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The iconic Doomsday Clock remains poised at five minutes until midnight, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced today (Jan. 14). The clock is no doomsday device — rather, it's a visual metaphor for the danger of a "civilization-threatening technological catastrophe." Every year, the board analyzes international threats, particularly nuclear arsenals and climate change, and decides where the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock should rest. The closer it is to midnight, the closer the world is to doom. "As always, new technologies hold the promise of doing great good, supplying new sources of clean...

If ever there was a time when "see, I told you so" was warranted, it is now as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports this week that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon. That so many in the State Department over several administrations could deceive themselves into believing claims by the Iranians that their intentions are nothing but peaceful and their sole objective is to develop more sources of electricity for their country reminds me of the Munich Agreement of 1938. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler, thought they had an agreement concerning Czechoslovakia,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.N. investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions that the Syrian government worked with A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to acquire technology that could make nuclear arms. The buildings in northwest Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Moammar Gadhafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan's guidance, officials told The Associated Press. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency also has obtained correspondence between Khan and a Syrian government official, Muhidin Issa, who proposed scientific cooperation and a visit to Khan's...

"The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns with President Barack Obama's goal...

Military planes loaded with nuclear weapons were flying around the US, could be getting ready to fly out to Iran.

CHICAGO (CBS 2) – The threats came in the mail and to date, there have been 25 letters that warn of nuclear bombs destroying America. People who got them called the FBI and CBS 2′s Kristyn Hartman learned, the Bureau’s Chicago office is leading the investigation. FBI Special Agent Andre Zavala said, “Yes, they alarmed a lot of people.” Attorney Tracy Rizzo was alarmed. A number of days ago, an envelope, with a Chicago postmark and a hand-written address to her private investigations firm, came in the mail. The letter inside said, “The Al-Qaeda organization has planted 160 nuclear bombs...

Instead of pressuring reluctant Republican senators for rapid ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, the Obama administration should just drop it, says Richard Perle, a key architect of President Ronald Reagan’s strategy to end the Cold War. “It’s a seriously flawed treaty,” Perle, now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says during an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. “It’s certainly not the kind of treaty Ronald Reagan fought for and accomplished.” The pact is very weak on verification, he says. “For example, our right to inspections is limited to sites the Russians declare . . ....

KIM TAE YON made the statement just now in S. Korean Parliament (budget committee) that this is due to the just released information that North Korea has been building a light water nuclear reactor at amazing speed, details just released to the world and satellite photos also revealed.Minister of Defense of South Korea Kim stated that this is to put a halt to North Korean nuclear weapons ambition, and is now being considered, which will go back on South Korea's committment in 1991 under President Roh Tae Woo to never manufacturer, house or use nuclear weapons in South Korea.

North Koreans unveil vast plant for nuclear use New challenge for Obama when his disarmament push is in peril at home

Closing the Gulf oil well leak with a nuke sounds like a bad action cartoon. The only problem is that it has been tried successfully before by the Soviets. And it worked Mother Jones reports as follows on the latest buzz from that 24/7 town meeting known as the internet. Let’s start with the Russians. According to Vladimir Lagovsky of Komsomolskaya Pravda (once a Soviet communist paper), “In the USSR, a few such leaks were plugged with the help of the peaceful atom.” Five leaks, all underground, were plugged thusly, the paper says—starting with a 1966 natural gas fissure in...

Forget Iran, the Obama administration appears to be more worried about Israel’s nukes. It appears the next phase in the standoff over Iran’s apocalypse-inducing nuclear weapons program is beginning to come into focus. In the months ahead, don’t be surprised if the efforts of the Obama administration to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions become predicated on the nuclear disarmament of the Jewish state. Why is this likely? Simple: Such a mandate is the inevitable outgrowth of the foolish yet increasingly pervasive tendency to consider as equals the nuclear ambitions of Israel and Iran. This false moral equivalence between the nuclear programs...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of arms experts critical of the Obama administration claimed Wednesday that Russia bested the United States in a new treaty designed to reduce the two countries' arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month signed the historic "New START" treaty, the first major nuclear weapons reduction accord in nearly two decades. The agreement aims to reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads in each arsenal to 1,500 over seven years, about a third less than the 2,200 currently permitted. Obama and his advisers consider the treaty a major...

Even as momentum for Iran sanctions grows, containment seems only viable option,” reads a Washington Post headline from April 22. Leaving aside for the moment the dubious character of the first half of that assertion, is it really true that containment is now the “only” option? It is certainly true that nearly everyone in Washington — from administration officials to the permanent civil service to the foreign-policy establishment — believes that, and has believed it for at least a year, if not longer. The intellectual groundwork was laid long before President Obama came into office, in part as a way...

Defense: The administration proudly reveals a state secret to our enemies before a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation. It wants to lead by example on disarmament, but Iran and North Korea aren't following. Not since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy has there been such a stunning display of dangerous naivete. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disclosed U.S. nuclear secrets to the U.N. conference while proudly proclaiming it showed America is sending "a clear, unmistakable signal" that this nation is committed to nuclear disarmament. Kellogg-Briand laid the groundwork for Munich in...

The Obama administration is likely to reveal a closely guarded secret -- the size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile -- during a critical meeting starting Monday at which Washington will try to strengthen the global treaty that curbs the spread of nuclear weapons, several officials said. The numbers could be released as soon as Monday, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to address the NPT Review Conference in New York, officials said. She will speak after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is likely to repeat his demands for more global controls over the stockpiles of the nuclear nations.

Negotiations grind on toward a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran's nuclear weapons program, even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York to address the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference. Sanctions advocates acknowledge that the Security Council's ultimate product will do no more than marginally impede Iran's progress. In Congress, sanctions legislation also creaks along, but that too is simply going through the motions. Russia and China have already rejected key proposals to restrict Iran's access to international financial markets and choke off its importation of refined petroleum products, which domestically are in short supply. Any new U.S....

WASHINGTON – The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and "several thousand" more retired warheads awaiting the junkpile, the Pentagon said Monday in an unprecedented accounting of a secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly. The Obama administration disclosed the size of its atomic stockpile going back to 1962 as part of a campaign to get other nuclear nations to be more forthcoming, and to improve its bargaining position against the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

The United States today for the first time since 1962 disclosed the size of its nuclear arsenal in what officials described as an as an unprecedented unveiling of a state secret and an attempt to encourage other countries to be open about their nuclear capabilities. The Pentagon announced the U.S. currently has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile – an 84 percent reduction from a peak of 31,255 warheads in 1967. "For those who doubt that the United States will do its part on disarmament, this is our record, these are our commitments, and they send a clear, unmistakable signal,"...

US President Barack Obama is expected to reveal details on the US nuclear stockpile during next week's UN nuclear disarmament summit at New York, Israel Radio reported Saturday. Experts estimated the US nuclear arsenal at 9,000 nuclear warheads, with 5000 active and the rest slated for deactivation.

It was one of the most significant developments in the Obama presidency. We refer to the leak last week of an explosive top secret memo sent in January by the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to President Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, deploring the lack of planning concerning Iranian nuclear aspirations should the administration's much ballyhooed outreach approach fail. In itself, the memo's conclusion is nothing less than stunning - a senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, characterized the document as "a wake-up call." Yet the very fact that this highly classified analysis was leaked...