The United States intervened to block South Korea from developing nuclear weapons in the 1970s, according to newly declassified Korean government documents.
South Korea was seeking to acquire nuclear reactors from Canada and nuclear reprocessing technology from France in support of a weapons program, but U.S. pressure led to cancellation of the latter purchase.
See “Park Sought to Develop Nuclear Weapons,” Korea Times, January 15.
Meanwhile, the island nation of Barbados this week ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban. A total of 142 countries have now ratified the treaty, which prohibits all nuclear explosions.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]