nuclear

April 22 (Asia Today) — Global nuclear industry leaders gathered in Busan on Tuesday, highlighting the growing role of nuclear power in meeting surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence and data centers.

The Korea Atomic Industrial Forum opened its annual conference at BEXCO, bringing together policymakers, industry leaders and researchers under the theme “Nuclear energy for the AI era.”

This year’s event is being held alongside the Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference, which returned to South Korea for the first time in 14 years, and the Busan International Nuclear Industry Exhibition. Organizers expect around 19,000 participants.

The event features representatives from 19 countries and 156 companies, making it the largest exhibition of its kind to date.

Participants emphasized that rapid growth in AI technologies is fundamentally reshaping global energy demand. Electricity consumption by data centers is projected to reach 1,300 terawatt-hours by 2035, while AI-related power demand is expected to grow at an annual rate exceeding 120% through 2028.

To meet this demand, major technology companies have significantly increased investments in nuclear energy, with total spending surpassing $30 billion over the past 18 months.

Government policy is also shifting. The United States has set a target to expand nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050 – roughly four times current levels – while about 15 new nuclear reactors are expected to come online globally in 2026.

Keynote speakers included Mesut Ozman of Fermi Nuclear, who is leading an 11-gigawatt nuclear project in Texas, and Tomas Ehler of the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, along with other senior officials and industry executives.

The conference also includes sessions focused on Southeast Asia, where countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam are exploring nuclear energy adoption.

Discussions are covering a wide range of issues, including reactor lifetime extensions, carbon neutrality, artificial intelligence, energy security, small modular reactors and radioactive waste management.

South Korean companies are also expanding their global footprint. Hyundai Engineering & Construction is participating as an engineering, procurement and construction partner in negotiations for four AP1000 reactor projects, while Doosan Enerbility is supplying key components such as reactor vessels and steam generators.

The Czech Republic is also pursuing an expanded nuclear strategy, aiming to increase the share of nuclear power in its energy mix to as much as 50% to 60% through new projects at Dukovany and Temelin.

As energy demand accelerates in the AI era, industry leaders said nuclear power is increasingly being viewed as a reliable and scalable solution to ensure energy security and meet climate goals.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260422010007146

April 22 (Asia Today) — The Czech Republic said its nuclear power project with South Korea is progressing on schedule, signaling potential expansion of cooperation that could extend to additional reactor construction and broader entry into the European market.

Petr Závodský, head of the Czech project company EDU II, said the Dukovany nuclear project has entered a key design phase just 10 months after the contract was signed with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.

“We received the first large-scale engineering package, including the conceptual design, last week,” Závodský said at a conference in Busan. “This marks a major contractual milestone, and site investigations have already been completed.”

He added that the next step is to submit licensing documents to Czech nuclear regulators within a year.

Tomas Ehler said the Czech government selected Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power based on its proven ability to complete projects on time and within budget.

“In nuclear projects, the most important factor is execution capability,” Ehler said. “The Korean proposal was evaluated as the best across all criteria.”

He emphasized that nuclear construction involves complex risks and requires close coordination between partners to identify and manage challenges early.

Officials also addressed concerns over a dispute involving France, saying the issue has effectively been resolved after being dismissed by Czech courts. They added that approval procedures with the European Commission for expanded reactor plans are ongoing and expected to be finalized by early 2027.

The Czech government reaffirmed its strategy to increase nuclear power’s share in its energy mix from about 30% currently to 50%-60% in the coming years.

A final decision on constructing additional reactors at the Temelin Nuclear Power Plant is expected next year, with progress on the Dukovany project serving as a key benchmark.

Ehler said that if both projects move forward with Korean participation, significant synergies could be achieved.

Závodský stressed that the partnership goes beyond a typical supplier relationship.

“The Czech Republic cannot build nuclear plants without Korean companies, and Korean firms cannot carry out the project without Czech partners,” he said. “This is a joint project, not just a client-supplier arrangement.”

Officials added that the cooperation could expand beyond the Czech Republic to other European countries, including Slovakia and Poland.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260422010007168

April 22 (Asia Today) — South Korean President Lee Jae-myung held summit talks with Vietnam’s top leader on Tuesday to strengthen cooperation in nuclear energy, infrastructure and supply chains, as both countries seek to navigate rising global uncertainties.

Lee met with To Lam in Hanoi during a state visit, where the two sides discussed expanding strategic cooperation across key sectors, including energy security and critical minerals.

The talks come as prolonged conflict in the Middle East heightens concerns over global energy supply disruptions, prompting both countries to pursue more resilient and diversified supply chains.

South Korea and Vietnam, each among the other’s top three trading partners, agreed to deepen cooperation not only in trade and investment but also in nuclear power, infrastructure, defense and other strategic industries.

The two countries have set a goal of increasing bilateral trade from $94.6 billion in 2025 to $150 billion by 2030.

Lee is expected to express support for South Korean companies seeking to participate in major Vietnamese infrastructure projects, including a new urban development project valued at about 1.1 trillion won ($740 million) and a new airport project estimated at 102.7 billion won ($69 million).

The leaders are also expected to discuss expanding cooperation in science and technology, climate response, artificial intelligence semiconductors and cultural industries, as well as boosting people-to-people exchanges such as tourism.

