Rosatom has a “new blog”:http://blogstroyka.rosatom.ru whose English title, according to “this article,”:http://www.rosatom.ru/en/news/13055_08.12.2008 is _NPP Construction Projects_.
As far as I can tell, the blog itself is only in Russian, so Anya will have to tell us what it says.
Check out “this Beeb story”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/8/newsid_3283000/3283817.stm from back in the day when the INF was signed as well as this “ACA Factsheet”:http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty and “the Inventory”:http://cns.miis.edu/inventory/pdfs/inf.pdf on the INF.
Here is a neat video on INF verification:
Also, check out Margaret Thatcher’s comments on a “nuclear-free Europe”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQMo_kRu_mc. And finally, here is a neat video on “the Pershings”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJt7KCB3Jro and a Russian video on “the Spider ^ru^”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM2v2JYjlco in all of their pre-INF glory.
From the first glimpses of it, the “Russian-Indian nuclear agreement”:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aiepQLfHzBw4&refer=india is just for construction of additional units at Kudankulam. “Four of them”:http://www.rosatom.com/en/news/13021_05.12.2008. As expected. As I noted before, they’ve been “readying the construction site”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1694/on-your-mark-get-set for quite some time. Meh.
What I am curious about is whether they’ve discussed “India’s participation in the Angarsk IUEC”:http://www.rosatom.com/en/news/6781_31.10.2007 again.
Also, “press reports aside”:http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/05/stories/2008120556341500.htm, Medvedev’s “comment on Russian plans to lease a nuclear-powered sub to the Indians”:http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2008/12/04/0928_type82916_210105.shtml is crafty. (I like this part in particular: _”These projects are costly, because they require lots of money.”_ Check out the video.) He doesn’t even answer whether the “ill-fated Nerpa”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1765/was-it-the-ins-chakra is indeed the INS Chakra (“is it?”:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/As_Medvedev_visits_India_confusion_on_nuclear_submarine_deal/articleshow/3791903.cms).
Well, sorta.
Today, I went to an “AEI event”:http://aei.org/events/eventID.1850,filter.all,type.past/event_detail.asp where Bolton and Gary Milhollin were speaking about Iran’s nuclear program. Long story short, it looks like Bolton has essentially thrown in the towel on Iran. He thinks Tehran will inevitably acquire nuclear weapons and that the only possible way to stop this is by attacking its nuclear facilities – an action that, in Bolton’s opinion, neither the Bush nor Obama administrations will take. Therefore, he argues, the United States and its allies need to think about ways to deter and contain Tehran, though he is not sanguine about that course of action.
Now, I said “sorta” at the beginning because Bolton still thinks that the United States _should_ have been more hardline on Tehran in the past and, as I noted above, that military force is a good idea.
Happy Tuesday.
Ok, first off, looking at today’s Global Security Newswire story titled “Ukraine Could Join Russian ‘Fuel Bank’ Project”:http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20081202_4911.php, I can’t help but wonder whether the folks at GSN are confusing the fuel bank at Angarsk with the IUEC enrichment venture. ‘Cause Ukraine is definitely buying 10 percent of the latter. (And no, the “original RIA Novosti”:http://en.rian.ru/world/20081201/118627657.html story does not even mention the fuel bank.)
Second, I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
So, after months and months of speculation of where we were in the process, Ukraine’s parliament approved a “draft agreement” on Ukraine’s participation in the Angarsk IUEC.
This is not news. The Ukrainians haven’t joined. Yet.
They signed an MoU with the Russians on IUEC participation in June 2007. And this is just another seemingly small step in the horrendously drawn-out process of joining the IUEC.
I know that few care about the IUEC. And I am not being nitpicky. I’m just surprised that the amazing folks at _National Journal_ are this confused.