Dear all, 

I will be on annual leave for a few days from tomorrow so this week’s email is coming early. Thanks again for your continued support.

 Britain

• The Telegraph: British nukes are back – and so are CND’s middle-class campaigners. Nuclear weapons are returning to Britain for the first time since 1998 – and with them, the kind of demonstrations not seen since Thatcher.
• UK Defence Journal picks up on questions in the Lords on the independence of the nuclear bombs on British F-35A jets with Lord Coaker clarifying that while the UK controls the deployment and use of its F-35A aircraft, any American nuclear warheads they may carry under NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements would remain under US custody and require US authorisation for release.

Global Nukes

• The Atlantic: The nuclear club might soon double. As American power recedes, South Korea, Japan, and a host of other countries may pursue the bomb.
• Foreign Policy: Strikes on Iran validate North Korea’s nuclear sprint. The United States and Israel are speeding up the collapse of nonproliferation.
• ECPR: Nuclear norms under pressure: the case for upholding the test ban. In 2025, the world commemorates solemn milestones. It is 80 years since the first nuclear test and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the 15th International Day against Nuclear Tests. As global tensions rise, Maren Vieluf underscores the importance of defending the test ban to safeguard the global nuclear order.
• Multi-agency cooperation needed to accurately model effects of nuclear weapons. A new National Academies report finds that nuclear war modeling needs to incorporate more up-to-date science from a range of fields.
• Latin America at the Crossroads: Reviving nuclear leadership for a safer world.
  Once a global leader in nuclear disarmament, Latin America faces a critical decision: Reclaim its moral authority or risk irrelevance.

Iran

• UK threatens sanctions on Iran if it does not end uncertainty on nuclear plan. Foreign secretary, David Lammy, says European nations will act if there is no cooperation with nuclear inspectors.
• Newsweek: Iran’s nuclear facilities were “severely damaged” in military strikes launched by the United States last month, the country’s president has said.
  President Masoud Pezeshkian told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that the US strikes on Iran were “illegal,” and that the nation had never intended to develop a nuclear bomb.
• Foreign Affairs runs an article on Iran’s ability to make a uranium ‘dirty bomb.’
• Arguments in the Bulletin calling for Iran to make a non-enrichment nuclear deal.
• Le Monde: How Israel tracked down and assassinated scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program

NATO / Europe

• Slovenia to call consultative referendum on NATO membership. The announcement comes on the heels of an unexpected parliamentary defeat for the country’s prime minister on defence spending.
• NATO is pouring new spending into much-needed air defenses. Money alone won’t fix the West’s problems.
• Putin will attack NATO country to keep Europe distracted while Xi invades Taiwan, warns Rutte. Xi will tell Putin ‘I need you to to keep them busy in Europe by attacking Nato territory’, says Nato chief.
• The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost its off-site power supply for more than three hours on Friday, having to rely on its emergency back-up diesel generators for the first time since December 2023.
• NATO looks to the future. Europe is grappling with a rapidly evolving security landscape and needs to plan ahead to deal with looming challenges.

• EDF extends Flamanville EPR’s shutdown to August 13 to conduct technical checks on three valves of the reactor’s primary circuit, initially scheduled to resume production this week.
• Johnathon Porritt blog: The dust has just about settled since Labour’s ‘golden nuclear moment’ laid out by Rachel Reeves in her recent Spending Review. Plans for the monstrous Sizewell C took another step forward, nudged along by the offer of another £14.2 billion of taxpayers’ money, together with a further £2.5 billion promised for Small Modular Reactors, and roughly the same amount for fusion, the nuclear industry’s very own black hole. So loud were the fanfares, so overblown the hype, that the real story of that week got lost. EDF’s deeply ingrained habits of secrecy and deceit were – yet again – exposed to the harsh light of a Freedom of Information request from the indefatigable Together Against Sizewell C (TASC).

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament