UK Cuts Operational Nuclear Force By 25 Percent

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Friday, July 1, 2011.

U.K. Starts Nuclear Deployment Cuts - Global Security Newswire [link]

• In its Strategic Defense and Security Review, the United Kingdom's Conservative Party-led administration last October called for each of the country's Vanguard-class submarines to eventually carry a maximum of 40 warheads rather than 48. The government would also reduce to eight the maximum number of missiles to be deployed on each vessel.
• The changes [are] expected to lower the country's stockpile of operationally ready nuclear warheads from 160 to 120.

Iranian Rhetoric and Reality - Paul Pillar in The National Interest [link]

• Ahmedinejad's rhetoric certainly is outrageous, but there never has been any reason to to interpret it as anything other than manipulative demagoguery. He spews it because it sells.
• Another prominent feature of the alarmist discourse about Iran is the notion that Iranian leaders are driven by a radical religious ideology that will lead them to act even against their own interests. There never has been evidence for that.
• Anyone in Washington who really would like to understand Iranian behavior—and what that behavior would be if Iran were to build a nuclear weapon—should take note.

From Fukushima to Disarmament - Malcolm Fraser in Project Syndicate [link]

• ... while the Fukushima disaster is attracting overdue global attention to nuclear safety and security, and provoking a reconsideration of nuclear power, its implications for nuclear weapons remain largely unremarked.
• ... no nuclear reactors are built to withstand an attack like that of September 11, 2001 … Each of the world’s 437 nuclear power reactors and associated spent-fuel ponds are effectively enormous pre-positioned radiological weapons, or “dirty bombs.”
• Any country that can enrich uranium to fuel nuclear reactors has everything it needs to enrich uranium further, to weapons-grade strength … Currently, there is no restriction on any country building a uranium-enrichment plant or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium. As we have seen, safeguards alone are not up to the job.

Russia’s NATO envoy says the 2 have until 2018 to agree on a missile defense plan - Associated Press [link]

• Russia’s NATO envoy [Dmitry Rogozin] says that Moscow and the alliance have until 2018 to find agreement on a prospective U.S.-led missile defense plan in Europe … when Washington would like first interceptor missiles to be based in Poland, close to Russia.
• Rogozin stressed that the plan stands a chance of success only if it is implemented with Russia, and not against its interests. He said he believes a solution will be found because NATO and the U.S. are ready to talk.

Happy 65th Birthday, Pacific Nuclear Testing [link]

• Sixty-five years ago today on 1 July 1946, the United States conducted the first nuclear test after World War II. The explosion took place at the Bikini Atoll lagoon, situated in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
• Test Able was to be the first of a series of 67 tests in the atoll and the second U.S. nuclear test of over a thousand to follow.