"the resurgence of threat may be the catalyst for renewed recognition and resistance.. There is hope, perhaps, that a new anti-nuclear movement can borrow from climate action and nonviolent social justice movements that are gaining traction with younger activists.” Call me naive, but one must hope.

"Mounting risks from other states" have absolutely nothing to do with US confidence in its nuclear stockpile. Explosive testing remains unncessary. Comments from this administration suggest they view tests as nothing more than barbaric chest thumping (that, ironically, would be to US detriment)

Et tu, ProPublica?!

I'm extremely pleased to see that Sen. Warren and Rep. Garamendi have issued a letter to the DOE questioning the current plan for plutonium pit production. The letter draws on my @ucs.org report from earlier this year that proposes several alternatives that could reduce or eliminate the demand.

Our talented Scoville fellow, Sean Manning is following the money behind US defense. He writes "It’s up to all Americans interested in a more peaceful world to question why we have a system of increasing investments and decreasing returns.." Please check out his first blog for @ucs.org:

“Nuclear arms offend our shared humanity and also betray the dignity of creation, whose harmony we are called to safeguard.” - Pope Leo XIV

If you’d like coverage of the arms industry and endless war to not be funded by Boeing, that’s the newsroom we’re building at @inkstickmedia.com. We’re in Newsmatch season for nonprofit outlets and any donation you make to us is doubled: inkstick.substack.com/p/our-journa...

This one hits close to home. This apparently took place in the building where I spent almost all of my undergrad. Its hard to imagine this in hallways one knows so well, but given the number of mass shootings in the US, how long until that's true for nearly everyone?

"The defense industry has consolidated from 51 major players in the early 1990s to five today: Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Boeing" and they are not delivering. The same big 5 have made big promises for nuclear modernization (ahem, Sentinel...)

It’s just unreal that they had to ask the US to kindly not blow up the Nobel Peace Prize winner as she fled Venezuela. Also, her flight embodies my worst anxiety dreams in which I’m a hemisphere away from a really important engagement and running hopelessly late. The whole thing is beyond belief

My colleague, @rrucs.bsky.social untangles China’s recent paper on nuclear posture and arms control. Many interpret China’s buildup as a threatening change in tactic but, in fact, this report may be more of a mirror held to face of the US rather than a departure from previous thinking.

Lavrov has made clear: "this proposal is our unilateral gesture of goodwill. For the U.S. to support our approach, no negotiations or consultations are necessary…. All that’s required is for Washington to simply state that it won’t increase the quantitative levels set by [New START] for one year”

Most people assume all US nuclear tests were conducted either in the Pacific or in Nevada but many were done elsewhere, including New Mexico. Today is the anniversary of Project Gnome.

W87-1 certification is moving forward at LLNL, including assessment of new plutonium pit samples. Using the National Ignition Facility, Pu can be studied under 14 MeV neutron flux to assess any differences in survivability between new and aged material.

The is an amazing critique of JP Morgan's new building in NYC. Given that the twin towers were targeted on 9/11 in part because they symbolized American economic power, capitalist greed, and globalization, this building seems a fitting portrait for where we are in 2025.

Every state impacted by nuclear weapons tests: "please do not restart nuclear weapons tests" www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_n...

Signs of deep institutional culture issues in the US nuclear weapons complex: 1) Allegations of retaliation for reporting on safety and quality control issues for key components at SNL 2) Ongoing time-card fraud issue at Pantex, leading to an increase in weapons quality incident reports Links below

Nevermind the very recent development of million dollar condos just nextdoor to this site (which is smack in the middle of the SF bay area).

I recently spoke with Jim Carrier, at the Progressive, about the admin’s misguided statements about returning to nuclear testing. This story covers it well:

What advocates for testing don't realize is that US scientific achievements (e.g. fusion at NIF) are a surrogate demonstration of the credibiliity of the nuclear stockpile and allow better understanding of the underlying physics than a mushroom cloud.

Posting for no apparent reason whatsoever.....

A new film was just released for Veteran's Day about the 1958 voyage of the Golden Rule to protest nuclear tests in the Pacific. I was recently fortunate to sail aboard the boat and wrote about that experience. You can watch the film and check out the blog here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhrS...

This entire saga over Trump's suggestion to test only demonstrates how dangerously uninformed he is about his own nuclear arsenal. That, in and of itself, is a national security threat that needs acknowledging.

