Dear all,

 

Happy new year. Please find the first weekly digest of 2025. Thank you all for your continued support.

 

CND Weekly Press Digest: Friday 10 January 2025

 

Nuclear proliferation

• Politico: There is no such thing as good nuclear proliferation. In a world less constrained by international norms and rules, and increasingly governed by sheer power, the strictures that long constrained nuclear proliferation are in danger of loosening — if not untangling altogether.
• Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Donald Trump’s return to the White House could mean the end of the nonproliferation regime: As the Iranian-Israeli confrontation intensifies, and the threat of an Iranian nuclear breakout looms, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could see in a second Trump administration an opportunity to finally get the nuclear cooperation the Saudis have been yearning for. “The acceleration of the nuclear programme brings us close to the point of no return,” Macron said.
• Simon Tisdall writes in the Guardian asking if it’s time for South Korea to get their own nuclear weapons in the wake of North Korea’s accelerated programme.

Global nukes

• Modern Diplomacy: To Avoid Nuclear War: America’s Most Important Obligation. For the incoming American president, one policy assumption is unchallengeable: If the United States doesn’t manage to avoid a nuclear conflict, all other obligations will become moot.

NATO

• Atlantic Council on the case for increasing missile defence systems.
• Defense 24: An interview with the head of NATO’s nuclear policy.
• Reuters: NATO won’t heed Donald Trump’s proposal for a massive hike in defence spending but will likely agree to go beyond its current target, according to officials and analysts.The U.S. president-elect declared on Tuesday members of the military alliance should spend 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence – a huge increase from the current 2% goal and a level that no NATO country, including the United States, currently reaches.
• CNN: NATO takes control from US of air defenses in Poland crucial to supporting Ukraine days before Trump takes office.
• Some sanity coming from Ireland: President criticises NATO’s ‘appalling’ call for increased military spending. Michael D Higgins implores young scientists to commit to welfare of all global citizens and counter war rhetoric.
• Meanwhile, from David Lammy: Europe’s security “is on a knife-edge” and President-elect Donald Trump is right to say NATO member nations must increase military spending, Britain’s top diplomat said Thursday.

Ukraine 

• Politico: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz blocked a proposal for an additional €3 billion aid package for weapons to Ukraine, according to a local media report. The plan, revealed by Spiegel, was introduced by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius from Scholz’s Social Democratic Party. It sought to provide Ukraine with critical weapons systems, including three additional Iris-T air defense batteries, 10 howitzers and more artillery ammunition.

Gaza

• Met ban Palestine Coalition from assembling demonstration outside the BBC.You can also read the Palestine Coalition’s statement made prior to the Met’s decision on the CND website.

Climate

• The Guardian: Climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time last year, supercharging extreme weather and causing “misery to millions of people”. The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.

UK nuclear power

 

• S&P Global: The UK government’s 2025 Spending Review, to be conducted in the late spring, will be key to the funding and success of several new nuclear construction projects in the country, industry participants said. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves had previously “confirmed departmental budgets for 2024-25 and set budgets for 2025-26” in October, but the spring Spending Review will set actual government budgets for the next three years and “prioritise delivering the government’s missions,” the UK Treasury said on its website Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association UK, said that items likely be detailed in the Spending Review include government funding prior to a final investment decision for the proposed 3.4-GW Sizewell C nuclear plant in eastern England, in which the UK government owns around 76%, as well as funding for contracts for one or more small modular reactors designs. The designs are to be selected in an ongoing competition and deployed in the early 2030s.
• New Civil Engineer: The National Audit Office (NAO) has received a request from a campaign group, echoed by a former energy secretary, to conduct a review of the public money invested in Sizewell C. Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) wrote a letter to NAO comptroller and auditor general Gareth Davies asking the NAO to “carry out a review of the Value for Money assessment supporting the government decision” to spend billions on the project “without any guarantee that the project will go ahead”.

Nuclear waste

• Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) and the Theddlethorpe GDF Community Partnership requesting a change of name to also incorporate Mablethorpe into its title as the search for a location for the surface site of the nuclear waste dump has now been extended. The Search Area for Geological Disposal Facility incorporates the electoral wards of Withern & Theddlethorpe and Mablethorpe. NWS originally focused on the former Conoco gas terminal at Theddlethorpe as the most promising location for a surface. However, in recent months other energy projects have pursued their interest in the site.

AUKUS

• UK Defence Journal: The UK Government has reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from opportunities arising from the AUKUS defence partnership.

Best,

 

Pádraig McCarrick

 

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament