LLAW’s All Things Nuclear #865, Friday, (01/31/2025)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity” ~llaw

Jan 31, 2025

(See published article below for descripti9on and photo credit)

LAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES for TOMORROW . . .

To my mind the following article from the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” and author Jon B. Wolfsthal, although well covered and written, is little more than wishful thinking or at best a hopeful possible agreement among nuclear nations that are always, even if ratified, sure to be broken and abandoned, creating more conflict because of the insanity of nuclear arms control and constant build-up and the incredible cost of what’s called nuclear “deterrence”, which is the only shaky preventative we currently have that presently shelters the world from nuclear war..

I am not a believer in the very concept of nuclear armed nation-leaders honestly honoring — especially, the U.S., Russia, and China — any peace agreements that involve anything nuclear. And, Trump’s record of breaking peace and other international agreements is not what one would call commendable nor “peaceful”.

I suppose that optimism is a valuable characteristic, but being optimistic about anything that #47 does or will ever do is not a part of my own confidence that he will even avoid the idea of a potential world-engaging nuclear war. Iran is already threatening the U.S. (meaning Trump) to stay away from them and their nuclear program(s).

Time will tell, of course, but Trump is not yet two weeks into his 2nd presidency and not a single action he has taken thus far has been beneficial nor even tolerable to the United States of America as we know it. ~llaw

The authoritative guide to ensuring science and technology make life on Earth better, not worse.

Trump wants a nuclear deal. Can he be the ultimate negotiator?

By Jon B. Wolfsthal | January 31, 2025

On April 4, 2019, President Trump pushed for new arms-control agreements with Russia and China ahead of trade talks at the White House with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. In Davos last week, Trump suggested again that he may try to negotiate a new arms control agreement with Russia and enter in arms control talks with China. (Credit: White House, via Flickr)

The world has entered the third nuclear age, and nuclear weapons are increasingly seen as valuable—and even usable—weapons by a growing number of states. Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons, China’s rapid nuclear buildup, the United States’s unprecedentedly expensive nuclear modernization, and ongoing nuclear work in North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran all make clear the 21st century will be defined by nuclear risks.

The re-election of President Trump is likely to accelerate many of these trends as US allies increasingly question whether the United States will defend their security in a crisis, all while it doubles down on its nuclear investment. This modernization-turned-expansion will likely include at least one new nuclear weapon—a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile—and could also include the resumption of explosive nuclear testing in the United States. Despite these negative developments, Trump suggested at the Davos World Economic Forum last week that he may try to negotiate a new arms control agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s initial offer also included calls to negotiate with China. But it is very unlikely that China will agree to any such talks until its nuclear build-up reaches some parity with the United States and Russia, something that will take perhaps two decades. Until then, any agreement will likely be bilateral between Washington and Moscow.

Sadly, President Trump’s track record of actually negotiating nuclear agreements is poor. During his first term, Trump said he wanted to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korea (he tried and failed), with Iran (he never tried and withdrew from an existing agreement), and with Russia and China at the same time (he failed at both). But this time around, Trump has a chance to prove his negotiating skills—but only if he does it the right way.

Terms of a nuclear deal. Trump is a baby of the Cold War, an era when nuclear weapons were seen as the ultimate symbol of US and Soviet national power and prestige. And Trump has always seen himself as the ultimate negotiator. In the 1980s already, Trump even reached out to the Reagan administration and proposed himself as the lead negotiator for nuclear talks with the Soviets. Reagan’s team passed on his offer and eventually negotiated the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty or INF in 1987 and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START I in 1991—the first nuclear agreement to effectively reduce nuclear arsenals. Ironically, President Trump withdrew from the INF treaty in 2017, some 30 years after he was passed over for the job. But past rejections and failures die hard with Trump.

Trump’s comments in Davos beg some serious questions: Should Trump negotiate with Russia’s Putin, and what terms should he pursue if US and global security is to be enhanced?

The United States and Russia are currently parties to the New START agreement—a successor to START I—negotiated in 2010 by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. The agreement caps each country at no more than 1550 strategic offensive weapons on 700 deployed launchers. Russia has stopped reporting nuclear forces as required by the agreement since March 2023, but both states have pledged to continue to abide by the treaty’s limits. The Biden administration announced in its final days that Russia may have exceeded these limits by a small margin, casting doubt on the entire agreement’s future under Trump. In any event, New START expires in February 2026 and no extension is legally possible. If any limits are to be put in place, a new deal will need to be negotiated, and the clock is ticking on Trump.

