Twenty-six days after the ferocious Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear emergency has still not produced a single fatality. You would never know that from the headlines. Though the quake/tsunami killed tens of thousands of people and left half…
Category: Nuclear diplomacy
Nuclear threats in a changing world: revisiting Pakistan
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about nuclear proliferation at the World Affairs Conference in Toronto. The WAC is an annual student-run conference hosted by Upper Canada College. I co-presented along with a Carleton University professor, Trevor Findlay, a…
Plutonium stockpiles: reorganize and recycle, or Anarchy in the UK?
Get ready for a righteous fight over plutonium in the UK. The World Nuclear News reports that the UK government is thinking seriously about recycling the country’s civilian plutonium for electric power generation. It has launched consultations on the question…
Lock and burn: a clean, peaceful way to prevent terrorists from stealing nuclear weapons
There is a lot of talk of nuclear terrorists these days, and it might be useful to walk through the scenarios in which terrorists might acquire nuclear weapons. Let’s start with the ones we can quickly rule out. At the…
The Doomsday Industry: doomsayers and their agendas
A year ago, the hands of the famous Doomsday Clock were moved back, from five to six minutes before midnight. This suggested faint hope in the hearts of the clock’s keepers, the board of directors of the Bulletin of the…