From my colleague, @nucsafetyucs.bsky.social at @ucs.org, "without appropriate constraints, large-scale production and use of HALEU may greatly increase the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism" and it seems this was recognized decades ago:

This is a really tragic loss.

Today seems like a good time to remember Rosalind Franklin, without whom, James Watson may have never have gained the notoriety his obituaries proclaim. Bonus: she didn't use genetics as a guise to promote the kind of racist and sexist ideas Watson did.

My brilliant @ucs.org colleague Chanese Forté interviews two other brilliant folks, Dr. Jan Beyea, and @nucsafetyucs.bsky.social, on the Trump administration's moves to undermine sensible, science-based limits on radiation exposure. Team Trump seems to wants to promote nuclear power at any cost.

Any “scientifically useful” test would take years, according to Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program. “Anything shorter than that would be nothing more than dangerous political showmanship and would not allow collection of useful data.”

Thanks to UPI for reaching out to me for this story on Trump's nuclear testing rhetoric. Its still not clear the admin understands how high the stake are. The US has everything to lose and virtually nothing to gain by returning to explosive nuclear testing.

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact, according to this new study. Seems important! www.nature.com/articles/s42...

FWIW, VADM Correll (nominee to lead USSTRATCOM) a few days ago to SASC: "Neither China or Russia has conducted a nuclear explosive test, so I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out. To my knowledge, the last explosive nuclear testing was by North Korea, or DPRK, and that was in 2017"

“They were careless people,” Fitzgerald wrote, “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” The symbolism is too perfect.

Excellent piece on Trump's call to resume nuclear testing in The Independent (and not just because is cites me & my @ucs.org colleague @dkspaulding.bsky.social). BLUF for Trump, as duly noted by our @nuclearban.bsky.social colleague: Melissa Park: "This is no way to win the Nobel Peace Prize."

In this piece, my colleague @gkucs.bsky.social discusses the implications and potential Chinese response to Trump's recent suggestion that the US will resume nuclear testing. China has much more to gain from testing than the US and its not clear POTUS knows this. @ucs.org #Nukesky

Murmurs from this admin about nuclear testing are not new, which is why earlier this year, we published this piece in the @thebulletin.org on why a rapid test as a show of force is a BAD, BAD idea.

Earlier this year, Nevada passed a (bipartisan!) resolution, AJR 13, opposing the resumption of nuclear testing. Nuclear testing comes with potential harms to people and the environment and NV doesn't want it. Here's what I told the state legislature about why any return to testing is a bad idea:

The president has ordered the “Department of War” to immediately resume nuclear testing. Here’s a thread on what you need to know (1/n)

The Pentagon objects to the depiction of missile defense in House of Dynamite but, according to my colleague, @lauraegrego.bsky.social, "the GMD system has not been shown to work under realistic conditions...[its] test program is like T-ball practice when the real world is major league baseball."

Funny how its so easy to say this when you're a 70 year old white male worth more than $100 billion dollars.

This piece in the @nytimes.com highlights many of the risks and challenges facing plutonium pit production that we analyzed in our recent @ucs.org report: ✨ www.ucs.org/resources/pl... The current plan is unnecessary, expensive, and risky and there are many alternatives that could increase safety

Please check out this great piece - the first by our talented Scoville Fellow, Sean Manning - on the new Netflix film "House of Dynamite" in which he shows that ".. the quest for absolute security through missile defense exacerbates the very cycle of insecurity it aims to end." Nor does it work.

"We silence so much when we tear down places that are there to teach us, inspire us, humble us. Ghosts and memories drift away in the dust, the wreckage, and we are all poorer as a result."

Some doctoral programmes in the US are admitting no students at all amid uncertainty about federal science funding go.nature.com/4o63boK

"US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium"

"Viewpoint diversity" about whether human activity is warming the planet, or whether vaccines work, is like "viewpoint diversity" about whether the sky is blue or whether the Earth is round. It falls outside the range of good faith scientific and academic discourse. #ScienceUnderSiege

No Kings

Shocking..

I spoke with USA Today for this story on impending furloughs. Nuclear weapons programs transcend administrations but lost workers may never return. The best and brightest will take opportunities in industry rather than leaving their careers at the whim of this admin’s political charades.

DOE is 'consolidating' its expert advisory committees in a move that will undoubtedly harm foresight and US competitiveness in physics and energy research. These committees identify what is (and will be) cutting edge and are led by experts in their respective fields. This admin prefers to fly blind.