CND Press Roundup Tuesday 26th July 2022

War in Ukraine / NATO

• The Express has an article on calls for NATO to remove its nuclear weapons from Europe. It quotes a tweet from cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker who suggests that “NATO offers to withdraw nukes from Europe (militarily useless, ineffective deterrents as we’ve just seen, and recklessly dangerous) in return for ending the invasion. Putin gets a ‘win’ which costs us nothing worth having.” Meanwhile, Nuclear Information Project Director Hans Kristensen notes: “I agree US nukes in Europe are a ‘militarily useless, ineffective deterrent’, but NATO didn’t try to deter anything with them in Ukraine and Putin’s invasion is making NATO double down on keeping them. And the nukes are not important enough for Putin to agree to that.”

• The sprightly and alert appearance of Vladimir Putin at last week’s meeting with Iranian and Turkish counterparts has led to speculation that he sent a body double to the pow-wow. The Mirror picks up on claims by a Ukrainian intelligence chief who said he believed “a Putin lookalike” flew to Tehran for the meeting, noting the unnatural manner in which he disembarked from his Presidential plane and interacted with people on the tarmac.

Nuclear War / Disarmament

• Foreign Policy magazine has an explainer on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. “There’s basically zero to do about it from a personal point of view or from a health system point of view,” said Irwin Redlener, a disaster preparedness expert and director of the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative. “The only real remedy is to prevent it in the first place,” he added.

• Reiner Braun from IPB writes on the upcoming NPT review conference in New York.

UK Nuclear Energy

• Defence and nuclear firm Rolls Royce has named a former BP boss as its new chief executive. Tufan Erginbilgic will take over the position in January next year – after a stint at the oil giant spanning 20 years, the last five on BP’s executive team.

• French nuclear firm EDF will overhaul the design of its flagship EPR nuclear reactor after fuel rods used in a unit in China cracked and forced the plant to be shut down. The EPR design is going to be used in the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant and the planned twin-reactor plant at Sizewell C. Britain’s nuclear regulator said it was in contact with plants in other countries that use the reactor adding that any proposed changes to reactor design “would be rigorously assessed…in due course before any approval being granted for them to be implemented.”

Nuclear Energy

• Free market think tank the Mackinac Center writes on how we’ve been calculating the cost of nuclear energy all wrong – and how US government policy has compounded the issue.

Iran Nuclear Deal

• The head of Iran’s nuclear agency said Monday that it will keep the UN nuclear watchdog’s cameras turned off until the 2015 nuclear deal is restored.

• Conservative US think tank the Heritage Foundation has some commentary on the Iran nuclear deal – with its authors arguing that now is the time to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. They call for the US and partners to start preparing for discussions to revive the 2015 nuclear deal to falter, such as: ramping up sanctions on Iran in conjunction with the EU; beefing up the military presence in the Gulf region; more support for regional allies including Israel; and the further widening of Arab-Israeli security cooperation against Iran.

Nuclear Korea

• Reuters explores South Korea’s Kill Chain doctrine – its military plan to counter a nuclear attack by North Korea, by using preemptive missile strikes against Pyongyang’s missile sites and senior leadership if Seoul thinks an attack is imminent. The strategy, which has been in development for over a decade, has been enthusiastically embraced by South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol – who this month announced the creation of a Strategic Command by 2024 to oversee preemptive and retaliatory strike strategies. This includes a growing number of ballistic missiles, F-35 fighters, submarines, and regular wargaming. While experts say the Kill Chain strategy is one of the plans most likely to succeed, it’s also incredibly risky and the option most likely to create the uncontrollable dynamics that would bring about a nuclear war in the first place.

• Asia Times looks at the growing support among South Koreans for their country to acquire its own nuclear weapons – and the challenges that policy would face from both China and the US if Seoul chose to do so. Read the ‘pros and cons’ here.  

• A new white paper by the Japanese government warns that North Korea has the capability to strike Japan with a nuclear weapon adding that it “continues to develop ballistic missiles at an extremely rapid pace.”

Indo-Pacific Tilt

• An editorial from China’s state-backed Global Times has a snarky take at claims made by the FBI in a recent CNN report – that equipment made by Chinese communications firm Huawei and placed on cell towers, was capable of capturing and disturbing communications made by the the US Department of Defence including the US Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons. It asks: “are the communications defense capabilities of the Pentagon or even the US nuclear chain of command so weak? Can a civilian cell tower device easily monitor or jam them? Where does the US spend its annual defense budget of more than $800 billion? Or has Huawei’s technology reached a mythical and unfathomable level of development?”

• Asia Times looks at China’s version of the Russian Poseidon underwater drone and assesses the likelihood of it coming to fruition. Chinese researchers have completed the conceptual design of a “small, low-cost nuclear reactor for use in swarming torpedoes,” which the Asia Times suggests “could be used to power multiple torpedoes in a swarm launched in large numbers from existing torpedo tubes mounted on current warships and submarines.” But will the technology ever be used or will it stay on the shelf?