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...Agni-5, launched Thursday morning from a road-mobile launcher based on Abdul Kalam Island in India's eastern state of Odisha, Indian defense ministry officials said. The missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead, flew about 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) in 19 minutes... "All objectives of the mission have been successfully met," defense ministry officials said. "This successful test of Agni-5 reaffirms the country's indigenous missile capabilities and further strengthens our credible deterrence."

01/18/2018 NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy successfully performed their initial tests on a miniature nuclear power system, and will try a more developed test in March. Reuters reports: Months-long testing began in November at the energy department’s Nevada National Security Site, with an eye toward providing energy for future astronaut and robotic missions in space and on the surface of Mars, the moon or other solar system destinations. You may remember that human astronauts walked on the moon only a handful of times back in the 1960s and 1970s, and never for longer than three consecutive days. Longer...

Building nuclear weapons and warning systems that can be relied upon is harder than it was during the Cold War, thanks to the growing number of digital connections between various parts of the nuclear enterprise. Those links are intended to improve everything from commanders’ response times to the accuracy of missile defenses, but they also provide more avenues of attack and make it harder to know your exact level of readiness, according to new reports from U.S. Air Force advisors and a London think tank.

At the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, work is almost finished on a huge new solar plant that's set to provide one megawatt of renewable power for the local electricity grid. The new plant sits just a hundred metres (328 feet) from the Object Shelter, nicknamed the "sarcophagus", a sealed metal dome designed to prevent further radiation leakage from the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The blast that occurred on 26 April 1986 remains one of two most disastrous nuclear accidents in history alongside Fukushima, but the installation of these solar panels offers hope that...

US President Donald Trump will continue to suspend key sanctions on Iran, and so avoiding jeopardising the 2015 nuclear agreement, US officials say. But Mr Trump is expected to set a deadline for Congress and European allies to improve the deal or the US will abandon it, the officials say. He is also likely to impose a new set of sanctions targeting Iranian firms and individuals, a top aide has said. Mr Trump has strongly criticised the deal, which helped end a long crisis. European powers say that the accord is vital for international security. The agreement between six global...

California’s last nuclear power plant — Diablo Canyon, whose contentious birth helped shape the modern environmental movement — will close in 2025, state utility regulators decided Thursday. The unanimous vote by the California Public Utilities Commission will likely bring an end to nuclear energy’s long history in the state, even as California fights to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that come from conventional power plants. State law forbids building more nuclear plants in California until the federal government creates a long-term solution for dealing with their waste, a goal that remains elusive despite decades of effort. “With this decision, we...

Brookfield Business Partners, together with institutional partners - collectively known as Brookfield - has agreed to acquire 100% of Westinghouse Electric Company from Toshiba Corporation for total of about $4.6 billion, the companies announced today.

Sixty years ago, in 1951, Ray Maurer and Anthony Rizzo produced a film for the federal government's Civil Defense agency in response to Soviet nuclear tests. Featuring an animated turtle named Bert and real-life schoolchildren from New York, the film, Duck and Cover, IT RETURNS

There were several reactions to President Donald Trump’s recent “nuclear button” tweet to North Korea, including one from one of his favorite fast-food spots. --snip-- KFC jokingly delivered a similar message to McDonald’s. The chain wrote, “McDonald’s leader Ronald just stated he has a ‘burger on his desk at all times.' Will someone from his big shoed, red nosed regime inform him that I too have a burger on my desk, but mine is a box meal which is bigger and more powerful than his, and mine has gravy! #nuclearbutton.” The tweet quickly went viral, garnering more than 150,000 retweets...

South Korea's defense authorities said Thursday there has been no indication of an imminent missile test by North Korea, responding to U.S. news reports that the secretive nation appears to be preparing to fire another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). "There is no activity that would lead to an assessment that a missile provocation by North Korea is imminent," Army Col. Roh Jae-cheon, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press briefing. He pointed out, however, that it's possible for the North to press ahead with a missile provocation anytime, adding South Korea and the United States are...