Ahead of the summit, Lee said relations between the two countries had reached a “comprehensive strategic partnership” following the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties in 2022.

“Through this visit, we aim to further develop our highest-level cooperation into a more future-oriented and strategic partnership,” Lee said during a meeting with Korean residents in Vietnam.

Lee also paid tribute at the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh before the summit and is scheduled to attend a state banquet hosted by the Vietnamese leadership.

On Wednesday, Lee is expected to meet Vietnam’s prime minister and National Assembly chair, and attend a business forum with executives from major South Korean conglomerates, including Lee Jae-yong, Chey Tae-won and Koo Kwang-mo.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260422010007161

United States President Donald Trump has claimed that a new nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the US withdrew from in 2018 during his first term.

On Tuesday, Trump extended the two-week ceasefire with Iran a day before it was set to expire, with hopes for a second round of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Key among the US demands is that Iran stop all enrichment of uranium.

Iran has always insisted its nuclear programme is for civilian use only, such as for power generation, which requires uranium enrichment of between 3 percent and 5 percent. To build nuclear weapons, uranium needs to be enriched to 90 percent.

In this explainer, we visualise what uranium is, how it is enriched and how long it could take Iran to make a nuclear weapon.

What is uranium, and which countries have it?

Uranium is a dense metal used as a fuel in nuclear reactors and weapons. It is naturally radioactive and usually found in low concentrations in rocks, soil and even seawater. About 90 percent of the world’s uranium is produced in just five countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia and Uzbekistan. Reserves of uranium have also been found in other countries.

Uranium is extracted either by digging it out of the ground or, more commonly, through a chemical process that dissolves uranium from within the rock.

Before it can be used as nuclear fuel, uranium is processed through several different forms, including:

• Yellowcake: Mined ore is crushed and treated with chemicals to form a coarse powder known as yellowcake, which, irrespective of its name, is usually dark green or charcoal in colour, depending on how hot it has been treated.
• Uranium tetrafluoride: Yellowcake is then treated with hydrogen fluoride gas, which turns it into emerald-green crystals known as uranium tetrafluoride or green salt.
• Uranium hexafluoride: Green salt is further fluorinated to create a solid white crystal known as uranium hexafluoride. When heated slightly, this crystal turns into a gas, making it ready for enrichment.
• Uranium dioxide: The gas is spun in a centrifuge machine, which chemically converts it into a fine, black powder.
• Fuel pellets: The black powder is pressed to form black ceramic pellets, which can then be used in a nuclear reactor.

How is uranium enriched?

Natural uranium exists in three forms, called isotopes. They are the same element, with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.

Most naturally occurring uranium (99.3 percent) is U-238 – the heaviest and least radioactive – while about 0.7 percent is U-235 and trace amounts (0.005 percent) are U-234.

To generate energy, scientists separate the lighter, more radioactive U-235 from the slightly heavier U-238 in a process called uranium enrichment. U-235 can sustain a nuclear chain reaction while U-238 cannot.

To enrich uranium, it must first be converted into a gas, known as uranium hexafluoride (UF₆). This gas is fed into a series of fast-spinning cylinders called centrifuges. These cylinders spin at extremely high speeds (often more than 1,000 revolutions per second). The spinning force pushes the heavier U-238 to the outer walls, while the lighter U-235 stays in the centre and is collected.

A single centrifuge provides only a tiny amount of separation. To reach higher concentrations – or “enrichment” – the process is repeated through a series of centrifuges, called a cascade, until the desired concentration of U-235 is achieved.

What are the different levels of uranium enrichment?

The higher the U‑235 percentage, the more highly enriched the uranium is.

Small amounts (3-5 percent) are enough to fuel nuclear power reactors, while weapons require much higher enrichment levels (about 90 percent).

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) considers anything below 20 percent to be low-enriched uranium (LEU), while anything above 20 percent is considered highly-enriched uranium (HEU).

Low enriched – less than 20 percent

• Commercial grade – 3-5 percent: This is the standard fuel for the vast majority of the world’s nuclear power plants
• Small modular reactors – 5-19.9 percent: Used in more modern reactors and advanced research reactors

Highly enriched – More than 20 percent

• Research grade – 20-85 percent: Used in specialised research reactors to produce medical isotopes or to test materials
• Weapons grade – above 90 percent: This is the level required for most nuclear weapons
• Naval grade – 93-97 percent: Used in the nuclear reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers

Depleted uranium, which contains less than 0.3 percent U‑235, is the leftover product after enrichment. It can be used for radiation shielding or as projectiles in armour‑piercing weapons.

How long does it take to enrich uranium?

The effort it takes to enrich uranium is not linear, meaning it is much more difficult to go from 0.7 percent natural uranium to 20 percent LEU than it is to go from 20 percent to 90 percent HEU. Once uranium reaches 60 percent enrichment, it becomes much quicker to reach 90 percent weapons grade.

The effort it takes to enrich uranium is measured in separative work units (SWU).

According to the IAEA, Iran is believed to have about 440kg (970lbs) of uranium enriched to 60 percent – enough to theoretically build 10 or 11 low-technology atomic bombs if refined to 90 percent.

