Who Holds The World's Nuclear Warheads?

Who Holds The World's Nuclear Warheads? Get The Full List By Country -- The Guardian

The cold war is long over, but there are still over 7,000 nuclear warheads deployed globally. How is the world's nuclear arsenal distributed?

The news that North Korea has successfully launched a satellite heightened fears that the same know-how could be used to launch ballistic missiles. Which countries already have the capability to launch a nuclear missile, and how many warheads do they have?

Data on the number of nuclear weapons is notoriously difficult to find - not least because commitments on disarmament and dismantlement are linked to the number of weapons each state has claimed to have.

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My Comment: A lot of good data here.

Ever Heard The Sound Of A Nuclear Bomb Going Off?

The sound of the largest man-made explosion: A cinematographer films an atomic mushroom cloud on July 19, 1957 in Yucca Flat, Colorado

Ever Heard The Sound Of A Nuclear Bomb Going Off? Historian Unveils One Of The Few Surviving Audio Recordings Of Blast From 1950's Nevada Tests -- Daily Mail

They are surely the most horrifying offshoot of modern technology - nuclear warheads which can smite hundreds of thousands of people dead within seconds, and leave lasting scars on a landscape for generations.

And while most of us will have seen archive footage of nuclear explosions before, one thing we are unlikely to have heard is their sound.

For, according to one expert, most films we see of a nuclear blast use stock 'explosion' sound effects for the bang - and audio footage is few and far between.

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My Comment: It sounds like hell.

Global Nuclear Stockpile (A History)

If Terrorists Explode A Nuclear Bomb, Can The Origin Of The Bomb Makers Be Found?

Photo: The first atomic bomb exploded at a test site in July 1945

Nuclear Debris Could Reveal Clues Of Bomb's Origin -- BBC

Forensic analysis of the debris left after a nuclear explosion could yield crucial evidence about the composition and the origin of the bomb, say scientists.

A US team examined Trinitite, the glassy ground debris from the first-ever nuclear test that the US Army conducted in 1945 in New Mexico.

They used advanced analytical techniques to reveal details about the materials used to construct the bomb.

The study appears in the journal PNAS.

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My Comment: What happens if such a terrible event occurs, and it is determined that the bomb came from Russia?, Pakistan?, North Korea?, the U.S.? I can only see a terrible situation getting worse .... much worse.

Meet The Men Whose Job Was To Photograph Nuclear Explosions

ZERO HOUR Milliseconds after the image at left, the vehicles beneath the fireball were obliterated. "How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb"

The Bomb Chroniclers -- New York Times

They risked their lives to capture on film hundreds of blinding flashes, rising fireballs and mushroom clouds.

The blast from one detonation hurled a man and his camera into a ditch. When he got up, a second wave knocked him down again.

Then there was radiation.

While many of the scientists who made atom bombs during the cold war became famous, the men who filmed what happened when those bombs were detonated made up a secret corps.

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My Comment: I always wondered about the men who photographed nuclear explosions .... the risks and dangers that they took each time that they were at an above nuclear test. Well .... now I know.

As to how many photographers are left ....

..... As for the atomic cameramen, there aren’t that many left. “Quite a few have died from cancer,” George Yoshitake, 82, one of the survivors, said of his peers in an interview. “No doubt it was related to the testing.”

An Animation On The History Of World Nuclear Tests

WNU Editor: An interesting animation on the history of nuclear weapon tests.

Hat Tip: Lawyers, Guns, And Money

Eight Nations Hold 7,540 Deployed Nukes

Russian Topol-M intercontinental ballistics missile

Eight Nations Hold 7,540 Deployed Nukes, Report Finds -- Global Security Newswire

Eight nations at the beginning of 2010 held an estimated 7,540 operational nuclear weapons, a figure that is down somewhat from last year due largely to the withdrawal by Russia and the United States of fielded warheads, according to a yearly report released yesterday by a Sweden-based think tank (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2009).

The five official nuclear powers -- China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- together with India, Pakistan and Israel have an estimated 22,500 nuclear weapons when counting armaments that are in storage, set for disassembly or not yet ready for deployment, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute stated in its annual yearbook.

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My Comment: An excellent summary of what is "out there" when it comes to deployed nuclear weapons .... let us hope that their numbers are accurate, and that there are no loose nukes floating around.

Securing The World's Nuclear Stockpiles

Image from Atomic Archive

Reports Shine Light On Nuclear Weapons Vigilance -- Washington Post

While public attention is focused on a new arms-control treaty between Russia and the United States, the slow, dull work of keeping nuclear warheads and weapons-grade uranium and plutonium protected from terrorists goes on almost unnoticed.

But two new reports have shed light on the subject. A fascinating study on China's system of securing its nuclear weapons was published last week. Two days earlier, an update on the multiyear U.S. effort to secure Russian nuclear sites, and those of other countries, was presented to the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water, which has jurisdiction over funding for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

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My Comment: It is reassuring that the large nuclear states are working to secure their nuclear stockpiles. What is not reassuring is that states like Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and God knows who else .... it is these nuclear programs that are out in the open with safeguards that one can question and doubt. Unfortunately, I do not see countries like North Korea opening up their nuclear program to outside inspectors anytime soon.

What to Do About Europe's Secret Nukes

From Time Magazine:

Is Italy capable of delivering a thermonuclear strike? Could the Belgians and the Dutch drop hydrogen bombs on enemy targets? And what about Germany — a country where fear of atomkraft is so great that the last government opposed all civilian nuclear power? Germany's air force couldn't possibly be training to deliver bombs 13 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, could it?

