Dear all,

Please find this week’s top stories below. We will be moving to a new office next week so the next email will be in two weeks time. Have a lovely weekend.

Britain

• Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has seen his efforts to lobby the Labour leadership over nuclear weaponry slapped down. Murray previously said he’d work to encourage the government to send observers to the TPNW meeting in New York.
• Now is the time to reaffirm the UK Government’s commitment to nuclear weaponry, the Prime Minister has said – on the day that international efforts to promote a global ban on the technology step up. Speaking in the Commons on Monday, Keir Starmer took issue with the SNP’s opposition to nuclear weapons – apparently in response to comments from First Minister John Swinney last week. The SNP leader suggested that a focus on nuclear weapons was an “inhibitor” to combating current military challenges due to the “resources they command” – and called for the funding allocated for renewing Trident should instead be invested in “conventional weaponry”.
• Concerns about the potentially “catastrophic” introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into the nuclear weapons’ command, control and communication (N3) systems have been raised by the former First Sea Lord and former Security Minister Lord West of Spithead. An AI expert told the Canary that the potential worst-case scenario for introducing AI into nuclear weapons command and control systems is a situation like the one which caused the apocalypse in the Terminator franchise. The Terminator films revolve around an event where the AI in control of the USA’s nuclear weapons system gains self-awareness, views its human controllers as a threat, and chooses to attempt to wipe out humanity.
• Treat weapons investments as ‘ethical’ to help arm Ukraine and UK, MPs urge. More than 100 Labour MPs and peers sign open letter saying ESG policies are holding back defence spending.
• Meanwhile, The Telegraph runs the headline: Top pension funds refuse to back defence industry.
• Economist Mick Burke writes for the CND blog arguing that Britain’s dangerous armaments drive won’t create economic growth, instead making us poorer and devastate public services.
• The Telegraph and LBC have been reporting on the potential return of US nuclear weapons to Britain, although no new information about the deployment has been given.

Global Nukes

• Say what? British nuclear weapons can protect Canada against Trump, saysTrudeau party candidate.

Ukraine

• IAEA. As the armed conflict in Ukraine enters its fourth year, the nuclear safety and security situation throughout the country continues to be highly precarious. The presence of the IAEA at all Ukrainian nuclear facilities has been and continues to be an invaluable asset to the international community and must be preserved.https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/iaea-director-generals-introductory-statement-to-the-boar…

Middle East

• Starmer faces calls for UK’s role in Gaza war to be scrutinised in Chilcot-style inquiry. In a letter to the prime minister seen by Sky News, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says UK officials may have been implicated in “the gravest breaches of international law”.

NATO / Europe

• BBC: France has a nuclear umbrella. Could its European allies fit under it?
• Alexander Hurst in The Guardian: Trump dreams of a Maga empire – but he’s more likely to leave us a nuclear hellscape.

AUKUS

• Surface tension: could the promised AUKUS nuclear submarines simply never be handed over to Australia? The multi-billion dollar deal was heralded as ensuring the security of the Indo-Pacific. But with America an increasingly unreliable ally, doubts are rising above the waves.
• NATO is in tatters – Britain’s security pact with the US and Australia could be next. Survival of Biden-era submarine deal in doubt as Trump wields the axe on foreign alliances. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/07/nato-in-tatters-britain-security-pact-australia-next…

UK Nuclear Energy

• It looks like EDF will finally install acoustic fish deterrents at Hinkley Point C due to developments in the technology that were unknown to them when they tried to convince locals that a saltmarsh would be enough to preserve Severn fish stocks. The company has previously claimed that earlier forms of the technology posed too great a risk for divers when it was included in planning applications in 2013.
• Foreign Policy looks at the growing enthusiasm for small modular reactors among policy makers in Britain and Australia.

• The Scottish Parliament has passed the following: That the Parliament rejects the creation of new nuclear power plants in Scotland and the risk that they bring;believes that Scotland’s future is as a renewables powerhouse; further believes that the expansion of renewables should have a positive impact on household energy bills; notes the challenges and dangers of producing and managing hazardous radioactive nuclear waste products, and the potentially catastrophic consequences of the failure of a nuclear power plant; recognises that the development and operation of renewable power generation is faster, cheaper and safer than that of nuclear power, and welcomes that renewables would deliver higher employment than nuclear power for the development and production of equivalent levels of generated power.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament