How many nukes are there around the world? Take a look at this infographic.

More sanctions on Iran start today, then even more on Sunday.

A nice summary of where the Iran negotiations stand, including the points both sides have put forth.

I don't agree with everything in this article, but it's a good perspective on how many different national interests are at play relative to Iran.

News that didn't get enough play today: China will lead talks among the five original nuclear-armed states to define arms control terms. This is really, really important. First, China is taking a significant role where it hasn't been inclined to before. Second, it's bringing all the nuclear weapons nations named in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty together to discuss arms control. Arms control has been the province of the United States and the Soviet Union, then Russia, exclusively. The New START Treaty and the Obama administration have said that the next steps in arms control must involve other nations with nuclear weapons. China probably has the third-largest arsenal.

Is Britain's nuclear arsenal really independent from America's?

Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, on why the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty is needed.

Gareth Porter on Iran's Parchin test site.

Looks like the US budget could result in fewer nukes.

More about that nuclear powers meeting that China is chairing.

The vehicles that haul nuclear material around the US need to be replaced, and more federal agents are needed to accompany them. (pdf) (h/t to Frank Munger)

I need to read this more carefully, but I think that the American Nuclear Society is saying that providing nuclear fuel services is a good way to keep the more proliferation-supporting parts of the fuel cycle from being attractive to other nations. That's an argument to start up work on nuclear reprocessing again, presumably government funded, since no commercial companies seem to be interested in it.

India is concerned that it may not get into the Nuclear Suppliers' Group.

David Ignatius and his headline writer seem to think that "a breakdown in the Iran nuclear talks" means "we're not going to see complete agreement by the end of this week." There is a somewhat better analysis after the first several paragraphs, but I think that, overall, Ali Vaez makes more sense. Mohammed Ali Shabani thinks that Iran feels that it's got some leverage.

Iran made its proposal, presented at this week's technical talks, available to Barbara Slavin, who has made it available to all of us (pdf). Here's her short summary.

Another report of where things stand.

Next week, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold a final hearing on a proposal by General Electric (GE) and Hitachi to build the first commercial laser-enrichment plant.

Rosatom approved a technical project for decommissioning of the plutonium production reactors at the Siberian Chemical Combine in Seversk.

A chronic problem of nuclear building is cost overruns. Why does this happen? The overruns have been going on pretty much forever. Do the companies underbid to get the contracts? Are the expectations of all parties unrealistic? These articles don't really say, but they do describe some of the problems.
AP IMPACT: Building costs rise at US nuclear sites
The Mixed-Oxide Fuel Program

The UK government is thinking about selling its share in Urenco?

The US NRC on international safeguards. This explains some of the terms that are used in the discussion of Iran's facilities.

Raytheon wins another big missile defense contract, and the National Academies of Science reply to Congress on some of the problems of missile defense (pdf).

Jeffrey Lewis on the Defense Department's report to Congress on Iran's military power.

Some more history relevant to this date, on later nuclear tests in the south Pacific. H/T to Frank Munger.

Why hurricanes sneer at nuclear weapons.

North Korea Resumes Construction of Light Water Reactor: Completion of Buildings May Be Near.

And North Korea says it's ready for some more talks. Is there a connection?

United Arab Emirates grants a license to build two nuclear power reactors. (ABC, Dan Yurman)

Someone unauthorized got into South Africa's Pelindaba nuclear site again, but apparently no damage was done.

Bombs versus Budgets: Inside the Nuclear Weapons Lobby.

Entangled histories: Climate science and nuclear weapons research.

John Fleck interviews Sig Hecker.

Thomas Pickering: Strategic Engagement with Russia 2013-17.

AREVA and Rosatom sign an agreement.

I've been saving them up while we've been offline!

Matthew Wald, NYT: A Low-Key Debut for a New N.R.C. Leader

MarketWatch: AREVA and Northrop Grumman Announce Plans to Provide Cybersecurity Support to U.S. Nuclear Facilities. That would be the same Northrop Grumman that had to shut down its computers because of a security breach last year?

Telluride Daily Planet: Uranium prices too low to sustain mill

Mark Hibbs: Taiwan and the ‘Gold Standard’. The "Gold Standard" is an insistence by the United States on no reprocessing or enrichment by countries with which it shares nuclear technology. Hibbs tells us why Taiwan's acceptance of it doesn't say anything about other countries.

IBN Live: India has 80 to 100 nuclear warheads

Nuclear history: Nuclear missiles on Okinawa during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Japan's nuclear psychology.

If you're interested in following the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, @missilecrisis62 is tweeting daily events.

A private contractor will be taking care of the UK's nuclear weapons in Scotland.

Informed consent: Getting from NIMBY to yes. Siting nuclear waste repositories and other controversial facilities.

