China recently significantly expanded its uranium enrichment capacity. The predominant view of experts and respected non-governmental organizations is that this expansion is needed to supply China’s growing civilian nuclear energy sector. The attached in-depth analysis by Chinese nuclear physicist Dr. Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate...
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the space-based portion of the Golden Dome missile defense system would cost $700 billion to build over the next 20 years and a billion a year to operate. The CBO’s determination assumed the Golden Dome’s primary...
Last week, controversy over precisely what the terms are of the U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear cooperative agreement generated national headlines. Some of its provisions still are not yet public; others reportedly have been redacted. At least as worrisome as the agreement’s unknown terms is how safe it might be to build U.S. reactors...
Today marks the last day of America’s 60-day memorandum of understanding with Iran, which featured several nuclear provisions. Among those was an Iranian pledge not to “procure or develop nuclear weapons.” The rub, of course, is how to make sure Iran lives up to this...
Last week, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee raised a number of nuclear nonproliferation concerns about the U.S.-Saudi civil nuclear cooperative agreement and stated that Congress had an obligation to review the pact carefully. As I note below, in the op-ed “The...
Critics of the recently announced U.S. nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia let out a sigh of relief last Thursday when President Trump posted on Truth Social that the deal wouldn’t go ahead until Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel and insisted that the agreement permits “no enrichment...
Last April, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published a piece I wrote, “Missing from US-Iran talks: plutonium for more than 200 nuclear bombs.” Not long after, it published a critique by Sasan Karimi, a professor teaching at the Iranian-government and managed University of Tehran. His...
In the midst of the war on Iran, American and Iranian diplomats met this weekend to determine how best to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. As I note in the attached piece, “U.S.-Iranian Nuclear Talks: Three Headaches,” that RealClearDefense posted over the weekend,...
As peace talks with Iran take a backseat to continued military operations, Washington is getting an object lesson in just how challenging preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is. If all the United States and its Middle Eastern allies had to worry about was arresting...
Last week, senior U.S. and South Korean officials met in Washington to hammer out how the United States might help build and fuel nuclear submarines for South Korea. The South Korean officials also urged the United States to give Seoul permission to enrich uranium and...
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