CND Press Roundup - 18 December

Posted: 18th December 2020

Nuclear weapons

• UK submarines 
• According to a report in the Daily Mirror, Britain’s nuclear submarine replacement programme has been set back by a year, with the current phase of replacing the submarines now expected to stretch until March 2022. The MoD insists that the programme is still within its £31 billion budget. 
• Cyber attack hits US nuclear agencies 
• According to an exclusive report in Politico, the ongoing cyber attack on the United States has hit the Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration. DOE and NNSA officials have evidence, according to the report, that ‘hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies.’ The NNSA manages the US nuclear weapons. 
• In a joint statement, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the office of the director of national intelligence said: “This is a developing situation and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government.”
• New START
• Vladimir Putin yesterday called on Washington to extend the New START treaty by one year. It has previously been suggested that a five year extension will be sought. 

Nuclear power 

• Floating mini-nukes? 
• The Guardian reports that Danish startup Seaborg Technologies believes that floating nuclear barges fitted with advanced nuclear reactors ‘could begin powering developing nations by the mid-2020s’. The first such ship, fitted with one or more SMRs, began supplying heat and electricity to Pevek, a Russian port on the East Siberian Sea, in December last year. 

Iran nuclear deal 

• New deal needed?
• IAEA Director Rafael Grossi has argued in an interview that the revival of the Iran nuclear deal will require striking a new agreement which sets out how Iran’s breaches should be reversed. Speaking at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Grossi said: “I cannot imagine that they are going simply to say, ‘We are back to square one’ because square one is no longer there… there is more (nuclear) material, ... there is more activity, there are more centrifuges, and more are being announced. So what happens with all this? This is the question for them at the political level to decide”.
• Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s ambassador to IAEA, quickly rejected Grossi’s suggestion, saying: “Presenting any assessment on how the commitments are implemented is absolutely beyond the mandate of the agency and should be avoided”. 
• This came after Hassan Rouhani said in a statement yesterday that he was certain that the Biden administration will return to the nuclear deal and lift sanctions: “I have no doubt that the three-year resistance of the Iranian people will persuade the future American government to return to its commitments and the sanctions will be broken”. 
• Construction continues 
• Meanwhile, satellite photos obtained by the AP and reported by The Independent show that Iran has begun construction at its underground nuclear facility at Fordo. Jeffery Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, noted that “Any changes at this site will be carefully watched as a sign of where Iran’s nuclear program is headed.”