HONG KONG — President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, traded threats this week about the size, location and potency of their “nuclear buttons.” The image of a leader with a finger on a button — a trigger capable of launching a world-ending strike — has for decades symbolized the speed with which a nuclear weapon could be launched, and the unchecked power of the person doing the pushing. There is only one problem: There is no button.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper gave sobering assessment of North Korea's efforts to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities during an interview with CNN on Tuesday. "That train left station a long time ago," Clapper said of North Korea's willingness to halt its weapons program. "The North Koreans are not going to denuclearize." Clapper's comments stood in contrast to a fiery warning from the US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who said on Tuesday that the US would not take talks between South Korea and North Korea seriously after South Korea proposed holding high-level talks between...

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, moved Monday to ease his country’s isolation by offering to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, even as he claimed to have accomplished the ability to launch a nuclear missile at the mainland United States. Mixing the nuclear threat with an overture for easing tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula, Mr. Kim proposed immediate dialogue with South Korea to discuss the North’s participation in the Olympics. If such talks were held, they would mark the first time the two Koreas have had an official dialogue since the South’s new...

With tensions continuing to build between the United States and North Korea, there’s growing talk by politicians and TV pundits that we are on the brink of war. In truth, we shouldn’t be anywhere close. This increasingly hot war of words — including loose talk about the probability of war — does nothing to bring us closer to where we need to be on North Korea, especially when military options short of war remain on the table. In fact, with millions of lives at stake, waging a war of words is a distraction from the serious task at hand. Any...

With most of the Western hemisphere on holiday, another crisis appears to be developing on the India–Pakistan border known as the Line of Control (LoC). The incident started on Saturday, where at least four Indian soldiers were killed, in an exchange of fire with the Pakistani Army on the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir, ABC News reported. The two sides reportedly exchanged heavy fire in the Keri sector of the Rajouri district, about 222 km southwest of Srinagar city, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The skirmish started when Pakistani troops used automatic weapons,...

Former President Barack Obama’s administration derailed efforts by the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration to prosecute a Hezbollah crime syndicate over fears it would disrupt efforts to sign a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Politico reports. The Obama administration’s efforts included using elements of executive power like the Department of Justice and Department of State to quash efforts by law enforcement to drastically reign in Hezbollah operations. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down,” an analyst on the law enforcement effort told...

Pentagon to boost U.S. weapons under nuclear posture review Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and is expected to deploy a total force of 8,000 warheads by 2026 along with modernizing deep underground bunkers, according to Pentagon officials. The 8,000 warheads will include both large strategic warheads and thousands of new low-yield and very low-yield warheads to circumvent arms treaty limits and support Moscow's new doctrine of using nuclear arms early in any conflict. In addition to expanding its warheads, Russia also is fortifying underground facilities for command and control during a nuclear conflict. One official said the...

A laser-driven technique for creating fusion that dispenses with the need for radioactive fuel elements and leaves no toxic radioactive waste is now within reach, say researchers. Dramatic advances in powerful, high-intensity lasers are making it viable for scientists to pursue what was once thought impossible: creating fusion energy based on hydrogen-boron reactions. And an Australian physicist is in the lead, armed with a patented design and working with international collaborators on the remaining scientific challenges. In a paper in the scientific journal Laser and Particle Beams today, lead author Heinrich Hora from the University of New South Wales in...

North Korea launched its most capable missile on Tuesday, displaying a range that could most likely reach the US mainland — but the country has already hinted at a more dangerous test. In its state media, North Korea routinely swears to conduct missile tests and complete a missile program that can strike the US with nuclear weapons. But after US President Donald Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea in a speech to the UN this summer, Pyongyang laid out another goal. North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said in September that the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, could...

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said today that the diplomatic options are running out after North Korea fired a new kind of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The rogue dictator Kim Jong Un boasted that the Hwasong-15 can be armed with a nuclear warhead and could strike the U.S. mainland. The ICBM was fired at 2:48 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the regime said, traveling 596 miles and demonstrating the potential to reach a range of 8,100 miles. Bolton said this test-launch is "significant" because, if the early estimates are confirmed, it leaves no doubt that Pyongyang is "getting very close"...