “nuclear umbrella” and places intermediate range missiles closer to Russia; it also positions France to replace US nuclear-armed aircraft currently deployed in three of those countries (Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands) in the case of US withdrawal from NATO.

France, like the US, Russia, China, and Great Britain, is a signatory to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. That Treaty requires nuclear-armed states to pursue “in good faith” a cessation of the arms race and complete nuclear disarmament “at an early date.” Since the signing of that Treaty more than fifty years ago, the US and Russia have intermittently engaged in negotiations leading to reductions in stockpile size, but both have also maintained nuclear arsenals with more than 3,500 warheads and show no signs of attempting a full disarmament campaign.

That reality, along with the consistent refusal of the nuclear powers to provide required reports to the United Nations about efforts to comply with NPT obligations, led non-nuclear nations to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017. The TPNW entered into force in January 2021 and now has the support of a majority of global states.

The United States government has been dismissive of the TPNW, denouncing it when it was being negotiated in 2017 and ignoring it since then. The government’s attempt to pretend the Treaty does not exist has been abetted by US mainstream media that resolutely refuses to mention the TPNW even in articles exploring the current status of the nuclear threat that include hand-wringing about the failure of arms control efforts.

That same mainstream media has, in recent months, begun to speak of the new global nuclear arms race—something OREPA has been warning about for more than a decade. Fifteen years ago, we pointed out that US investment in “modernization” of its nuclear capabilities, including building new bomb plants like the Uranium Processing Factility in Oak Ridge, was pushing the world toward a new nuclear arms race.

Unfortunately, our prescience has since been validated. Today, as mainstream media used words like “verge” and “brink” to talk about the nuclear arms race, some media with deeper knowledge describe the situation more accurately. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, for instance, has stated that we are in a full-blown global nuclear arms race.

Until Macron’s announcement, that global nuclear arms race was considered to be between the US, Russia, and China. But as the illusion of the old “rules-based” world order collapses, nuclear weapons are once again being deployed as viable threats and, potentially, the beginning of the end for planet Earth.

Macron’s Monday speech did follow one long-standing rule of the nuclear establishment—never mention the human cost of nuclear weapons. Any conversation that includes the damage done to human beings, men, women, children, families, by nuclear weapons production, testing, use, and threat of use; or that mentions the trillions of dollars being spend on these weapons of mass destruction while hundreds of millions of people go hungry and lack health care and shelter; or that accounts for massive environmental damage at mines, processing, production, and testing sites around the world; or that warns of the effects of nuclear winter in the event of a nuclear exchange—would undermine if not erase arguments that nuclear weapons have a role in providing security in any rational, human sense.

As victims of nuclear weapons, the hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, winners of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, courageously share their witness, telling the story of the worst day of their lives, the unimaginable horror of the devastation, death, and destruction wrought by bombs that, by today’s standards, are tiny. Their conclusion is the only one that makes sense—nuclear weapons must never be used again, and the only way to guarantee that is to abolish them altogether.

There exists today a path to nuclear disarmament, and it is not the path laid out by Emmanual Macron. It is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the only hope we have of avoiding a nuclear holocaust. As then-director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Beatrice Fihn, said in accepting the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize: “There are only two possible outcomes to the story of nuclear weapons. Either we do away with them, or they will do away with us.”

March 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France to increase its number of nuclear warheads, Macron says – as it happened

French president says deterrent needs to be ‘strengthened’ in recognition of new challenges

Jakub Krupa, 3 Mar 26,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/02/eu-response-middle-east-conflict-evacuate-citizens-europe-live-latest-news

• French president Emmanuel Macron has said France would increase the number of nuclear warheads and allow for temporary deployment of its nuclear-armed aircraft to allied countries for exercises as part of its new nuclear strategy seeking to “Europeanise” its deterrence programme (15:29, 15:50).
• In a major speech at the nuclear submarines Navy base of Île Longue, Macron said Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom are expected to be involved in the programme, with London and Berlin playing particularly important roles (15:47, 16:00).
• Several EU leaders confirmed their plans to engage with France on the details of the programme (16:44, 16:51, 17:04).
• The president repeated his warnings that Europe needed to urgently step up its defence posture to respond to new, emerging threats and disintegration of rules on the use of nuclear weapons

March 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, weapons and war | Leave a comment