China’s nuclear expansion will clearly influence any US effort to negotiate with Russia. In addition to Russia remaining a nuclear peer, US nuclear and security officials from both parties are concerned about China building up its nuclear forces. Yet here, too, facts matter: China has roughly 600 total nuclear warheads, compared to the United States’s 1550 accountable strategic weapons under New START and 3700 weapons in total. And Russia’s arsenal is even larger. However, as China catches up, some analysts and officials believe the US must expand its arsenal to deter and, if needed, defeat Russia and China at the same time. This has yet to be proven militarily or strategically, but politically, in the United States, it is being taken at face value. The policy being pushed is that the United States should try to match the combined nuclear arsenals of Russia and China. That mindset will result in a never-ending arms race—the same one that led Russia and the United States to possess combined arsenals of 70,000 nuclear weapons at the peak of the Cold War—to no one’s advantage or security.

This is where the possible terms of a Trump deal might come together.

The United States and Russia have been part of arms limitation agreements since 1972. Allowing these agreements to lapse altogether opens the door to further arms racing and instability. Into this gap, Trump might be tempted to offer Russia a shorter-term deal of perhaps five or 10 years that puts an upward cap on nuclear arsenals but allows both to expand their forces from where they are now. Because arms control negotiations typically favor nice round numbers (New START is an exception), the United States and Russia might agree to, say, 3000 strategic weapons each. This new limit would allow Russia and the United States to roughly double their deployed strategic weapons while creating the illusion that the arms race is under control. However, an agreement that does not require weapon reductions would be a major step back in such agreements. The last time Washington and Moscow agreed to a deal that allowed both sides to build up their arsenals was in 1972.

In addition, arms control negotiations—from Reagan through Obama—all featured on-site inspections and effective verification. Support for this approach has broad political consensus. Yet agreeing to such steps requires hard and determined work, something the Trump team has yet to demonstrate in this arena. Trump may, therefore, bypass such steps and simply agree to an exchange of data with Russia and rely on national intelligence means (spying) and satellites for the rest. Trump’s negotiators offered Russia a similar approach during his first term, in a deal that never came to fruition. And while any agreement without effective verification would be far less effective than New START or its predecessors, it could still be sold as offering some marginal intelligence and defense value. This is not what any traditional arms control approach should seek to produce, but it should be clear to anyone by now that Trump does not tend to follow traditional approaches.

Bottlenecks. The form of a US-Russian nuclear deal is also an open question.

In the past, most but not all nuclear arms control agreements with Russia have been submitted as treaties to the Senate for its advice and consent. The now Republican-controlled Senate would likely pair approval of any such agreement with additional funding and requirements to accelerate and expand the ongoing nuclear modernization program, which is already slated to cost almost $2 trillion over the next 30 years. Of course, the current Congress is likely to fund this program, treaty or not. Still, Senate Republicans have railed against agreements in the past that cannot be enforced or effectively verified, and any deal without it would put them in a tough spot. However, in the current US political environment, it is easy to see Senate Republican leaders rubber-stamping any of Trump’s efforts in this area—as they might do in so many others.

It is not entirely clear how and when Trump will make negotiating a nuclear treaty with Russia a priority. However, it is easy to see why this kind of strategy might be attractive to Russia’s Putin. Indeed, the benefits of such a deal for Putin are what may lead Trump to invest time and energy on this nuclear agenda. Putin remains an indicted war criminal (Russia has stolen and re-educated Ukrainian children throughout the war), and he might seek to repair his global reputation and regain his position on the world stage. If the war in Ukraine ends or achieves a cease-fire—another goal Trump has promised but has yet to fulfill—the next step would be for Putin to ensure that Trump lifts US sanctions against Russia. A new nuclear arms control agreement might fit very well into Putin’s public relations campaign and facilitate Trump’s efforts to build political support to undo US pressure on Russia. This will also put the Republicans’ puzzling but sustained admiration for Russia under Putin to the test.

Last, Trump might find this approach to the deal attractive because it would put the Democratic caucus in the Senate in a tight spot. Democrats have traditionally supported negotiated nuclear arms control with Russia to control arms racing and nuclear dangers. Asking them to support a deal, even with Putin—and commit to even larger nuclear budgets to pay for it—is all but certain to divide Senate Democrats. To gain Senate approval, a treaty would require 67 votes. It is not hard to see at least two dozen Democrats or so supporting a deal to cap—even at such a large increase of forces—nuclear weapons and fund what will be billed as a necessary expansion of the US deterrent forces.

Bad deal vs. no deal. These bottlenecks beg the central question of whether a US-Russian agreement along these lines is in the United States’s interest. Put in terms familiar to conservatives: Is a bad agreement worse than no agreement at all?

