Plutonium Sampling at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Cost of RECA Chart
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
New & Updated
Which nation spends the most on nuclear weapons?
“Acceleration of spending on these inhumane and destructive weapons over the past five years is not improving global security but posing a global threat,” Alicia Sanders-Zakre, co-author of the report, said in a statement.
By Michael Loria, USA TODAY | June 26, 2024 usatoday.com
The world’s nine nuclear powers spent $91 billion on their nuclear arsenals in 2023, or nearly $3,000 per second, according to a new report by a global coalition of disarmament activists.
At the top of the list is the United States, which spent $51.5 billion – more than all of the other nations combined. That amounts to nearly $100,000 per minute aimed at developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles, new airplanes to drop bombs and new submarines, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) report.
The U.S. spent 18% more than it did last year, according to the report. The $7.8 billion increase in spending on nuclear weapons accounted for nearly 80% of the $10.7 billion increase in spending worldwide, according to ICAN. Other big spenders were China with $11.9 billion; Russia with $8.3 billion; and the United Kingdom with $8.1 billion. The increase in worldwide spending in 2023 is the greatest ICAN has recorded in a single year.
ICAN: Global nuclear weapons spending surges to $91.4 billion
In 2023, the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91,393,404,739 on their arsenals – equivalent to $2,898 a second. ICAN’s latest report “Surge: 2023 Global nuclear weapons spending” shows $10.7 billion more was spent on nuclear weapons in 2023 than in 2022.
Read the report
Download the Executive Summary
Who spent what on their nuclear arsenal in 2023?
In 2023 China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the UK and US spent a combined $91.4 billion on their nuclear arms, which breaks down to $173,884 per minute, or $2,898 a second. The United States’ share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together and accounts for 80% of the increase in nuclear weapons spending in 2023. The next biggest spender was China which expended $11.8 billion with Russia spending the third largest amount at $8.3 billion. The United Kingdom’s spending was up significantly for the second year in a row with a 17% increase to $8.1 billion.
$387 billion in 5 years
“Surge” is the 5th edition of ICAN’s global nuclear weapons spending report. In the last 5 years, $387 billion has been spent on nuclear weapons, with the yearly spending increasing by 34% from $68.2 billion to $91.4 billion per year, as all nine nuclear-armed states continue to modernise, and in some cases expand, their arsenals. Alicia Sanders-Zakre, co-author of the report [and NukeWatch’s summer 2019 intern] noted:
“The acceleration of spending on these inhumane and destructive weapons over the past five years is not improving global security but posing a global threat.”
Keeping a (Nuke)Watchful Eye on Consolidated Interim Storage: No High-Level Waste To New Mexico
If you follow news on nuclear waste, you know that the federal government is required by law to have a permanent disposal plan for our nation’s nuclear waste before engaging in temporary storage, or “consolidated interim storage” for commercial spent nuclear fuel. There are currently about 86,000 metric tons of this fuel in the U.S., stored on-site at operating or shutdown nuclear power plants in 33 states, an amount that continues to grow by about 2,000 metric tons a year (GAO). This is waste generated by nuclear power plants called ‘high-level radioactive waste’ (HLW), also known as ‘spent’ or ‘irradiated’ fuel. This waste contains plutonium, uranium, strontium, and cesium; it is most toxic and dangerous type of radioactive waste created by the nuclear industry and will be radioactive for millions of years.
Two private companies “Holtec” and “Interim Storage Partners” are proposing to build and operate facilities for HLW called “Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities (CISF)” in New Mexico and Texas. While federal law requires the government to have a permanent disposal solution, it does not explicitly prevent private entities from offering interim storage solutions. Enter money-gobbling Holtec and ISP.
Does the U.S. Need “New” Nuclear Weapons?
Watch “McCuistion Perspectives Matter” TV programs – subscribe to the McCuistionTV YouTube channel.
Episodes can also be viewed at McCuistionTV.com.
Aired Sunday, June 23, at 11:30 AM on KERA, Channel 13, PBS Dallas
The film “Oppenheimer” and the saber-rattling from Russia and North Korea have increased interest in U.S. nuclear weapons.
Today, Russia, China, and the United States are each committed to robust and expensive nuclear modernization, programs. At the same time, long-standing arms control treaties have either been suspended, or canceled and negotiations to extend them have essentially been stalled.
Join host Jim Falk to discuss this issue along with:
Sarah Scoles, a science journalist, and author of “Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons.” Her articles have been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Popular Science, Scientific American, and others.
Jay Coghlan is president of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. Established in 1999, Nuclear Watch promotes safety and environment at nuclear facilities and diversification away from nuclear weapons programs.
Hans Kristensen is the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He is the co-author of the Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, considered widely to be the most accurate source of information on nuclear weapons available to the public.
The economic and political questions surrounding the state of our nuclear stockpiles are among the best-kept national security secrets.