It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those — Britain and France — who have built their own weapons. Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands — and planes from each of those countries are capable of delivering them. The Federation of American Scientists believes that there are some 200 B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs scattered across these four countries.

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My Comment: This is just another example of Europe not wanting to pay the financial and political costs for its defense.

How Many Nuclear Weapons Are There In The World?

Image from The BBC

More Than 23,000 Nukes Found in 14 Nations, Report Says -- Global Security Newswire

There are an estimated 23,360 nuclear weapons stockpiled in 14 nations, with the great majority held by Russia and the United States, two nonproliferation experts said in a report issued this week.

There are nine nations known or widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons -- China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Another five European states -- Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the Netherlands -- also host U.S. nuclear bombs.

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My Comment: This total is 40% of what it was 25 years ago .... and probably much of it is inactive .... but it is still an incredibly high number.

Where Old Soviet Nuclear Weapons End Up Going

Nuclear missiles prepared for destruction at a base near the city of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia. Utilities have been loath to publicize the Russian bomb supply line for fear of spooking consumers. Vladimir Mashatin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Power For U.S. From Russia’s Old Nuclear Weapons -- New York Times

MOSCOW — What’s powering your home appliances?

For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.

“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Capital and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war.

But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn’t secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.

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My Comment: I guess we are also getting stuck with the nuclear waste.

Should The US Be Prepared For Nuclear War

US Must Plan for Nuke Wars -- DoD Buzz

Perhaps more than any other open-source outfit, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has put serious intellectual muscle into examining the implications of waging war in an environment where potential enemies don’t just threaten to use nuclear weapons, they actually detonate a nuclear device.

While nuclear disarmament remains a noble aspiration, the world is going in the other direction, that is, more states with more nukes, says CSBA President Andrew Krepinevich in a new report, US Nuclear Forces: Meeting the Challenge of a Proliferated World.

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My Comment: we should .... but we are not.

Why It's So Hard To Make Nuclear Weapons

The first nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Test Site New Mexico, July 16, 1945, taken from 6 miles away. As Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the demonstration, he recalled a line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds." Credit: Library of Congress

From Live Science:

It took only a matter of hours last week for the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency to shoot down a news report that its experts had drafted a secret document warning that Iran has the expertise to build a nuclear bomb.

"With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon program in Iran," the European-based agency said in statement.

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My Comment: An easy to read and comprehensive description on why it is difficult to make the bomb.

How The US Forgot How To Make Trident Missiles

From The Sunday Herald:

PLANS TO refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists forgot how to manufacture a component of the warhead, a US congressional investigation has revealed.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "lost knowledge" of how to make a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank. As a result, the warhead refurbishment programme was put back by at least a year, and racked up an extra $69 million.

According to some critics, the delay could cause major problems for the UK Trident programme, which is very closely tied to the US programme and uses much of the same technology. The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the ageing W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles in order to prolong their life, and ensure they are safe and reliable. This apparently requires that the Fogbank in the warheads is replaced.

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My Comment: This news makes it very clear to us on how old these weapon systems are.

News Updates On America's Nuclear Arsenal -- February 5, 2009

(Image from Wikipedia)

General to Nuclear Crews: Get it Right. Or Else.
-- The Danger Room

In certain corners of the military, there's some grumbling, about how impossibly hard the Air Force's nuclear handling tests have become. Major General Don Alston, the Air Force's new man at the Pentagon overseeing all things atomic, has a message for the grumblers: Suck it up.

These are weapons that can destroy cities, and turn the world's political balance on its ear. There's no room, he says, even for the small failures. "You actually have to get out of bed every day and hustle to achieve a certain level of deterrence," Alston tells Danger Room. "Any anecdotal exposure of a weakness, that may or may not be interpreted as an opening for someone who would want to press an advantage."

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More News On America's Nuclear Weapons

Report: Air Force units failed 2 more nuke surety inspections -- Stars And Stripes
Nuclear Weapon Mistakes Force Major Overhaul of Air Force Operations -- Global Security Newswire
US Air Force nuclear units flunk inspections -- Daily Times
Underreported: Nukes cost U.S. $52 billion last year -- The Daily
Obama eyes Pentagon control of federal labs -- Air Force Times
Obama Considers Placing U.S. Nuclear Complex Under Pentagon Control -- Global Security Newswire
National Labs Moving to DOD? -- Nextgov
Offutt has rivals for 2 commands -- Omaha World Herald
Obama's Showdown Over Nukes -- Time Magazine
Obama, Gates Differ on Next-Generation Warhead -- Global Security Newswire
Gary Samore Tapped for Weapons of Mass Destruction 'Czar' -- FOX News

My Comment: With the Pentagon being told to get ready for budget cuts .... you wonder if America's nuclear forces will be on the copping block.

Planning For The "Unthinkable"

Hiroshima Memorial

From The Armchair Generalist:

I'll bet that you were just wondering if your state and city emergency planners were prepared for that DHS scenario of a 10 kiloton nuclear device going off in your city. Well, wonder no more! The feds have written the manual for how to prepare for and respond to that event.

What is the "Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation"?

The White House developed this guidance specifically for application for nuclear detonations. This guidance is the first Federal guidance focusing on areas of severe damage and high radiation. It provides the basis to help state and local planners develop state and local plans by tailoring this guidance to their specific circumstances or to compare differing inputs and assumptions. It serves to facilitate coordination between state and local planners and the Federal government.

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My Comment: A great post. Makes me want to dig my own fall out shelter and stock it with food and provisions.