Nuclear Research Highlighted by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
By Hans M. Kristensen
The Nuclear Notebooks Robert Norris and I publish in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are now the most frequently read articles in the magazine, according to their latest announcement.
The highlight of the announcement is Senator John Kerry’s use of our estimate of Russian nonstrategic nuclear weapons during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the New START treaty on December 19, 2010.
The Bulletin announcement states that all current and previous Nuclear Notebooks are now freely available online. Issues back to 1999 are here. You’ll have to scroll down to the end of each table of content to find the Notebook in each issue. Earlier versions are available on Google Books.
In the past, Norris and I have urged the publisher of the Notebooks to make them freely available to the public to ensure that this important resource on the status of the world’s nuclear arsenals is available for the debate about the future of nuclear weapons.
The Notebooks are very popular. As of January 4, 2011, our Notebook on Chinese nuclear forces from November 2010 was listed as the most read article on the Bulletin’s web site, and 11 of the 50 most read articles were Notebooks.
Good estimates on nuclear arsenals don’t come easy or cheep but require time-consuming and persistent research. We’re grateful for the generous support we have received to do this work over the years from foundations including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation, and the Ploughshares Fund.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.