Ted Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Al Jazeera that before the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow, the country had at least 10 cascades of 174 IR-6 centrifuges in operation – meaning 1,740 IR-6 centrifuges.

The IR-6 is one of Iran’s most advanced centrifuge models. The country also has tens of thousands of older centrifuges.

Little is known about the conditions of these centrifuges or the stocks of uranium hexafluoride, which are still believed to be buried underground.

Postol has calculated that Iran’s cascade of centrifuges could produce 900 to 1,000 SWUs annually.

“Getting from natural uranium to 60 percent enrichment, which Iran has already achieved, takes roughly five years, and about 5,000 SWUs using Iran’s cascades.”

“If I want to go from 60 to 90 percent, I only need 500 SWUs. So, instead of five years, [by] starting with the 60 percent here, this might take me four or five weeks. Because I am already very enriched,” Postol said.

Using an analogy of a clock, Postol explained: “Let’s say it takes seven minutes to get 33 percent enrichment, and then eight minutes to get to 50 percent enrichment. It only takes me one minute to get to total [90 percent] enrichment.”

How easy would it be for Iran to build a nuclear weapon?

Postol said Iran’s stockpile is held underground, meaning a military strike would not necessarily eliminate the nuclear threat.

A single centrifuge cascade capable of enriching weapons-grade uranium could take up “no more floor space than a studio apartment, making it easily hidden in a small laboratory”, he said, estimating the area at 60sq metres (600sq feet).

“A single Prius Compact Hybrid car can produce enough electric power to run four or more of these cascades at a time,” Postol added, meaning “Iran can covertly convert its 60 percent uranium into weapons-grade uranium metal”.

“What they have done is put themselves in a position where anybody who thinks about attacking them with nuclear weapons has to know that they could be sitting in those tunnels after such an attack, refining [and] enriching the final step they need to build atomic weapons and converting it to metal, and building a nuclear weapon, and that they have the means to deliver it,” Postol said.

“They would have all of the technical equipment they need to build the atomic weapons. And they have the missiles, which are also in the tunnels and can be manufactured in addition to what they already have. And the atomic weapon would not need to be tested, because uranium weapons do not need to be tested before they’re used.”

What does the NPT say about enrichment?

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), established in 1968, is a landmark international agreement aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Iran is a signatory to this pact.

The treaty supports the right of all signatories to access nuclear technology and enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, including energy, medical or industrial purposes, with precise safeguards to ensure it is not diverted to make weapons.

Under the NPT, nuclear-weapon states agree not to transfer nuclear weapons or assist non-nuclear-weapon states in developing them. Non-nuclear-weapon states also agree not to seek or acquire nuclear weapons.

Despite this, most nuclear powers are currently modernising their arsenals rather than dismantling them.

Most of the countries are signatories, except five: India, Pakistan, Israel, South Sudan and North Korea.

What agreements has Iran made about its nuclear programme in the past?

In 2015, under the Obama administration, Iran struck a deal with six world powers — China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US — plus the European Union, known as the JCPOA.

Under the pact, Tehran agreed to scale down its nuclear programme, capping enrichment to 3.67 percent, in exchange for relief from sanctions.

“The Iranians agreed to it, and they were following the treaty. There was no problem with the treaty at all, absolutely no problem,” Postol said.

“They were allowed to have 6,000 centrifuges, which, if they had natural uranium, they could probably build a bomb within a year if they were secretly using these centrifuges, but that was all under inspection. They were just simply going to enrich to 3.67 percent, which is for a power reactor. They’re allowed to do that by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

But in 2018, Trump pulled out of the deal, calling it “one-sided” and reimposing sanctions on Iran. Iran responded by eventually resuming enrichment at Fordow.

After the US killed Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, Tehran stated it would no longer follow the set uranium enrichment limits.

Former President Joe Biden made attempts to revive the deal, but it never came to fruition due to disagreements over whether sanctions should be lifted first or Iran should rejoin the JCPOA first.

Trump has repeatedly said Iran should not have the ability to produce nuclear weapons. It has been one of Washington’s red lines during talks with Iranian officials over the past year, and was also the central justification that Washington used when it bombed Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day US-Israel war on Iran last year.

In the current negotiations, Iran has said it is willing to “downblend” its 60 percent enriched uranium to about 20 percent – the threshold for low-enriched uranium. The process of downblending involves mixing stocks with depleted uranium to achieve a lower percentage of enriched U-235 overall.

“From the point of view of showing goodwill, I think it’s good, it shows that the Iranians are thinking of ways to address what the Americans claim are their concerns,” Postol said.

Which countries have nuclear weapons?

Nine countries possessed roughly 12,187 nuclear warheads as of early 2026, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Approximately two-thirds are owned by two nations – Russia (4,400) and the US (3,700), excluding their retired nuclear arsenals.

Some 9,745 of the total existing nuclear weapons are military stockpiles for missiles, submarines and aircraft. The rest have been retired. Of the military stockpile, 3,912 are currently deployed on missiles or at bomber bases, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Of these, some 2,100 are on US, Russian, British and French warheads, ready for use at short notice.

While Russia and the US have dismantled thousands of warheads, several countries are thought to be increasing their stockpiles, notably China.

