Avatar photoChina and No First Use

I am sure you have, by now, noticed that Kyodo News has published a story titled, “China military eyes preemptive nuclear attack in event of crisis,” which was picked up by the Associated Press and AFP.  The article claims that an “internal document” from the PLA indicates that under certain conditions, China would abandon its …

Avatar photoIAEA Fuel Bank

I have acquired two IAEA documents relating to the establishment of an IAEA fuel bank, which I am making available to the community as a public service.\ Have at ’em. Assurance of Supply, Establishment of an IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank for the Supply of LEU to Member States, GOV/2010/67,  (26 November 2010) Assurance …

Avatar photoChina Peeps about Plutonium

Anthony Trollope lived and wrote half a century before plutonium was discovered, and maybe that’s why during the holidays I was deeply immersed in three of his novels. Shortly before New Year’s and about 400 pages into The Eustace Diamonds, I got an e-mail from a friend in Beijing, telling me that something noteworthy had …

Avatar photoJoint Verification Experiments

During the Reagan administration, the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty was in Senate limbo, mired in arguments over Soviet cheating. The TTBT limited underground tests to yields no greater than 150 kilotons, but the U.S. intelligence community did not have sound geological data of the Soviet test sites and used questionable extrapolations to infer yields. …