Depleted uranium munitions are bad news for enemy tanks, but are not nuclear weapons, and studies have shown that they pose low risks of radiation or chemical exposure.
Uranium processing plant in Utah, US.
RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Libya’s lost but found yellowcake poses no significant security risk but highlights the need for African countries to get their acts together in the area of nuclear safety and security governance.
South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol is only the second leader to travel to the U.S. for a state visit during the Biden administration.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
The ‘Washington Declaration’ unveiled during the state visit by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol gives Seoul a greater role in coordinating a nuclear response strategy.
The first AUKUS-class submarine will be delivered in the 2040s. We may only get about a decade of use before adversaries can easily detect the new boats.
Dilemma: some on the left blame Nato for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Avpics/Alamy Stock Photo
Jeffrey Fields, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
What are classified documents? Who gets to see them? What happens if they are released? A former State Department and Department of Defense staffer who had top secret clearance provides the answers.
Cult of personality: Vladimir Putin has vowed to restore Russia’s imperial greatness.
EPA-EFE/Maksim Blinov/Sputnik/Kremlin pool
A recent barrage of nuclear-capable missile tests and a change in law setting out the conditions for a nuclear strike show that North Korea’s leader is intent on reunification on his terms.
This Russian short-range cruise missile, the Iskander-K, can carry nuclear warheads for several hundred miles.
Russian Defense Ministry Press Service photo via AP
Tactical nuclear weapons were designed to be used on the battlefield rather than for strategic defense, but that doesn’t mean there’s a plausible case for using them.
With heightened superpower tensions, war in Europe and new military alliances forming, New Zealand’s defence review must set the right course in a dangerous world.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during the 2022 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations on Aug. 1, 2022.
Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
Using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be difficult and risky for Russia.
A cascade of gas centrifuges at a U.S. enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, in 1984. Iran is using similar technology to enrich uranium.
U.S. Department of Energy
Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons centers on producing weapons-grade uranium. Here’s what reports about Iran enriching uranium indicate about its progress toward the bomb.
A Russian military intercontinental ballistic missile launcher rolls by during the 2019 Victory Day military parade celebrating the end of the Second World War in Red Square in Moscow in May 2019.
(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
The sort of scenarios that might lead to the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war would require a significant deterioration in Russian fortunes — and greater western involvement in the conflict.
MAD: launch of the Sarmat, or ‘Satan 2’ ICBM on April 20, 2022.
Russian Defence Ministry/ZUMA Wire
Despite decades of progress on nonproliferation, Russia’s new threats of nuclear strikes bring to mind that convincing countries to reduce their nuclear weapons has long been very difficult.
A U.S. Air Force jet performs a test drop of a B61-12 bomb in December 2021. That bomb can contain a nuclear warhead for use in wartime.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Both the Russian and US arsenals boast thousands of nuclear weapons, located in various places around their own countries and, for the US, in Europe as well.