U.S. Officials: Smugglers May Possess Enough Fuel for a Nuke

Worse than we thought - “The resulting international probe into the [Ruslan Andropov] case has sparked fresh, and previously unreported worries, that thieves inside of Russia somehow made off years ago with a full bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium. Western spies fear the thieves have been doggedly looking for a buyer for the past sixteen years... But no one in the West knows exactly who has this nuclear explosive material, and where they may be,” report Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith for The Center for Public Integrity.

--“Western concerns are based on a simple trail of evidence that officials have until now kept secret: Three times since 1999, identically packaged containers of highly-enriched uranium have been seized by authorities outside of Russia — in Ruse, Bulgaria, in May 1999; in Paris in July 2001; and most recently here in Chisinau. In each case those holding the uranium said it was part of a larger cache, available to a buyer for the right price… Confidential forensic analysis by U.S. and French nuclear scientists… has shown that these materials came from the same stockpile.”

--“Officials say they believe all were produced in the early 1990s at a sprawling Russian nuclear facility known as the Mayak Production Association, located in Ozersk... The facility, which produced the fuel for Russia’s first nuclear warheads and for its naval nuclear reactors, is still one of the country’s ‘closed cities,’ where access is tightly regulated. [This is] the most worrisome unresolved instances of illicit trafficking in authentic, bomb-grade materials anywhere in the world, according to more than a dozen government officials and independent experts interviewed for this article...” Read the full story from the 2014 winner of the Pulitzer Prize here. http://bit.ly/1WU3Rt2

Tweet - @Arms Control Now : #DYK there's ~136,807 kgs of civilian HEU in the world? Learn what's being done about it. bit.ly/20KY51y

Bad nuclear odds - “Leading national security experts see a rising risk of a nuclear conflict, a survey conducted by the Project for Study of the 21st Century shows. A poll of 50 national security experts from around the world showed 60 percent concluding the risk had grown over the last decade. Overall, they predicted a 6.8 percent probability of a major nuclear conflict in the next 25 years killing more people than the Second World War (roughly 80,000,000 at upper estimates).”

--“The survey featured 50 individuals including leading international relations academics, former senior military officials and private sector political risk specialists… The poll showed 52 percent saying the risk of great power nuclear conflict would grow further over the coming 10 years. In addition, 80 percent said they expected proxy confrontations and other forms of ‘ambiguous warfare’ to also increase.” Read the full report here. http://bit.ly/20OO2Zq

Tweet - @eu_eeas : EU non-proliferation disarmament conference @FedericaMog #IranDeal opens new opportunities #CTBT http://bit.ly/1GYuprq

The B61 semantics debate - “The $8 billion upgrade to the US B61 nuclear bomb has been widely condemned as an awful lot of money to spend on an obsolete weapon,” writes Julian Borger for The Guardian… “Apart from the stratospheric price, the most controversial element of the B61 upgrade is the replacement of the existing rigid tail with one that has moving fins that will make the bomb smarter and allow it to be guided more accurately to a target.”

--“The modifications are at the centre of a row between anti-proliferation advocates and the government over whether the new improved B61-12 bomb is in fact a new weapon, and therefore a violation of President Obama’s undertaking not to make new nuclear weapons. His administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review said life extension upgrades to the US arsenal would ‘not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.’” Read the full story here. http://bit.ly/1krlrZJ

Tweet - @NTI_WMD : #ICYMI Sam Nunn, Richard Lugar & Des Browne report on securing Military #Nuclear Materials http://bit.ly/1GYvcbR

LRSB a major money pit - “According to a January 2015 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, the direct costs of the administration’s plans for nuclear forces will total about $350 billion between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2024… In addition to the Long Range Strike Bomber, the Pentagon’s plans to rebuild the ‘triad’ of nuclear delivery systems over the next 20 years include nearly $140 billion to design and build a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines”, writes Kingston Reif for Breaking Defense.

--“Now is the time for the White House and Congress to chart a more realistic path for our nuclear arsenal. New START is scheduled to expire in 2021. It’s likely that Washington and Moscow will seek an arrangement to replace it. Given the need for a follow-on pact will coincide with the projected emergence of the nuclear budget bow wave, it would be unwise to proceed full steam ahead with the current plans, which would constrain the force sizing options available to the next president.” Get the full story here. http://bit.ly/1NMThU8

Outfitted for nuclear detection - “The Department of Homeland Security is developing portable devices that can detect nuclear threats, as part of a broader federal effort to invest in wearable technology… The ‘Human Portable Tripwire’ program, which intends to outfit Customs and Border Protection, Coast Guard and Transportation Security Administration officers with devices that ‘passively monitor the environment’ and can alert wearers when they detect nuclear or radioactive material.” Get the full story by Mohana Ravindranath for Defense One here. http://bit.ly/1NN6tIL

Quick Hits:

--“Russia to develop nuclear weapons to overwhelm U.S. defenses,” L. Todd Wood for Washington Times. http://bit.ly/1OGlXzE

--“3-D Printing the Bomb? The Nuclear Nonproliferation Challenge,” by Tristan Volpe and Matthew Kroenig for Washington Quarterly. http://ceip.org/1WUcvrD

--“Santa Monica Council votes to fund restoration of late cartoonist's anti-nuclear war sculpture,” by Halley Branson-Potts for the Los Angeles Times.http://lat.ms/1MoVZL7

Events:

--“Stimson Debate: Nuclear Weapons and International Stability,” featuring Ward Wilson and Elbridge Colby. Thursday, November 12th from 12:30 - 1:30 PM at Stimson Center, 8th Floor, 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1GGdWaM

--“Boldness and Opportunity: The N Square Exhibit” celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Monday, November 16th - 19th from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM at The William Eckhardt Research Center, 5640 South Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL. For more information visit http://bit.ly/1OBEhtB

--“Analysis and Testing of Missile Defenses,” featuring Michael Gilmore, from the Department of Defense. Thursday, November 19th from 12:00 to 1:15 PM at University of Maryland, 1203 Van Munching Hall, College Park, MD. Read more here. http://bit.ly/1O5JqY3

Dessert:

Oops - “Two Kremlin-controlled channels, NTV and Channel One, showed a military official looking at a confidential document containing drawings and details of a weapons system called Status-6, designed by Rubin, a nuclear submarine construction company based in St Petersburg,” according to a story by The Guardian.

--“The nuclear torpedoes, to be fired by submarines, would create ‘zones of extensive radioactive contamination making them unsuitable for military or economic activity for a long period,’ says the document, which is clearly visible in the footage for several seconds... The document was shown at a meeting where Putin warned that ‘Russia will take necessary retaliatory measures to strengthen the potential of our strategic nuclear forces.’” Read the full story here at http://bit.ly/1RPvrqe