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Rofer on Nuclear Issues

You are here: Home / Archives for Science & Technology / Rofer on Nuclear Issues

A Couple Of Articles

by Cheryl Rofer|  June 15, 20216:42 pm| 50 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Excellent Links, Open Threads, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

I’ve been quoted in two news articles yesterday and today. I’m reasonably pleased with both of them.

Exclusive: US assessing reported leak at Chinese nuclear power facility

Zachary Cohen called me with not enough information on this reported leak. The odd thing about it was that France had notified the United States, and high-level US meetings were reported. So: secretive country, nuclear leak. Hard for me, even, not to feel resonances with Chernobyl. My early guess from the information we had was that it was a broken fuel element, and that’s what it turned out to be. The reason France contacted the US had to do with sharing nuclear information. When a country gets nuclear technology from the US, restrictions are attached about sharing it.

The Lab Leak Theory Doesn’t Hold Up

Justin Ling covers the major claims about a laboratory escape being the route of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into humans and finds them wanting; further, that a natural pathway from animals to humans is more likely. Long article and may have a paywall. This one should become the standard reference for refuting the lab leak bros.

Open thread!

A Couple Of ArticlesPost + Comments (50)

The Biden-Putin Summit

by Cheryl Rofer|  June 13, 20213:26 pm| 85 Comments

This post is in: Biden Administration in Action, Rofer on International Relations, Rofer on Nuclear Issues, Russia

What can we expect from the summit meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin?

Nothing.

That is the expectation that Biden is setting. There will be no grand pronouncements, no reset, maybe not even a perfunctory statement of agreement on a minor point. That is part of the reason that Biden plans to hold a press conference by himself. The other part, of course, is in contrast with Donald Trump’s disastrous showing at Helsinki.

But the meeting is necessary and important. Russia is a major country, with a nuclear arsenal equivalent to America’s. Russia is adjacent to our allies in Europe and supplies energy to many of them. It has a long land border across which untoward things can happen. Those are reason enough for the leaders to meet.

The meeting is important because tensions between the two countries have increased during the 21st century. The United States has pulled out of treaties that stabilized the relationship rather than try to resolve problems. Russia has acted as an international spoiler. Both sides need to show reliability in their actions. That can only be done through meetings.

Many issues might be discussed – the situation with those treaties and how to go forward, the situation in Ukraine, American sanctions on Russia, Russia’s attacks on dissidents inside and outside Russia, the situation in Syria, America’s return to the Iran nuclear agreement, relations with China, the uses of the Arctic, and more. Both men have their own lists of priorities. It’s likely that their aides have exchanged those lists and are working to pare them down to fit in the time available.

Those aides have also been gaming out something like a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. I’ll do a bit of that here. Obviously, I’m coming at it from an Americentric viewpoint.

The real strength internationally today is in dealing with the pandemic. The pandemic hinders economies and military strength. Biden understands this and has made controlling the pandemic his first priority, with some success. In contrast, Russia is going into another wave of disease. Its people are more reluctant than Americans to be vaccinated, and its vaccine may be less effective than others. Brazil and Slovakia have raised questions about quality control in its manufacture.

Russia’s willingness to take risks to upend other countries’ expectations in terms of invading its neighbors and willingness to kill individuals seen as dissidents both inside and outside Russia is a strength. It keeps opponents off guard and makes the most of capabilities that are weaker than others’.

Russia’s role as a supplier of natural gas to Europe is a strength in dealing with Europe, to be used as leverage against the formal alliances of NATO and the EU. Both of those alliances are strengths, emphasized during Biden’s visits these two weeks.

Both countries have weaknesses in their domestic political situations. America has a major political party that is sympathetic to and influenced by Russian organizations. Russia’s poor economic situation and repression of dissidents have led to demonstrations, which repression may damp down. Putin is not grooming a successor, which is not a problem now but will become one at some point. America’s last president contines to try to undermine the succession.

The summit itself is an opportunity for Putin personally. He wants Russia to be seen as an equal to America, and a summit provides favorable optics. But that doesn’t improve Russia’s economy or pandemic status. And Russia is an equal in nuclear destructive power.

The opportunity for both is to feel the other out, understand him better, try out approaches. The personal relationship is far from the whole thing, but it’s not unimportant.

The biggest policy opportunity is likely to be in the area of the now defunct nuclear treaties. Both sides understand that nuclear war or accident is the greatest danger facing them. Additionally, both sides are looking at very expensive plans for modernizing their nuclear forces. In the economic crunch of the pandemic, sizing those plans down would be significant. Communication of actions that might look like war is important. Bringing China into discussions of limiting numbers of nuclear weapons is worth thinking about. The most that might be achieved in this meeting would be agreement to hold working meetings on these topics.

Biden will bring up Ukraine, and Putin will bring up sanctions. The most that will be mentioned of these subjects in any communiqué will be that they were discussed. Maybe some positive words can be ginned up about the Arctic.  It is possible that there will not be a joint communiqué.

Threats to a chummy outcome with roses and unicorns are pretty much everything about the relationship, which is why Biden is damping down expectations, and Putin isn’t saying much either.

In the leadup to the summit, both sides are making gestures of strength and perhaps signaling ways forward. They are predictable and not very significant.

One that I find significant is that NATO made a statement that it will not deploy new land-based missiles to Europe. It wasn’t planning to, but Russia has deployed potentially nuclear cruise missiles in the area. It was these missiles that were the proximate cause of the American withdrawal from the INF Treaty. Russia says it is willing to come back to an INF-style treaty in Europe, but it will be a long way. The activity around this issue suggests it will be discussed, although the best we can expect is the formation of a working group.

Biden will have his own interpreter and note-taker with him. He may also have Jake Sullivan or Antony Blinken along. Putin will have a similar complement of his people. The summit will take place, and we will move along to the next thing.

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner

The Biden-Putin SummitPost + Comments (85)

Quick Open Thread

by Cheryl Rofer|  June 12, 20216:11 pm| 22 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Rofer on International Relations, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

I plan to write a post on what to expect from the Biden-Putin summit, but here’s a foretaste. Last week I finally said on Twitter, in plain English, what I’ve thought for some time: that nuclear weapons are unusable unless we want to destroy the Earth, so we should say that and explicitly move toward that goal. I didn’t emphasize, but will here, that I am not calling for instant destruction of all nukes, but rather stating elimination as the goal and taking steps in that direction.

So today I was very pleased to see this

A first step toward what I advocated the other day: Admit that they are useless and work toward eliminating them. https://t.co/jhc6P6zYUQ

— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 12, 2021

And I had to gloat a little.

Kind of pleased NATO is watching my twitter feed and has taken action so quickly!

— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 12, 2021

Open thread!

Quick Open ThreadPost + Comments (22)

Two News Stories – Free To Reporters

by Cheryl Rofer|  June 10, 20214:20 pm| 48 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19, Media, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

Covering government is boring, until it isn’t. Trouble is, you need to know something about the boring parts to see when it isn’t. I’ve seen two of those – potentially big stories – today.

Trump’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation Spills The Beans

Chris Ford has been in government a long time in positions relating to arms control and nonproliferation. I don’t agree with his policy positions, but I was relieved when Trump appointed someone who actually knew about the field to this position. He is a quiet and professional man.

He published a tell-all open letter on Medium today. My jaw is still dropped.

There’s a lot to the letter, and I don’t have time to go into it in detail, but basically a couple of Trumpian bozos in one of his bureaus were ginning up a conspiracy theory about China and the coronavirus. And they did everything they could to keep it from him! This is the backstory to every “lab leak” story out there, oh useful idiots like Nate Silver, Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, and others.

Los Alamos Can’t Make 80 Pits A Year

Dan Leone covers the nuclear weapons bureaucracy for EM Publications. He tweets Congressional hearings, which is a great service to people like me who usually don’t listen to the whole thing. The House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces held a hearing today on the FY22 budget request. Charles Verdon, the nominated Administrator for the NNSA, the part of the Department of Energy that is responsible for nuclear weapons, testified. The nuclear arsenal is getting old, and there has been a plan to remake the plutonium cores (pits) for some nuclear weapons. That would be done at the Los Alamos Plutonium Facility, PF-4, and at a repurposed plant at Savannah River, Georgia.

Verdon said that the Savanna River plant won’t be ready for several years and will cost a lot more than has been projected. He also said that PF-4 won’t ever be able to produce 80 pits a year. Here’s Leone’s summary of a long thread:

So: hearing’s a wrap.

News: 80 pits/year by 2030 a no-go, per NNSA; Pantex now assembling system first production unit for W88 Alt-370 (SLBM warhead (larger of 2) refurb); Biden Nuclear Posture Review coming ≈ Jan. 2022. 1st GBSD test flight 12/01/23. Thanks for following.

— Dan Leone (@Leone_EXM) June 10, 2021

This is the first time that the NNSA administrator has admitted that the big talk about pit production is just that – talk. It’s significant that the Biden administration is saying this; it may pave the way for a different sort of talks between the US and Russia. And maybe China, if they ever become willing to talk.

I find both of these stories amazing. I’ll be interested to see which news media pick them up. You read them here first.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

Two News Stories – Free To ReportersPost + Comments (48)

Kazakhstan Cleans Up

by Cheryl Rofer|  March 28, 20211:20 pm| 59 Comments

This post is in: Rofer on International Relations, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

In the 1990s, the United States and other countries helped the newly independent states that had been part of the Soviet Union to deal with their nuclear weapons and materials. It’s a story that has been almost completely forgotten, but it contains a number of lessons that might be helpful today.