Certainly, aspects must remain under wraps, but given the enormous amount of money devoted to our nuclear arsenal, it seems appropriate for there to be more transparency.
Watch the episode to learn more about our U.S. nuclear program from experts who are very familiar with the current situation.
EPISODES CAN BE VIEWED ON YOUTUBE OR AT MCCUISTIONTV.COM
Oil and gas ‘ready to defend’ decision to block license for nuke waste in Permian Basin
Nuclear Companies “Holtec” and “Interim Storage Partners” Appeal Block of Licenses to Store Waste in the Permian Basin —
Monica Perales, an attorney with Fasken Oil and Ranch which filed the initial suit against the NRC’s licensing decision, [argued] the proposals to store the nuclear waste in southeast New Mexico and West Texas should be evaluated by federal lawmakers, not a single agency like the NRC, due to the significant impact on the region and national policy she said consolidated interim storage of the waste could have.
Perales said the companies and the NRC were not transparent and did not convey the true impact of the projects to all of those affected, including southeast New Mexico and West Texas communities around the site, but also those along the transportation routes the waste will take into the Permian Basin via train.
“The NRC is acting like a rogue agency. They’re out of order,” Perales said. “These plans are of such political and economic consequence that they should be looking to Congress for a directive as to how to deal with this tremendous amount of spent nuclear fuel that’s piling up around the country, and not take it upon itself to send it to the Permian Basin and force it on us.”
By Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus | June 24, 2024 currentargus.com
A nuclear technology company looking to store spent nuclear fuel rods in the Permian Basin, along the Texas-New Mexico state line, appealed in U.S. Supreme Court a decision last year to vacate its license to do so, hoping to bring the waste from privately-owned reactors around the country.
Interim Storage Partners (ISP) was issued a license in 2021 to build a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) to hold up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel at the Waste Control Specialists site in Andrews, Texas. The project was smaller but almost identical to another facility proposed by Holtec International to hold about 100,000 metric tons of the same waste at a facility near Carlsbad and Hobbs.
Guterres warns humanity on ‘knife’s edge’ as AI raises nuclear war threat
UN secretary general makes plea for nuclear states to agree on mutual pledge not to be first to use nuclear weapons
“The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has warned that the spread of artificial intelligence technology multiplies the threat of nuclear war, and that humanity is now ‘on a knife’s edge’ as dangers to its existence coalesce.”
By, The Guardian | June 7, 2024 theguardian.com
Guterres’s warning is due to be shown on a recorded video to be played on Friday morning at the annual meeting of the US Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington.
In the video, the secretary general makes his most impassioned plea to date for the nuclear weapons states to take their non-proliferation obligations seriously, and in particular, agree on a mutual pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.
“The regime designed to prevent the use, testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons is weakening,”
Guterres says in the recorded message, in a warning that comes with some 600 days to go before the expiry of the 2010 New Start accord between the US and Russia, the last remaining agreement limiting the strategic arsenals of the two nuclear superpowers.
U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts
“China’s expansion and Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and in space have changed a U.S. drive to reduce nuclear weapons.”
ByJulian E. Barnes and , New York Times | June 7, 2024 nytimes.com
A senior Biden administration official warned on Friday that “absent a change” in nuclear strategy by China and Russia, the United States may be forced to expand its nuclear arsenal, after decades of cutting back through now largely abandoned arms control agreements.
The comments on Friday from Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, were the most explicit public warning yet that the United States was prepared to shift from simply modernizing its arsenal to expanding it…
New Nuclear Media: Art, Films, Books & More
Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America
A new book is out about Hanford, by Joshua Frank, co-editor of Counterpunch, Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America.
Once home to the United States’s largest plutonium production site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state is laced with 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. The threat of an explosive accident at Hanford is all too real—an event that could be more catastrophic than Chernobyl.
Continue reading
Fallout from a nuclear past: A new book explores the human toll of “nuclear colonization” in New Mexico
Of the three waves of colonization New Mexico has undergone — Spanish, American and nuclear — the latter is the least explored. And for author Myrriah Gómez, there were personal reasons to reveal the truth about how “nuclear colonization” has altered the state’s past and continues to shape its future.
By Alicia Inez Guzmán Searchlight New Mexico | December 2022 searchlightnm.org
Gómez, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, is the author of “Nuclear Nuevo México,” a book that explores the history of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the fundamental tension of living in its shadow. Its publication this month by the University of Arizona Press couldn’t be timelier: Los Alamos is currently preparing to build plutonium “pits” that act as triggers in nuclear weapons, putting the lab front and center in an ongoing national debate about nuclear impacts.
“If Spanish colonialism brought Spanish colonizers and U.S. colonialism brought American colonizers,” as Gómez writes in her book, “then nuclear colonialism brought nuclear colonizers, scientists, military personnel, atomic bomb testing, and nuclear waste among them.”
