When experts discuss the prospects of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), they naturally focus on impending events. Will nonaligned nations tie their continued adherence to reaching a comprehensive test ban? Will North Korea, Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, and Iran live up to their NPT obligations? Will some follow through on their threats to withdraw from the treaty? Is China, which is building more nuclear weapons and refused to agree to limit them, in violation of the treaty’s demand that nuclear weapons states limit their nuclear arms? Will the NPT’s inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), strengthen its inspection procedures? Can certain nuclear materials and activities ever be reliably inspected to detect and prevent their military diversion? The answers to these questions will determine not only the future of the NPT but the prospects for nuclear restraint.
Late last week, Bill Gates’ TerraPower nuclear reactor corporation struck an agreement with the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry to build a small, advanced modular fast power reactor in Wyoming. The nuclear plant, called Natrium, is touted as the path forward to […]
Our government seems on a tear to hug Mother Earth and to decarbonize the planet with advanced U.S. nuclear reactors. None of these plants yet exist; all still are being designed. Some of them, like Bill Gates’ Natrium fast reactor, are prodigious producers of weapons-grade plutonium. […]
Almost the instant President Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, analysts worried that it set a bad nuclear nonproliferation precedent that the Irans of the world would exploit to justify pushing nuclear subs programs of their own. […]
Earlier last month, Secretary of Energy Granholm touted the Department’s commercialization of advanced fast reactors at the COPO26 Glasgow Climate Conference as a demonstration of America’s commitment to decarbonizing the planet. The State Department announced it’s organizing itself to support the export of such reactors. […]
The Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) nuclear submarine deal became a political fact the instant President Joe Biden and Prime Ministers Borris Johnson and Scott Morrison announced it. However, as John Lee and Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute and I explained at an event held […]
Some Washington insiders are now betting the proposed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill may stall in the House but be reconsidered at a later date. If they’re right, it may not be all that bad. As Victor Gilinsky and I note in our The National Interest piece, “‘Fast […]
Iran is increasingly putting Washington in a nuclear bind. On the one hand, it refuses to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor its uranium enrichment-related activities or to clarify its past suspect nuclear weapons pursuits. On the other, it has […]
Last month, Wyoming became ground zero for the future of nuclear power. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and the state of Wyoming announced their intent to construct a commercial fast reactor demonstration plant, known as the Natrium project. Experts are already debating the project’s merits. Can […]
As Secretary of State Blinken returns from his trip to Israel after its shooting match with Hamas, the question arises, just how peaceful is the Middle East ever likely to be. The immediate crisis and the shooting may be over in Israel but the long-term […]
Given the shooting in the Middle East not only in Israel, but between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, reviving the nuclear deal is getting far more difficult than it was before. Compounding these difficulties is that the Iranian election June 18th is likely to produce […]
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