Answering this requires deciding whether the United States needs to expand its nuclear force to deter Russia and China at the same time. But that is hotly debated right now. Needed or not, the United States is taking steps now that will enable it to expand its forces in the future year. The Biden administration considered steps to pursue this expansion, and the Trump team is likely to follow suit, including by putting more warheads on existing US land-based missiles and bombers.

By any historical standard, an agreement that is not effectively verified and does not substantially limit the growth of US, Russian (or Chinese) nuclear forces has marginal value for the United States and its allies. One that enables a doubling of strategic forces is better described as performative arms control. A hollow agreement might feel good, but it would likely do little to reduce nuclear risks or address growing international pressure to take serious steps toward disarmament.

Of course, these voices are likely to have little, if any, influence on the Trump administration, which now feels empowered and eager to destroy past norms and agreements. And such a nuclear deal might even bolster Trump’s self-promoted case that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, another one of Trump’s long-held wishes. But even if negotiated and approved, such a treaty would not bring stability or peace—and it would have to be heavily scrutinized. Yet without an agreement, the three largest nuclear powers will likely keep building up their arsenals. Weighing the benefits of a performative agreement versus no agreement at all is a choice the United States can and should seek to avoid.

The ultimate negotiator. Trump has an opportunity to negotiate a deal that effectively reduces nuclear risks and improves US security.

There remains hope that the president might put in the hard work required to achieve a treaty that caps US and Russian strategic weapons at current or lower levels—a level still far above what China possesses. If Washington and Moscow lock in current levels, it could take China as long as 20 years for them to catch up. This means Russia and the United States together would have almost 10,000 total weapons and China would have no more than 1500 for at least the next decade. And if China’s arsenal ever gets to a size that undermines the United States’s deterrent, whoever is president at the time would always have the possibility of withdrawing from a treaty that no longer serves US interests. Given how quickly the international security environment is changing, the new agreement could have an initial period of five years, with the option to extend for additional five-year periods, as needed. In the intervening years, circumstances and leaders will change. Creating some nuclear stability and predictability for a decade or more is a worthy achievement and should be seriously considered.

A new agreement at current or lower levels should and could include robust on-site verification that uses the lessons learned from over 50 years of inspections, as well as rely on advanced satellite and other sensor technology. All can be brought to bear in a way that protects secrets but provides the necessary transparency to make a deal worth having.

Certainly, a bad nuclear deal with Russia can, in many ways, be worse than no deal at all. But in this case, President Trump has a chance to prove his negotiating prowess and produce a deal that benefits US security now and into the future without compromising the ability of the United States to deter both Russia and China, at the same time. If President Trump seizes that chance, he will deserve accolades.

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(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)

There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
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Nuclear War
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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’s NUCLEAR WORLD’s NEWS, Friday, (01/31/2025)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Investigation into the fatal plane-helicopter crash. And, future of nuclear testing | KGOU

KGOU

All Things Considered. Next Up: 7:00 PM National Native News. 0:00. 0:00 … nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.

Investigation into the fatal plane-helicopter crash. And, future of nuclear testing – KIOS

KIOS

All Things Considered. Next Up: 5:30 PM Marketplace. 0:00. 0:00. All Things … nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary …

Nuclear Research Associate Cautions Against Sole Presidential Authority – The Hoya

The Hoya

… nuclear weapons with the capability to wipe out cities. At the event, which All Things Nukes, a graduate student organization that examines nuclear ..

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Nuclear revival puts uranium back in the critical spotlight | Reuters

Reuters

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Is uranium a critical mineral? Not according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which dropped it from its critical …

Column: Nuclear revival puts uranium back in the critical spotlight – MINING.COM

Mining.com

The resurgence of nuclear power means the world is going to need a lot more uranium and supply is already struggling to match demand.

Artificial intelligence is bringing nuclear power back from the dead — maybe even in California

Jefferson Public Radio

Energy demands from big tech, including for AI, has elected officials giving an old power source a second look.

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

EMERGENCY TEXT REGARDING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT PUTS NORTH KEY LARGO …

Keys Weekly

“Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant site area emergency. Everyone in Ocean Reef, Key Largo Anglers Club and Card Sound Road should monitor local media ..

Paul Starick: Australia needs a Trump-style energy emergency | The Advertiser

The Advertiser

Analysis: Australia needs to follow Donald Trump’s lead and declare a national energy emergency on high power bills | Paul Starick … Nuclear energy is …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Doomsday Clock inches closer to midnight as global threats continue – Houston Chronicle

Houston Chronicle

It later included dangers posed by climate change and other existential threats. “The purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to start a global conversation …

‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight amid threats of climate change, nuclear war …

Marietta Times

‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight amid threats of climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, AI. International News. Jan 30, 2025. Former …