The only country to have voluntarily relinquished nuclear weapons is South Africa. In 1989, the government halted its nuclear weapons programme and began dismantling its six nuclear weapons the following year.

Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, with a stockpile of at least 90. It has consistently neither confirmed nor denied this, and despite numerous treaties, it faces little international pressure for transparency.

Data centres, climate targets and energy security – three forces pushing nuclear power back to the forefront of the global agenda. But behind the technological shift lies a human dimension: the story of nuclear host communities, where quality of life has long defied the familiar fears.

Three Forces Behind the Renaissance

In 2024, Microsoft signed a deal to restart a unit at Three Mile Island – the very plant in Pennsylvania whose partial meltdown in 1979 shaped public anxiety about nuclear for decades. The reasoning was simple: the data centres powering AI require enormous quantities of electricity, continuous and ideally carbon-free. A nuclear plant delivers all three. That deal has since become something of a symbol for a much broader shift playing out across dozens of countries.

The industry already calls it a renaissance – not the first in nuclear’s history, but arguably the most structurally grounded. Three things are happening at once: explosive electricity demand from the digital economy, binding climate targets set by governments, and a growing reckoning with the limits of intermittent renewables. Wind and solar are essential to decarbonisation – but they cannot guarantee baseload supply in all weather, at all hours. Nuclear can.

“We need a source that delivers around the clock, every day of the year – sun or no sun, wind or no wind.” That, roughly, is how energy executives frame the problem when they look at what AI actually needs from the grid.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: AN UNLIKELY ALLY FOR NUCLEAR

Data centres already account for about 2% of global electricity consumption, and that figure could rise dramatically by 2030 as training and running large language models becomes routine. Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft are all in the market for long-term clean power contracts – and nuclear plants are almost the only sellers that can offer both the scale and the certainty those contracts require.

One example already up and running: the Kalinin Data Centre, built directly on the site of the Kalinin nuclear power plant in Russia. It draws up to 80 MW of guaranteed power straight from the plant’s substations – giving it some of the lowest electricity costs in central Russia – and operates to Tier III reliability standards. It has been included in Russia’s national Digital Economy programme. This is not a concept for the future: a nuclear plant is already powering real digital infrastructure today.

In the United States, after decades of stagnation, the first licensing procedures in a generation have begun for new reactors, including small modular reactors – SMRs – that promise lower capital costs and shorter build times. In the United Kingdom, Hinkley Point C is under construction. France has announced six new EPR-2 reactors. Canada has approved a major refurbishment of the Pickering station. These are not isolated decisions. They represent a change of direction that is now systemic.

THE CLIMATE CASE: THE NUMBERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Nuclear energy produces less carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour over its full lifecycle than a solar panel, and many times less than a gas turbine. For governments that have committed to climate neutrality by 2050, this is becoming a decisive argument – particularly given that large-scale battery storage, the main alternative for backing up renewables, carries its own considerable environmental costs.

It is no coincidence that at COP28 in Dubai, more than 20 nations signed a declaration committing to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. The list includes the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and South Korea. After years on the political margins, nuclear is back in the official climate conversation.

NUCLEAR CITIES: THE LIFE THAT RARELY MAKES THE NEWS

In the middle of the technology and climate debate, it is easy to miss a different dimension entirely – the human one. Nuclear energy does not exist in the abstract: it lives in specific towns and regions, alongside real communities. And the data on quality of life in those places tell a story that sits rather awkwardly alongside the image embedded in popular culture.

Research from multiple countries consistently finds that cities and regions hosting nuclear facilities tend to have higher household incomes, better infrastructure, stable employment, and often stronger demographic indicators than comparable areas without nuclear presence. A nuclear plant is not simply a generator. It is an anchor employer, a leading taxpayer, and a structural pillar of the local economy for decades at a stretch.

EVIDENCE FROM AROUND THE WORLD

CANADA – Bruce Power (Ontario)

Bruce Power is the largest employer in Ontario’s Bruce County. Ipsos polling found that 93% of local residents consider the company a “good neighbour” and 96% are confident the plant operates safely. That level of sustained public support sits alongside major refurbishment programmes that will go on creating thousands of regional jobs for years ahead.

HUNGARY – Paks

Paks is a small town on the Danube, 100 kilometres south of Budapest. According to Hungary’s Central Statistical Office (KSH), it ranks among the country’s leaders in per capita income – GDP per capita and purchasing power run roughly 1.5 to 2 times the national average. Male life expectancy in Paks is around 75-76 years, against 73 nationally; female life expectancy is 81-82, against 79 across Hungary. 

FINLAND – Eurajoki (Olkiluoto NPP)

The Finnish municipality of Eurajoki, home to the Olkiluoto plant, has a population of around 9,000 and is one of the most financially secure municipalities in the region. In 2022, the plant’s operator TVO paid €20 million in property tax, out of the municipality’s total tax revenue of €57 million. Local authorities describe Eurajoki as debt-free. It also maintains a stable population, which is a genuinely rare achievement for small Finnish communities. 

RUSSIA – Udomlya (Kalinin NPP, Tver Region)

The Kalinin nuclear power plant is the largest electricity producer in central Russia, located 3 kilometres from the town of Udomlya. The plant generates 82% of all electricity produced in the Tver Region and 14% of the output of the entire Central Federal District. It is also a major regional employer: together with contractor organisations, the station accounts for around 30% of all jobs among the working-age population of the Udomlya municipal district. The plant supplies the town with heat and hot water, and the construction of the station marked the beginning of rapid development across the entire surrounding area.

