Digests and Blog

By Tom Z. Collina and Kelsey Davenport According to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) February 2013 quarterly report on Iran's nuclear program, Tehran is continuing to develop its nuclear program and slowly enhancing its nuclear weapons breakout potential. While this progress is troubling, Iran still remains years away from having a workable nuclear arsenal. IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria The IAEA's February 2013 report (PDF), which was leaked to reporters today, indicates that Iran has begun installing, for the first time, advanced second-generation centrifuges in the…

Robert Gallucci, former U.S. negotiator with North Korea at the 2013 Asan Nuclear Forum. By Kelsey Davenport (Seoul, Republic of Korea)—North Korea's third nuclear test on Feb. 12 sparked concern in the international community about possible qualitative and quantitative improvements to Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal. But concerns about an increasing number of nuclear weapons on the Peninsula should not solely be limited to the North. Recent polling data collected by the Asan Institute indicates that the majority of South Korean favor acquiring their own nuclear arsenal. A public opinion poll…

By Daryl G. Kimball President Obama in the State of the Union Address Feb. 12: "America will continue to lead the effort to prevent the spread of the world's most dangerous weapons." Barack Obama's State of the Union pledge to continue "to lead the effort to prevent the spread of the world's most dangerous weapons" represents a renewal of the President's commitment to pursue a step-by-step plan toward a world without nuclear weapons, which he first outlined in Prague on April 5, 2009. In his address, the President made it clear that he will press forward to find a diplomatic solution to the…

By Daryl G. Kimball and Greg Thielmann The DPRK's Punggye-ri nuclear test site April 18, 2012. The government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has apparently conducted its third nuclear test explosion, defying the explicit demands of the UN Security Council and the international community that it "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner." The Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), Tibor Toth, issued the following statement on Feb. 12 at 04:19:17 CST: "Today our…

The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has apparently conducted its third nuclear test explosion, defying the explicit demands of the UN Security Council and the international community that it “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.” The Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), Tibor Toth, issued the following statement on Feb. 12 at 04:19:17 CST: “Today our monitoring stations picked up evidence of an unusual seismic event in the Democratic People’s…

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) announced this week that the organization is able to detect seismological activity in North Korea "within minutes" of an explosion. Following North Korea's previous nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, the CTBTO was able to determine "within a couple of hours" of each event that they were explosions, not earthquakes. According to Annika Thunborg, a spokeswoman for the CTBTO, it will take the organization several days to verify that the event was a nuclear test explosion, as opposed to an exceptionally large conventional explosion. This…

Sandia National Laboratories recently tested an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), nicknamed "Harvester," for use in detecting nuclear test explosions. The UAV's airborne pods are equipped with radiation sensors and debris samplers, which can track radiation to its source and use particulates and gases to identify the location of a nuclear test explosion, according to a press release from Sandia. Harvester differs from traditional nuclear test monitoring technology in that it actively investigates sources of radiation, as opposed to the immobile monitoring stations used by the United States…

Today, North Korea’s National Defence Commission released a statement ramping up the rhetoric towards the United States. Pyongyang announced its intention to conduct a nuclear explosion of a higher yield than its previous tests in 2006 and 2009. The country also announced that it plans to continue to launch satellites and long-range rockets in direct violation of several UN Security Council resolutions. Pyongyang stated that its “upcoming all-out action” would target the United States and that “settling accounts with the U.S. needs to be one with force, not with words.” North Korea also…

In 2011, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to designate January 27 as a "national day of remembrance for Americans who, during the Cold War, worked and lived downwind from nuclear testing sites and were adversely affected by the radiation exposure generated by the above ground nuclear weapons testing." From Jan. 27, 1951 to June 9, 1963, the United States conducted 100 atmospheric nuclear weapons test explosions at the site, according to the U.S. Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office. These tests released hazardous levels of nuclear fallout, which was concentrated in downwind…

In a major speech on Jan. 18, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke on a range of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation issues at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. He touched on the international community's achievements on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, outlined the challenges that lay ahead, and called for renewed action on key priorities including the CTBT: The Secretary-General said, "We must intensify efforts to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty into force. I urge the remaining eight states whose ratification is…