October 2024
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

The United Kingdom and the United States, responding to perceived rising threats, are seeking to bolster nuclear cooperation by indefinitely extending their mutual defense agreement prior to its expiration at the end of the year.

On July 25, Karen Pierce, the UK ambassador to the United States, and Bonnie Jenkins, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, signed a pledge to amend the agreement. The UK Parliament and the U.S. Congress are now considering acting on the amendment, which includes a clause deleting references to the expiry date.

The mutual defense agreement has allowed the two allies to exchange nuclear materials, technology, and information related to nuclear weapons, naval nuclear propulsion, and nuclear threat reduction since 1958 and has been renewed several times.

The agreement underpins the special UK-U.S. defense relationship and is considered unique among nuclear-weapon states because of the level of dependency and technical integration. Areas of recent collaboration include nuclear weapons modernization projects and safeguards.

By extending the agreement indefinitely, the proposed amendment streamlines the UK-U.S. exchange of nuclear materials and components of nuclear weapons and submarine reactors. “The exception to this is information sharing, which either state can end unilaterally at certain times if they give one year’s notice,” according to a report on Sept. 11 by Nuclear Information Service, a UK think tank.

The change fosters bilateral nuclear cooperation amid rising nuclear threats from their adversaries, namely Russia and China. David Cullen, director of the Nuclear Information Service, told the Financial Times on Sept. 2 that the amendment “provides a permanent underpin to the modernization of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.”

“It also locks in cooperation over AUKUS,” he said, referring to the Australia-UK-U.S. agreement to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and other defense cooperation.

Discussing the agreement at an event in Washington on July 29, Jill Hruby, administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said that the two countries “are closely aligned, with our W93 [nuclear warhead] program and their [UK] replacement warhead program Astraea.”

The allies also “are working together to create a new development and training center for [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards, and we are discussing a mutual resilience strategy for our nuclear deterrence, and importantly…we are working to provide Australia with a nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarine capability under the AUKUS agreement,” Hruby added.

The amended agreement was submitted to the UK and U.S. legislative bodies in July.

The amendment is “consistent…with United States commitments to the United Kingdom regarding the development and deployment of the United Kingdom TRIDENT Strategic Weapon System, continued cooperation in nuclear propulsion programs, and support for the United Kingdom atomic weapon and nuclear threat reduction programs,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a letter to Congress on July 29.

Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Angus King (I-Maine) proposed an amendment extending the agreement as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025. The amendment must be approved by both houses of Congress.

In the UK, the amended agreement was presented to Parliament on July 26. It will be enacted automatically unless the House of Commons or the House of Lords passes a resolution objecting to the amendment before Oct. 23.

On Sept. 2, seven members of Parliament requested a parliamentary debate, called an Early Day Motion, due to concerns that the extension “violates both countries’ obligations” under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

The explanatory memorandum attached to the amendment signed by John Healey, the UK defense secretary, on July 26 says that the agreement “does not provide for the transfer of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices” and therefore “[o]ur cooperation under the [agreement] is consistent with the UK's obligations” under the NPT.

October 2024
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

World leaders kicked off a new UN initiative designed to address an era of global transformation and catastrophic risk by adopting a “pact for the future” that includes renewed promises to uphold long-standing disarmament obligations and commitments.

The leaders convened the first Summit for the Future on Sept. 22-23 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. The groundwork for the meeting was laid in 2022 when the General Assembly adopted a resolution authorizing a summit process that is intended to reaffirm the UN Charter, reinvigorate multilateralism, boost implementation of existing commitments, agree on concrete solutions to challenges, and restore trust among member states.

“Our collective security system is threatened by geopolitical divides, nuclear posturing, and the development of new weapons and threats of war,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in a statement opening the summit on Sept. 22.

“Our multilateral tools and institutions are unable to respond effectively to today’s political, economic, environmental, and technological challenges, and tomorrow’s will be even more difficult and even more dangerous,” he said.

“We must take the first decisive steps towards updating and reforming international cooperation to make it more networked, fair, and inclusive now…. [T]oday, thanks to your efforts, we have,” Guterres added, referring to the summit outcome document.

The summit approved the pact by consensus after an unsuccessful effort to prevent action led by Russia and backed by Belarus, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.

The document paints the present era as “a time of profound global transformation” in which the world is “confronted by rising catastrophic and existential risks, many caused by the choices we make.”

It notes that “[f]ellow human beings are enduring terrible suffering” and warns that “[i]f we do not change course, we risk tipping into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown.” The summit affirmed that its outcomes are important given the challenges posed to the multilateral systems particularly on disarmament issues.

Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Bárcena Ibarra called the pact more than “just another United Nations document” because it addresses three specific issues: “the imperative of a world free of nuclear weapons in a context of high military tension; second, the unequivocal need for financing for development; third, the need for reforms to multilateral governance, identifying guidelines for the reform of the [UN] Security Council and the international financial architecture.”

Guterres emphasized that the pact represents “the first agreed multilateral support for nuclear disarmament in more than a decade.”

The nuclear disarmament section was the result of intensive discussions among the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and members of the New Agenda Coalition, which includes Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and South Africa, diplomatic sources said.

In it, pact supporters expressed “deep concern over the state of nuclear disarmament” and promised to advance the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons; uphold “our respective obligations and commitments” set out in treaties, protocols, and established norms; and “take all steps to prevent nuclear war.”

The pact seeks to revitalize the role of the United Nations in the field of disarmament, including by recommending that the General Assembly pursue work that could support preparation of a fourth special session devoted to disarmament.

Further, the document includes action plans to accelerate efforts to address the potential risks associated with new and emerging technologies involving lethal autonomous weapons systems and the space realm.

October 2024
By Xiaodon Liang

The United States continues to weigh a request from Ukraine to use U.S.-origin missiles against targets deep behind the frontlines of the continuing full-scale Russian invasion.

At a Sept. 6 meeting in Ramstein-Miesenbach, Germany, of states supporting the Ukrainian war effort, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed a call on the United States and other countries to permit use of long-range missiles against “the Russian territory so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

In his statement, Zelenskyy referred not only to the U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), a ground-launched ballistic missile, but also weapons provided by other countries that incorporate U.S. components or licensed technology, such as the French-British Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG air-launched cruise missile.

Although Ukraine referred to these weapons as “long-range” systems, the ATACMS is a short-range ballistic missile with an estimated range of 300 kilometers. The Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missile has an estimated range of up to 550 kilometers. (See ACT, June 2024; November 2023.)

U.S. President Joe Biden discussed the Ukrainian request in a Sept. 13 meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, but no change in U.S. policy was announced following the event. Starmer is understood to have argued in favor of Ukraine’s request at the meeting, the Associated Press reported.

U.S. officials are skeptical that permitting deep strikes with U.S.-origin missiles into Russia will create a military advantage for Ukraine. In a statement to the Associated Press, a Pentagon spokesperson said that ATACMS missiles do not have the range to target Russian combat aircraft that deliver glide bombs, which are now a priority threat for Ukraine.

Following the Sept. 6 meeting in Germany, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, responding to a question about long-range strikes, said, “I don’t believe that one specific capability is going to be decisive.” Speaking at a U.S. Air Force base in Alabama a week later, Austin pointed out that Ukraine has conducted successful deep strikes with its own drone systems. (See ACT, July/August 2024.)

U.S. officials also are concerned that Russia might respond to a U.S. decision to approve Zelenskyy’s request by providing Iran with technological support to target U.S. forces in the Middle East, The New York Times reported on Sept. 12.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Sept. 12 that acceding to the Ukrainian request would mean that the United States and other providers of missiles “are parties to the war in Ukraine.”

“This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” he said in a comment to the press in St. Petersburg.

In response, John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, said at a Sept. 13 press conference that “we take these comments seriously, but it is not something that we haven’t heard before.” In a Sept. 17 interview with The Times of London, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “[T]here have been many redlines declared by [Putin] before, and he has not escalated.”

Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet Biden on Sept. 26 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, the White House said.

October 2024
By Carol Giacomo

Israel’s use of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies during its conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon appears to violate international law, an expert said.

“Based on the currently available information…there is a strong basis to conclude Israel violated Article 7(2) of Amended Protocol II” of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Brian Finucane, senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, wrote for JustSecurity.org on Sept. 25.

The relevant article states that “it is prohibited to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.” Booby traps are defined as any device “which is designed, constructed, or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.”

The pagers, which detonated on Sept. 17, killed more than a dozen people and injured more than 2,700. The walkie-talkies, which exploded a day later, killed 20 people and wounded hundreds more, according to news reports.

The New York Times reported on Sept. 18 that Israel established a shell company in Hungary under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. The devices supplied to Hezbollah were produced by the shell company and contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role in the explosions.

Israel and the United States both agreed to be bound by Amended Protocol II. In his essay, Finucane urged the United States to scrutinize the case and determine if Israel also violated U.S. law.

October 2024
By Doniyor Mutalov

The situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant “remains precarious” due to “regular explosions, drone attacks, and repeated interruptions of power supply” that heighten the risk of a nuclear accident, according to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi shared his continuing concerns in a statement Sept. 16 following a recent visit to the power plant, which has been occupied by Russian military forces since shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“Preventing a nuclear accident during this terrible war is vital, and attacking a nuclear power plant is unacceptable, regardless of where it is located,” he said.