UNITED STATES – Palo Verde (Arizona)

Palo Verde is the largest nuclear plant in the United States and generates more than $2 billion in annual economic impact for Arizona. The station directly employs 2,500 people, with a further 5,800 jobs supported in related industries. It is Arizona’s largest private taxpayer – a contribution that matters directly to the funding of local schools and public infrastructure. 

SWEDEN – Forsmark

A Novus survey from spring 2023 found that at least 86% of residents in Östhammar municipality – where Forsmark is located – support the construction of a permanent spent fuel repository. Nine in ten local residents believe the presence of operator SKB has a positive impact on regional development. 

UNITED KINGDOM – Hinkley Point C (Somerset)

Britain’s largest infrastructure project will employ up to 15,000 workers at peak construction. More than 1,500 apprentices have already been trained, 500 more than originally planned. Three Skills Centres of Excellence in Somerset have put over 8,000 people through training in welding, electrical and mechanical trades. The effects on the regional labour market will be felt for a long time. 

CANADA – Pickering (Ontario)

The Pickering refurbishment is expected to create around 30,500 jobs during construction and sustain 6,700 permanent positions during operation. The project received government approval in November 2025, with construction due to begin in 2027. 

FRANCE – Nuclear host regions

Analysis by France’s national statistics agency INSEE indicates that nuclear plants generate economic clusters that sustain employment and population in smaller municipalities across the country. 

THE PROXIMITY PARADOX: WHY NUCLEAR COMMUNITIES SUPPORT NUCLEAR ENERGY

Sociologists have long noted a pattern that tends to surprise outsiders: the further people live from a nuclear plant, the more they fear it. The closer they live, the more they trust it. A Nuclear Energy Institute study found that 89% of residents within ten miles of a reactor view nuclear energy favourably. Surveys across nuclear host cities in Russia show that 78% of residents feel proud of the industry’s achievements, and more than two-thirds rate its contribution to their city’s development positively. Across 24 such cities, 87% of residents report satisfaction with their quality of life – in some, the figure exceeds 90%.

This is not a coincidence, and it has nothing to do with messaging campaigns. It is the product of lived experience. When a nuclear plant is the largest employer in the area, the main source of local tax revenue, and the sponsor of community sports clubs and healthcare facilities, people’s relationship with it is shaped not by what they read in the news, but by the texture of their daily lives.

The Proximity Paradox: Trust Rises Near the Plant

CONCLUSION: AN OLD SOURCE OF ENERGY FOR NEW CHALLENGES

The nuclear renaissance that gathered momentum through the mid-2020s is neither nostalgia nor ideology. It is a practical response to several problems that landed at roughly the same time: exponential growth in electricity demand from the digital economy; climate targets that cannot realistically be met without firm, low-carbon baseload generation; and hard lessons from successive energy crises about the fragility of systems built around a single source or a single supplier.

Against that backdrop, the accumulated experience of nuclear communities around the world: from Eurajoki in Finland to Paks in Hungary, from the shores of Lake Ontario to the Arizona desert, makes for a substantial body of evidence. Living near a nuclear plant is not a losing proposition for a community. More often than not, it has been the foundation of lasting prosperity, decent public services, and demographic stability that many non-nuclear towns can only envy. That, too, belongs in the conversation about what the future of energy actually looks like.

This analysis draws on data from: Deloitte / NuclearEurope (2025); Good Energy Collective / Carnegie Mellon University (2022); Ipsos Canada; Novus / SKB (Sweden, 2023); KSH — Hungarian Central Statistical Office; TVO (Finland); APS — Arizona Public Service; EDF Energy (United Kingdom); Government of Ontario; INSEE (France); Nuclear Energy Institute (United States); IEA; sociological surveys of nuclear host cities in Russia; Rosenergoatom

United States President Donald Trump has said a nuclear agreement currently being negotiated with Iran will be “far better” than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he withdrew from in 2018 during his first term in office.

The original 2015 accord took roughly two years of negotiations to reach and involved hundreds of specialists across technical and legal fields, including multiple US experts. Under it, Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to subject itself to inspections in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions.

But Trump took the US out of that pact, calling it the “worst deal ever”. Before the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February, the US had made new demands – including additional restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programme, the restriction of its ballistic missiles programme and an end to its support for regional armed groups, primarily in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Trump’s latest remarks come amid growing uncertainty about whether a second round of talks will proceed in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, as a two-week ceasefire between the US-Israel and Iran approaches the end in just a day.

So, what was the JCPOA, and how did it compare to Trump’s new demands?

What was the JCPOA?

On July 14, 2015, Iran reached an agreement with the European Union and six major powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the US, and Germany – under which these states would roll back international economic sanctions and allow Iran greater participation in the global economy.

In return, Tehran committed to limiting activities that could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.

These included reducing its stockpile of enriched uranium by about 98 percent, to less than 300kg (660lb), and capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent – far below weapons-grade of 90 percent, but high enough for civilian purposes such as power generation.