LANL Eyes Plutonium Project.

Changes in the Nuclear Weapons Targeting Process Since 1991.

The Ayatollah tweets, and now is on Instagram as well. @khamenei_IR

The 2012 Conference on a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone in the Middle East (pdf). From the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Documents Show Japan Repeatedly Rejected Nuclear Weapons.

The US nuclear terrorism budget.

I linked a government report on nuclear targeting upthread. Here's some analysis.

A photo tour of Manhattan Project sites that are likely to be included in a new national park. Mostly Oak Ridge and Hanford.

Recontextualizing atomic tests. I find this exercise desensitizing, when its objective is the opposite. It reminds me of a Far Side cartoon, which I can't find on line, but here's a photoshopped version.

And a paper from our own Susan Voss on Tracking Nuclear Proliferation within a Commercial Power Program (pdf).

Hiroshima at 67: The Line We Crossed

Paul Fussel: "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" (pdf)

Frank V. Pabian and Siegfried S. Hecker: Contemplating a third nuclear test in North Korea.

Video from inside Tepco's command center during the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Czech government spokesman on nuclear safety at their Temelin plant.

The United States and Iran are not "at war."


Iran to File Lawsuits against Cyber Terrorists. Well, good luck with that. Hard to say if this is a bad or good omen for the negotiations.

I occasionally agree with what Iranian government officials have to say. I think that Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi gets part of this right in referring to Israel's recent bluster:

The rest of what he says is obviously intended for domestic consumption, but the fact that he's got this nailed might give Israeli officials some pause.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Allison Macfarlane's first interview in that post.

The nuclear deal with India, putting a non-signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and holder of nuclear weapons on a similar standing with signatories, isn't panning out for the United States the way President George W. Bush said it would. The problem is a strict-liability law that US private firms can't live with. The largely national-owned French firm Areva and Russian Rosatom can, although Rosatom isn't happy with it.

Long article from the New York Times on how information from the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been the basis for radiation exposure standards, and why it's so difficult to quantify the effects of low-level exposure.

Overhead views of the progress (or lack thereof) on North Korea's light-water reactor.

Frank Munger continues to cover the security breach by peace demonstrators at Oak Ridge's Y-12 plant. He also posts historic photos and other interesting material.

U.S. nuclear industry turning weapons into clean power.

Looking for followup health studies on New Mexico's Church Rock uranium tailings spill.

India's nuclear regulation must improve.

Today's big threat is China, according to the New York Times. Gregory Kulacki and Stephen Walt don't think so.

US Diplomatic Efforts Stalled Brazil's Nuclear Program in 1970s. Another country that was investigating the possibility of nuclear weapons. By the 1970s, proliferation was being seen as even more of a danger than in the 1950s, but the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty wasn't as strong as it is today.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization says that snap inspections by the IAEA are okay, but then goes on to say that the IAEA must justify each one to Iran's satisfaction. That's not the definition of snap inspections.

Do nuclear firms lowball their estimates for building reactors?

How the protestors got through the fences around the Y-12 enriched uranium facility and what happens next. Frank Munger has been on this story from the beginning. Scroll through his blog for the whole story.

A viewpoint from Pakistan on the unfairness of the nonproliferation regime.

A website with lots of information on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 50 years ago this fall.

Twenty Canadian communities have said they’ll consider volunteering to host a nuclear waste storage site.

US State Department report says there's no indication that Myanmar (Burma) has violated its obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The Democratic Party's platform calls for more cutbacks in the nuclear arsenal and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Some history of Pakistan's nuclear programs.

A. Q. Khan enters politics.

Bacteria grow in a spent fuel pool. Deinococcus radiodurans is known to be highly resistant to radiation, but it looks like there may be a few more species.

Documents newly declassified on nuclear terrorism.

I would like to know more about the 1957 plutonium fire at Rocky Flats, but I have no confidence in what this article says. I would like to know what the interviewee has used as her sources. She is Kristen Iversen, the author of a new book on the subject: Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats. Perhaps the book cites sources. And yes, I'd have the same questions if a DOE official were interviewed and the answers were this glib.

Looks like the Arab states are trying to move things along toward a conference on a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone.

US statement to the IAEA Board of Governors on Iran. The Board of Governors is meeting this week. Word from Mark Hibbs via @carnegienpp Twitter account is that the resolution on Iran passed. The text should be available soon.

NNSA's warhead dismantlement process.

EPA will begin cleaning up three abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Reservation.

A physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and went on to become a lawyer has died at the age of 92.

A British judicial inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, who is suspected of being poisoned by polonium-210, is scheduled for next year.

Lost and Found: Halliburton is looking for one of its americium well-logging sources and has asked the National Guard to help search.