Nuclear Arms

A US official focusing on arms control on Monday provided what he called new, declassified details of a Chinese underground nuclear test nearly six years ago and urged countries to press China and Russia to do more on nuclear disarmament. Christopher Yeaw, assistant secretary of state for the bureau of arms control and nonproliferation, spoke to a UN-backed body after the last nuclear arms pact between the United States and Russia expired this month. That has ended limits on the arsenals of the world's biggest nuclear powers and raised concerns about a possible new arms race. Yeaw called for greater transparency from China and pointed to some shortcomings of the New START treaty, such as that it didn't address Russia's large arsenal of nonstrategic nuclear weapons - which counts up to 2,000 warheads. "But perhaps its greatest flaw was that New START did not account for the unprecedented, deliberate, rapid and opaque nuclear weapons buildup by China," he told the UN-backed Conference

Trump recently said he had ordered his defence department to restart nuclear weapons testing on an 'equal basis' with Russia and China

The United States will share closely held technology to allow South Korea to build a nuclear-powered submarine, President Donald Trump said on social media on Thursday after meeting with the country's president. President Lee Jae Myung stressed to Trump in their Wednesday meeting that the goal was to modernize the alliance with the US, noting plans to increase military spending to reduce the financial burden on America. The South Korean leader said there might have been a misunderstanding when they last spoke in August about nuclear-powered submarines, saying that his government was looking for nuclear fuel rather than weapons. Lee said that if South Korea was equipped with nuclear-powered submarines, that it could help US activities in the region. US nuclear submarine technology is widely regarded as some of the most sensitive and highly guarded technology the military possesses. The US has been incredibly protective of that knowledge, and even a recently announced deal with close

On July 16, 1945, the world changed forever. The United States detonated the first nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert. Just weeks later, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In his address to the nation, PM Modi says, "...No nuclear blackmail will be tolerated anymore..." He says, "Terrorist attack on India will have to face a befitting reply.

In 2025, a new atomic arms race is stirring, this time not provoked by Russia, China or North Korea but instead by President Donald Trump's trade war

The UN nuclear watchdog's board on Thursday condemned Iran for failing to cooperate fully with the agency, the second time it has done so in just five months. The International Atomic Energy Agency also called on Tehran to provide answers in a long-running investigation into uranium particles found at two locations that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites. Nineteen members of the IAEA broad voted for the resolution, while Russia, China and Burkina Faso opposed it, and 12 abstained and one did not vote, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the outcome of the closed-doors vote. The resolution was put forward by France, Germany and Britain, supported by the United States. It comes at a critical time, ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House. Trump's first term in office was marked by a particularly tense period with Iran, when the US president pursued a policy of maximum pressure against Tehran. In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew

Russia says the plant has been repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian forces that are just 40 km (25 miles) away after carving out a slice of Russian territory this month

The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant has been thrust onto the front line of the war between Russia and Ukraine after an incursion by Kyiv's forces placed them within artillery range

Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated tensions by threatening to arm North Korea in response to US and allied support for Ukraine

Global military spending on nuclear arsenals surged by 33% over the past five years, reaching $91 billion in 2023

Mutually assured destruction is the cornerstone of strategies to prevent nuclear war, but the leaders in charge of the codes hardly inspire confidence

The third meeting of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) is designed to follow up on last year's summit

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised salvo launches of the country's super-large multiple rocket launchers that simulated a nuclear counterattack against enemy targets, state media said Tuesday, adding to tests and threats that have raised tensions in the region. The report by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency came a day after the South Korean and Japanese militaries detected the North firing what they suspected were multiple short-range ballistic missiles from a region near its capital, Pyongyang, toward its eastern seas. Analysts say North Korea's large-sized artillery rockets blur the boundary between artillery systems and ballistic missiles because they can create their own thrust and are guided during delivery. The North has described some of these systems, including the 600mm multiple rocket launchers that were tested Monday, as capable of delivering tactical nuclear warheads. KCNA said Monday's launches represented the first demonstration of the country

Russia's top diplomat dismissed the United States proposal to resume a dialogue on nuclear arms control, saying Thursday that it's impossible while Washington offers military support to Ukraine. Speaking at an annual news conference, Sergey Lavrov accused the West of fuelling global security risks by encouraging Ukraine to ramp up strikes on the Russian territory and warned that Moscow will achieve its goals in the conflict regardless of Western support for Kyiv. Commenting on a US proposal to resume contacts in the sphere of nuclear arms control, Lavrov said that Moscow has rejected the offer. He said that for such talks to be held, Washington first needs to revise its current policy toward Russia. Lavrov charged that Washington's push for the revival of nuclear talks has been driven by a desire to resume inspections of Russia's nuclear weapons sites. He described such US demands as indecent in view of Ukraine's attacks on Russian nuclear-capable bomber bases during the ...

South Korea's president says he'll tell world leaders about the need to faithfully enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea and block the country's illicit activities to fund its weapons programmes when they converge in Indonesia and India for annual summits this week. President Yoon Suk Yeol is to visit Jakarta for four days starting Tuesday to attend a series of summits scheduled on the margins of a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders. On Friday, he'll travel on to New Delhi for a summit of the leading rich and developing nations. At the upcoming ASEAN-related Summits and the G20 Summit, I intend to urge the international community to resolutely respond to North Korea's ever-escalating missile provocations and nuclear threats and to work closely together on its denuclearization, Yoon said in written responses to questions from The Associated Press. As long as the U.N. Security Council sanctions currently in place are faithfully implemented, North Korea's

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To this, the US government says there is no indication that the Kremlin plans to use nuclear weapons to attack Ukraine

The White House is ready to have talks with Russia without preconditions about a future nuclear arms control framework even as it is enacting countermeasures in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to suspend the last nuclear arms control treaty between the two countries. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will make clear the Biden administration's desire for talks on building a new framework during an address to the Arms Control Association on Friday, according to two senior administration officials who previewed the address on the condition of anonymity. Putin announced in February he was suspending Russia's cooperation with the New START Treaty's provisions for nuclear warhead and missile inspections amid deep tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia, however, said it would respect the treaty's caps on nuclear weapons. The officials said that Sullivan would underscore that the U.S. remains committ

His arrest earlier this week, which sparked deadly unrest in the nuclear-armed nation, was ruled "invalid and unlawful" by the Supreme Court on Thursday