Before the JCPOA, Iran operated roughly 20,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges. Under the deal, that number was cut to a maximum of 6,104, and only older-generation machines confined to two facilities, which were subject to international monitoring.

Centrifuges are machines which spin to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope – enrichment – in uranium, a key step towards potential bomb-making.

The deal also redesigned Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor to prevent plutonium production and introduced one of the most intrusive inspection regimes ever implemented by the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In exchange, Iran received relief from international sanctions which had severely damaged its economy. Billions of dollars in frozen assets were released, and restrictions on oil exports and banking were eased.

The deal came to halt when Trump formally withdrew Washington from the nuclear deal in 2018, a move widely criticised domestically and by foreign allies, and despite the IAEA saying Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.

“The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence, bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. They have not lived up to the spirit of their agreement,” he said in October 2017.

He reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran as part of his “maximum pressure” tactic. These targeted Iran’s oil exports, as well as its shipping sector, banking system and other key industries.

The goal was to force Iran back to the negotiating table to agree to a new deal, which also included a discussion about Tehran’s missile capabilities, further curbs on enrichment and more scrutiny of its nuclear programme.

What has happened to Iran’s nuclear programme since the JCPOA?

During the JCPOA period, Iran’s nuclear programme was tightly constrained and heavily monitored. The IAEA repeatedly verified that Iran was complying with the deal’s terms, including one year after Trump announced the US’s withdrawal from the agreement.

Starting in mid-2019, however, Iran began incrementally breaching the deal’s limits, exceeding caps on uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels.

In November 2024, Iran said it would activate “new and advanced” centrifuges. The IAEA confirmed that Tehran had informed the nuclear watchdog that it planned to install more than 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium.

In December 2024, the IAEA said Iran was rapidly enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, moving closer to the 90 percent threshold needed for weapons-grade material. Most recently, in 2025, the IAEA estimated that Iran had 440kg (970lb) of 60-percent enriched uranium.

What are Trump’s latest demands for Iran’s nuclear programme?

The US and its ally, Israel, are pushing Iran to agree to zero uranium enrichment and have accused Iran of working towards building a nuclear weapon, while providing no evidence for their claims.

They also want Iran’s estimated 440kg stock of 60pc enriched uranium to be removed from Iran. While that is below weapons-grade, it is the point at which it becomes much faster to achieve the 90 percent enrichment needed for atomic weapons production.

Iran has insisted its enrichment effort is for civilian purposes only. It is a signatory to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

In March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.

On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a strongly worded statement, said Trump had no right to ⁠⁠”deprive” Iran of its nuclear ⁠⁠rights.

What else is Trump asking for?

Restrictions on ballistic missiles

Before the US-Israel war on Iran began, Tehran had always insisted negotiations should be exclusively focused on Iran’s nuclear programme.

US and Israeli demands, however, extended beyond that. Just before the war began, Washington and Israel demanded severe restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile programme.

Analysts say this demand was at least partly triggered by the fact that several Iranian missiles had breached Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Dome” defence system during the 12-day war between the two countries in June last year. While Israel suffered only a handful of casualties, it is understood to have been alarmed.

For his part, Trump has repeatedly warned, without evidence, about the dangers of Iran’s long-range missiles, claiming Iran is producing them “in very high numbers” and they could “overwhelm the Iron Dome”.

Iran has said its right to maintain missile capabilities is non-negotiable. The JCPOA did not put any limits on the development of ballistic missiles.

However, a United Nations resolution made when adopting the nuclear agreement in July 2015 did stipulate that Iran could not “undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons”.

Ending support for proxy groups

The US and Israel have also demanded that Iran stop supporting its non-state allies across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a number of groups in Iraq. Together, these groups are referred to as Iran’s “axis of resistance”.

In May last year, Trump said Tehran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons”, during a GCC meeting in Riyadh.

Three days before the war on Iran began in February, during his State of the Union address to Congress, Trump accused Iran and “its murderous proxies” of spreading “nothing but terrorism and death and hate”.

Iran has refused to enter a dialogue about limiting its support for these armed groups.

Can Trump really get a new deal that is ‘much better’ than the JCPOA?

According to Andreas Kreig, associate professor of Security Studies at King’s College, London, Trump is more likely to secure a new deal that closely resembles the JCPOA, with “some form of restrictions on enrichment, possibly with a sunset clause, and international supervision”.

“Iran might get access to frozen assets and lifted sanctions much quicker than under the JCPOA, as it will not agree to a long drawn-out, gradual lifting of sanctions,” Krieg pointed out.

However, he warned that the political landscape in Tehran has hardened. “Iran now is a far more hardline and less pragmatic player that will play hardball at every junction. Trump cannot count on any goodwill in Tehran,” he said.

“The IRGC is now firmly in charge… with likely new powerful and tested levers such as the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates as a parallel elite military force to the army and has a great deal of political and economic power in Iran. It is a constitutionally recognised part of the Iranian military and answers directly to the supreme leader.

Overall, Krieg stressed, the US-Israel war on Iran “leaves the world worse off than had Trump stuck to the JCPOA”, even if a new compromise is eventually reached.

Moreover, since the revocation of the JCPOA, the US and Israel have waged two wars on Iran, including the current one. The 12-day war in June last year included attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites and killed more than 1,000 people.

Attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure have continued since the latest war began on February 28, including on the Natanz enrichment facility, Isfahan nuclear complex, Arak heavy water reactor, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Nevertheless, King’s College’s Krieg said there is still room for a negotiated outcome if Tehran and Washington scale back their demands.

“Both sides can compromise on enrichment thresholds, and on temporary moratoriums on enrichments. But Iran will not surrender its sovereignty to enrich altogether, and the Trump administration will have to meet them halfway,” he said.

“While the Iranians will commit on paper not to develop a nuclear weapon, they will want to keep R&D [research and development] in this space alive.”

Economic incentives will be central, he added. “Equally, Iran would want to get immediate access to capital and liquidity. Here, the Trump administration is already willing to compromise.”

April 19 (Asia Today) — North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles on Saturday, just 11 days after its previous test, in what analysts describe as an effort to expand and demonstrate its nuclear delivery capabilities.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles were fired around 6:10 a.m. from the Sinpo area on the country’s east coast and flew about 140 kilometers over the East Sea.

The launch site, near a key submarine facility, has raised the possibility that the weapons could be linked to submarine-launched ballistic missile development, though officials said further analysis is needed.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said it is assessing the missiles’ specifications and whether they were launched from land or underwater.

Sinpo is home to North Korea’s main submarine shipyard, where vessels such as the “Kim Gun-ok Hero” submarine have previously been unveiled.

Recent satellite imagery cited by the North Korea-focused outlet 38 North indicated that another submarine had been moved to dry dock, suggesting possible preparations for additional testing.

Yang Wook, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the relatively short flight distance raises questions about whether a full submarine-based launch was conducted.

“Given the 140-kilometer range, it is unclear whether this was a full SLBM test, but the location suggests it could be part of efforts to verify repeated launch capability,” he said.

If confirmed as an underwater launch, the test would mark North Korea’s latest step in diversifying its nuclear delivery systems, following demonstrations involving land-based missiles and sea-based platforms in recent weeks.

Under its latest defense development plan, North Korea has been expanding a range of strategic capabilities, including short-range ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles and solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile engines.

Analysts say the timing may also reflect broader geopolitical considerations. With the United States focused on conflict in the Middle East, North Korea could be seeking to exploit a perceived security gap while reinforcing its deterrence posture.

Some experts also suggest the launch may be intended to strengthen Pyongyang’s bargaining position ahead of potential diplomatic engagement tied to an expected visit by President Donald Trump to China next month.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260420010005867

A source has told Al Jazeera that Pakistan is expecting a breakthrough tied to Iran’s nuclear programme as Islamabad helps negotiate an end the US-Israeli war on Iran. Pakistani military and government officials met with Iranian and Saudi leaders on Wednesday.

Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant has been targeted four times since the United States-Israel war on Iran began more than a month ago.

And the World Health Organization (WHO has warned of “catastrophic” risks if a radioactive release occurs.

Tehran has accused the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog of inaction – an allegation that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rejects. But it does acknowledge that the situation is of deep concern.

Why are the attacks happening, and what risks do they pose?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Tariq Rauf – Former head of verification and security policy coordination at the IAEA

Abas Aslani – Senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies

Alicia Sanders-Zakre – Head of policy at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening phase of the US-Israeli war against Iran has generated a striking argument in strategic and theological circles alike: that the killing may have removed not merely a political leader but a normative brake on Iran’s possible march toward nuclear weapons. Reports indicate that Iranian decision-making has since hardened under intense military pressure and an increasingly securitised internal environment.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam. If that position represented a genuine religious constraint rather than mere diplomatic rhetoric, then his death may have removed more than a leader: it may have weakened the doctrinal restraint that helped keep Iran a threshold nuclear state.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam.

Islamic just war theory places moral constraints on indiscriminate violence, constraints that Khamenei appeared to project onto state policy. With that authority now gone, the central question is whether a moral tradition can discipline a state that increasingly experiences its insecurity as existential. Whether the next supreme leader can impose doctrinal restraint on a system drifting toward hard security logic.

The Islamic just war theory

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence. Rather, it regulates warfare through a moral-legal framework derived from the Qur’an, the practice of the Prophet, and the juristic traditions that developed in subsequent centuries. The foundational Qur’anic injunction is taken from verse 2:190: “Fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not transgress. Indeed, God does not love transgressors.” The verse both permits fighting and limits it: war is accepted as a political reality, but not treated as morally autonomous.

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence.

The duality of permission and restraint thus runs through the Islamic just war tradition. War may be legitimate in cases of defence, resistance to aggression, or protection of the community. But even a just cause does not license unlimited means. Islamic jurists emphasised proportionality, legitimate authority, fidelity to agreements, and the protection of non-combatants—including women, children, the elderly, monks, and peasants— developing a norm of discrimination that restricted violence to active combatants.

It is from this perspective that nuclear weapons become especially difficult to reconcile with Islamic ethics. A weapon whose essence is mass, uncontrolled devastation, sits uneasily with any tradition that treats non-combatant immunity as morally central. In Islamic terms, the problem is not simply the scale of destruction, but the very structure of the act: the means themselves are transgressive.