In comments to the IAEA Board of Governors on Sept. 9, Grossi disclosed that, “in line with the agency’s advice, it is understood that no reactor will be restarted as long as the conflict continues to jeopardize the nuclear safety and security of the plant.” The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Russia wanted to restart at least one reactor at the power plant.

During his latest visit to the Zaporizhzhia facility, on Sept. 4, Grossi inspected the remains of a fire that ignited on Aug. 11 inside one of the plant’s cooling towers. The IAEA, in an Aug. 13 statement, rejected claims that a drone struck the towers and determined that no “foreign objects or materials were visible.” Because the facility is no longer operational, the cooling towers are not needed to cool the plant’s six reactors, and the fire did not pose any immediate threat to nuclear safety, the agency said. The fire-damaged cooling tower may have to be demolished, it said.

In a statement Sept. 5, the IAEA also highlighted Grossi’s visit to the water-pumping stations at the Zaporizhzhia plant and the availability of cooling water in the facility’s cooling pond, which has dropped by two meters since the destruction of the nearby Kakhovka dam in June 2023. The Kakhovka reservoir previously was a source of cooling water for the reactors, but since 2023, newly dug groundwater wells have been used to provide cooling water.

The plant temporarily lost connection on Aug. 23 to its only backup power line, the 330-kilovolt Ferosplavna line, leaving the facility “precariously reliant on a single power source,” the IAEA said.

Before the conflict erupted, the Zaporizhzhia plant had four 750-kilovolt and six 330-kilovolt powerlines. Currently, only the 750-kilovolt Dniprovska and 330-kilovolt Ferosplavna power lines are still connected to the plant.

On Aug. 8, Grossi stressed that “[t]he off-site power supply to the [plant] remains vulnerable, and any threat to the operability of the last two power lines is extremely concerning.”

October 2024
By Libby Flatoff

The Indian Navy commissioned a second indigenously designed ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arighaat, which Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said would “help in establishing strategic balance” in the region. 

The commissioning ceremony and Singh’s remarks took place Aug. 29 at the Visakhapatnam Naval Yard, the headquarters of India’s Eastern Naval Command on the Bay of Bengal, according to a same-day press release from the Indian Defense Ministry.

The Arighaat and its predecessor, the INS Arihant, each will have up to four K-4 missiles having an expected range of 3,500 kilometers. (See ACT, March 2020.) Currently, they are equipped with an older submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the K-15, which has a range of 750 kilometers. (See ACT, December 2022.) Within the submarine, each SLBM launch tube can hold three K-15 missiles or one K-4 missile. The K-4 missiles are expected to be deployed in 2025, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

In December 2023, India conducted two successful underwater tests of the K-4 missiles within six days. After these tests, a source told the Times of India that ​​“the K-4 is now virtually ready for its serial production to kick off. The two tests have demonstrated its capability to emerge straight from underwater and undertake its parabolic trajectory.”

China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States have SLBMs with a range of more than 5,000 kilometers. The K-4 missiles, once equipped, will narrow the capability gap between India and other nuclear-armed states. “Although India’s sea-based nuclear deterrent remains in relative infancy, the country clearly has an ambition to field a sophisticated naval nuclear force with ballistic missile submarines at its core,” Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists, told CNN on Sept. 14.

This year, India accomplished several successful tests to modernize its arsenal, including one involving the Agni-5 missile, the country’s first domestically produced missile capable of carrying multiple independently targeted warheads, the Agni-5 missile, which has independent targeting capability. (See ACT, April 2024.)

October 2024
By Frank N. von Hippel 

Matthew Costlow describes protections against unauthorized launch.

That was not the subject of my article.

My article focused on the danger of authorized but mistaken launch due to the less than 10 minutes that the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch-on-warning posture allows the president to make the launch decision, combined with the pressure that Strategic Command would put on a president to launch if it were convinced that the early-warning system had detected an actual enemy attack.¹ For a sense of the challenges of such a situation, see the partially declassified documents released by the National Security Archive earlier this year relating to what was meant to have been a presidential training exercise in the launch-on-warning decision-making process, in October 1977, perhaps the only one that has ever been conducted.²

The possibility of being put in this situation has terrified presidents back to Ronald Reagan.³ The Pentagon insists on a launch-on-warning posture, but not because of the deterrence benefits that Costlow claims. If 1,000 warheads on ballistic missile submarines at sea are an insufficient deterrent, an ICBM launch-on-warning policy will not change that situation.

But every U.S. missile warhead has an assigned target, and Strategic Command has made covering all those targets, no matter how minor, a higher priority than avoiding the danger of a mistaken launch.⁴ The imperative of target coverage has prevailed over that of protecting civilization.