David Frum reminds us of that effort. I was involved in it. A few additional thoughts.

It wasn’t just the United States that helped. Although Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) started the funding, the International Science and Technology Committee, funded by the European Union, Japan, and Norway, in addition to the United States, also helped to support nuclear weapons scientists suddenly without jobs.

And it wasn’t just Kazakhstan. Most of the former Soviet republics had leftovers from the Soviet nuclear weapons programs – from mining through production plants to the weapons stationed in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Help was needed in materials accountability and in moving the weapons back to Russia, which inherited the USSR’s status as a nuclear weapons power.

I am pretty sure that I have seen the site pictured in Frum’s article. The caption is “The destruction of a Soviet-era nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan in 2000.” It looks like the sealing of one of the tunnels in the Degelen Mountain testing area. Nuclear tests were carried out in the tunnels. Some of them left metallic plutonium behind.

Frum article

When I saw in 2001 that the tunnels had been sealed, I realized that they would have to be opened up again. They were, in the recovery of plutonium during 2005-2007. It probably was a good idea to seal them early, though, because scavengers were at the test site, removing copper wire that had been used for the tests.

My photo, 2001

The Soviet Union formally ended December 25, 1991. In early February, the three directors of the American weapons laboratories – Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia – were on their way to Sarov, Russia’s equivalent of Los Alamos. Scientists and engineers from those laboratories and others followed. As Frum notes, Vladimir Putin ended the cooperation in 2012. Kazakhstan now has removed its weapons-related nuclear material. The Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site and other nuclear operations left a great many things to clean up.

President George H. W. Bush eliminated a large number American nuclear weapons in a unilateral gesture intended to show Mikhail Gorbachev that the US would not take advantage of Russia in its disarray. Frum emphasizes that Soviet weapons were eliminated, but weapons were eliminated on both sides.

Those of us who were part of it made new friends and spent time in countries we never imagined would be open to us. It felt like making the world a better place. It was the best thing I did in my career.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner.

Kazakhstan Cleans UpPost + Comments (59)

Continuing Impeachment Trial Open Thread

by Cheryl Rofer|  February 10, 20215:11 pm| 151 Comments

This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Open Threads, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

The previous thread was getting long. I’m not sure how much more there is to go – I am not watching, just getting snips from Twitter as I get some other stuff done.

I found this interesting – the nuclear football that follows the Vice President around was also at risk. You can see the military aide carrying it at 0:13 in the video.

Truly remarkable footage of Vice President Pence and his family being escorted out of the Senate chamber. President Trump was back at the White House, continuing to trash Pence, according to multiple people. pic.twitter.com/Vr3c5EBwTR

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 10, 2021

Stephen Schwartz follows the nuclear footballs and collects photos of them. I asked him to verify. Here’s his answer –

Correct, although that's a different military aide than was seen carrying it earlier in the afternoon that day from the House to the Senate. https://t.co/rAtaTNMte5

— Stephen Schwartz (@AtomicAnalyst) February 10, 2021

Sorry for the duplication. That seems to be the way this works.

Continuing Impeachment Trial Open ThreadPost + Comments (151)

Chain of Command

by Cheryl Rofer|  January 8, 202112:22 pm| 232 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Impeachment, Rofer on Nuclear Issues

Nancy Pelosi says that she “spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”

JUST IN: Speaker Pelosi, 2nd in line of presidential succession, speaks to Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley "to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike"; READ: pic.twitter.com/zFwTtrSf9g

— Mark Albert (@malbertnews) January 8, 2021

I can tell her the available precautions, and I hope Milley did too: NONE

The President has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. He is not required to consult anyone else, nor is there provision to force him to.

This situation came about because back in the Cold War, it seemed plausible that the President might not know about a nuclear attack until the missiles were on the way. That gave him a half-hour or less to decide. It was also assumed that we would elect only presidents capable of doing the job.

Nuclear strategists have pressed Congress to change the situation, but so far Representative Ted Lieu’s and Senator Ed Markey’s bill has gone nowhere. Maybe the next Congress will see fit to consider it.

No, there wasn’t a workaround when Nixon was wandering the corridors of the White House, drunk, talking to the portraits. We were lucky.

Nancy Pelosi can’t do a workaround with Mark Milley. That would be tantamount to a military coup, and I think that Milley is not interested in a military coup right now.

If this is a concern, Speaker Pelosi, and I think it is, then bring articles of impeachment to the floor of the House. NOW.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

Chain of CommandPost + Comments (232)

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