32 posts
Readers may remember when I popped over to Yverdon-Les-Bains this summer to attend an EastWest Institute Meeting on Reframing Nuclear De-Alert. It was a very interesting meeting with an outstanding cast of characters. Oh, and thermal baths. The estimable Walter…
Travis Sharp avails himself of the opportunity to use a statement by the new Japanese Foreign Minister to take a swipe at the PONI blog: Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Sunday called on the United States to make a…
Loyal readers may know John Mueller, who holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at The Ohio State University. (I know, that’s so awesome.) Mueller is rather less worried than I about an instance of nuclear terrorism —…
It’s a red-letter day: David Ignatius of the Washington Post has been reading Mark Hibbs in Nucleonics Week. He [i.e., Ignatius] concludes that molybdenum impurities could prevent Iran from enriching its LEU far beyond present levels. No further enrichment, no…
A close-up view of the decommissioned Tokai Power Station — Japan’s first power reactor The usual answer to that question is the one that the North Koreans have supplied: gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors can be operated without enriched uranium or heavy…
Henry Kissinger doesn’t do remorse. The closest he came to second guessing his arms control negotiating record has become a classic quote in Wonkdom: I would say in retrospect that I wish I had thought through the implications of a…
In meetings over the past few weeks, I have heard repeated references to the wonderful 1983 essay Deterrence and Reassurance by the late Michael Howard. Point of fact — Sir Michael Howard is not dead. But with the way in…
Much has been said about the decision to refuel Iran’s Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) and many have worried about possible consequences for proliferation that supplying Iran with uranium enriched to 19.75% U235 might imply. As I hope I made clear,…
Yes, we’ve all had a big helping of TRR lately, but this extra tidbit is just too juicy to pass up. Other topics again soon, I promise. A friend of the blog who shall go nameless points out that just…
Thomas Schelling and Morton Halperin provided the most widely used definition of arms control in their seminal book, Strategy and Arms Control (1961): We believe that arms control is a promising, but still only dimly perceived, enlargement on the scope…