After decades of failed efforts to persuade the Pentagon to change its priorities, some of us have concluded that the only way out of this impasse is to get rid of the ICBMs. Historically, Congress has been most willing to cancel counterproductive government programs when those programs have incurred huge cost overruns and indefinitely growing delays. The U.S. ICBM replacement program has developed this syndrome and therefore is providing a rare opportunity to reduce the danger of accidental nuclear war.

ENDNOTES

1.  B.G. Blair, “Loose Cannons: The President and U.S. Nuclear Posture,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 76, No. 1 (2020): p. 12-26; Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), p. 194 (interview of General George Lee Butler, commander in chief, Strategic Command) (hereinafter Butler interview).

2.  “Ivory Item: Carter First U.S. President to Participate in Nuclear Drill,” National Security Archive, May 31, 2024, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2024-05-31/ivory-item-carter-first-us-president-participate-nuclear.

3.  Blair, “Loose Cannons.”

4.  Butler interview.

Frank N. von Hippel is senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.

October 2024
By Daryl G. Kimball

Nearly 80 years have passed since the atomic bomb created by J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project was detonated secretly in central New Mexico. The Trinity explosion not only ushered in the nuclear age and triggered the Cold War arms race, it also spread deadly radioactive fallout across dozens of states and led to increased rates of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses for millions of American downwinders.

The United States went on to test 928 nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site outside Las Vegas, 100 of which were above ground. Most of these blasts were far more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of uranium miners, workers who manufactured weapons, and residents of communities in dozens of states were poisoned by the wastes produced by the Manhattan Project and the massive weapons complex that was part of the nuclear arms buildup that followed World War II.

Today, thousands of Americans still live with the tragic consequences of Oppenheimer’s bomb and the orgy of nuclear testing and weapons production that followed. For them, the Cold War has never really ended.

Unfortunately, the leadership in the House of Representatives has blocked legislation that would reauthorize and expand a program under the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to assist those harmed by Cold War-era uranium mining, nuclear weapons production, and testing.

Before adjourning this year, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Congress have an opportunity and a moral obligation to approve updated legislation that would begin to address the shortcomings of the original RECA program, which excluded far too many victims of the U.S. testing program.

The existing program provides limited compensation only to those who lived in 22 largely rural counties of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah between 1951 and 1958 and during the summer of 1962 who developed leukemia or one of 17 other kinds of cancer. It also covers uranium miners from 1942 through 1971 who can document a subsequent diagnosis of a specified compensable disease.

The new bill, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, introduced by Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), was approved by the Senate 69-30. It would reauthorize the RECA program for six years and expand partial compensation to communities that have been excluded. If considered by the House, the bill very likely would win passage. President Joe Biden has said he would sign it.

The RECA program expired in June. Further dithering would be a dereliction of duty. Johnson reportedly has complained that the Senate bill would cost tens of billions of dollars and compensate people who were not affected by nuclear testing and Manhattan Project-era weapons production.

He is wrong on both counts. As of February 2024, the RECA program had paid $2.6 billion to more than 41,000 claimants since the program began in 1990. Experts say that if the program were reauthorized for six years and expanded, it is highly unlikely that there would be more than $5 billion in additional eligible claims, if that much.

In any case, the additional money spent on an expanded RECA program would amount to a small fraction of the estimated $756 billion that the United States expects to pay for modernizing its massive nuclear arsenal over the coming decade.

Cost should not be an issue. But if House leaders truly are concerned about that factor, they could work with RECA proponents in both chambers to set a cap on the total amount that could be paid for compensation claims.

Moreover, numerous health studies since 1990 have shown that fallout from past nuclear tests did not stop at the county or state lines recognized under the original RECA program. For instance, northern Utah, the most populated area of the state, never has been included in the program.

Incredibly, the many downwinders affected by the Trinity test in New Mexico, who are mostly Hispanics and Native Americans, never were warned about the fallout, never were acknowledged as victims, and never were included in the RECA program. Uranium miners working after 1971 and communities in the Navajo Nation and other western states whose land and water is still poisoned by uranium mining waste have been ignored as well. So have residents whose homes and schools are contaminated by radioactive waste from Manhattan Project-era sites around St. Louis and other former weapons-related sites across the country, including my hometown of Oxford, Ohio.

Under the Senate bill, the RECA program would be extended to eligible downwinders in seven western states and Guam. It also would add additional uranium workers and residents in Alaska, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee who are living in or near areas contaminated by the effects of nuclear weapons production.

Americans who have been endangered by their government’s nuclear weapons production and testing without their knowledge or consent deserve justice and accountability.

A version of this op-ed, co-authored with Mary Dickson, first appeared in The Hill in June.