 The fatwa: Genuine constraint or strategic cover?

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s reputed opposition to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War established an early precedent for this kind of doctrinal restraint. Iraq used chemical agents extensively, and Iran suffered enormously—some 20,000 Iranians were killed and over 100,000 severely injured. Yet the Islamic Republic did not respond in kind on a comparable scale. Whether that restraint was entirely theological or also strategic remains debated. Recent evidence suggests limited Iranian chemical weapons development during the war. Still, the episode reinforced the notion that certain weapons lay beyond the moral threshold that Iran’s clerical leadership was prepared to cross openly.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005. Over subsequent years, Iranian officials repeatedly invoked his religious decree as evidence of the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear intentions.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005.

But the fatwa’s authenticity and legal weight have always been contested. Some have argued that no formal written fatwa was ever issued and that what Iran marketed as a religious ruling was, in origin, merely the closing paragraph of a message to a 2010 nuclear disarmament conference, later retroactively framed by Iranian diplomats as a fatwa. Others have documented that Khamenei’s pronouncements on nuclear weapons were inconsistent: at times he categorically forbade development, stockpiling, and use; at other times he appeared to permit development and stockpiling while forbidding use.

None of this entirely strips the fatwa of significance. In political systems where legitimacy is partly theological, a public prohibition articulated by the supreme jurist, even if ambiguous in its legal form, raises the political and doctrinal cost of reversal. As one scholar observes, such declarations make it costly for the Islamic Republic to overturn the publicly stated position even if they do not constitute binding juridical rulings in the formal sense.

Succession and the question of doctrinal inheritance

The critical question of whether Khamenei’s successor would inherit his political and moral authority looms large. On March 9, 2026, the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei as Iran’s third supreme leader. Whether he would inherit his father’s doctrinal commitments, especially on nuclear weapons, is far from clear. Not known as a jurist of comparable standing to his father, Mojtaba’s authority derives primarily from his revolutionary and security credentials rather than from the depth of his theological learning, a fact noted critically within Iran’s clerical establishment, which has historically resisted father-to-son succession as uncomfortably monarchical.

Khamenei’s nuclear prohibition carried weight because it came from the state’s highest religious authority. Mojtaba’s standing is far more contested, which means that any comparable prohibition would likely carry less doctrinal force—while any tacit relaxation would accelerate the erosion of the barrier his father maintained. The IRGC commanders who manoeuvred his appointment to power have long been among those pressing for a reassessment of Iran’s nuclear posture.

Islamic restraint vs strategic realism

This leads to the final and perhaps hardest question: would Iran, if acting as a pure realist state, pursue nuclear weapons regardless of the Islamic just war tradition? The realist answer is straightforward. States seek survival in an anarchic international system. When a state faces stronger adversaries, recurring coercion, and the credible prospect of regime-change violence, it has every incentive to pursue the ultimate deterrent. From this perspective, the logic of nuclear acquisition is not theological but strategic: a bomb would promise not battlefield utility but regime survival, deterrence, and insulation from future attack.

And yet Iran is not a pure realist state in the abstract. It is a political order where ideology, clerical authority, national security, and regime survival have long coexisted in uneasy combination. The more interesting possibility, therefore, is not that realism simply replaces theology, but that realism gradually colonises it. In that scenario, doctrine is not openly discarded; it is reinterpreted and subordinated to necessity, allowing the state to retain Islamic language while moving toward a posture that the older Khamenei publicly resisted.

The greater danger is that the Islamic Republic’s language of restraint may cease to anchor policy and instead begin to trail behind it. If so, Iran’s nuclear future will be decided not only in centrifuge halls or command bunkers, but in the struggle between theological limits and strategic fear.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Tehran says it is the fourth attack near the nuclear plant amid the US-Israel war on Iran.

One person has been killed by projectile fragments after United States-Israeli strikes targeted a location close to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The agency, citing confirmation from Iranian authorities, said in a statement on X that there was “no increase in radiation levels” after Saturday’s attack.

Later on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed the Bushehr facility had been “bombed” four times since the war erupted, criticising what he described as a lack of concern for its safety.

The strike comes as the US and Israel escalate their targeting of Iranian industrial sites, even as experts warn of the high risks of striking nuclear or petrochemical facilities.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed “deep concern about the reported incident and says [nuclear] sites or nearby areas must never be attacked, noting that auxiliary site buildings may contain vital safety equipment”, the statement read.

Grossi also reiterated a “call for maximum military restraint to avoid risk of a nuclear accident,” the IAEA added.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) confirmed the incident, also in a post on X.

An “auxiliary” building on the site was damaged, but the main sections of the power plant were not affected by the strike, the government agency said, adding that the person killed was a member of security personnel.

It’s the fourth time the site has been attacked since the start of the US and Israel’s war on Iran, the AEOI noted.

The Bushehr plant is Iran’s only operational nuclear power plant. It is located in Bushehr city, home to 250,000 people, and is one of Iran’s most important industrial and military nodes.

Meanwhile, US and Israeli strikes on Saturday hit several petrochemical plants in the southern Khuzestan region, an important energy hub, according to Iranian media.

At least five people are reported injured.

Explosions were heard, and smoke was also seen rising after missiles hit several locations across the Mahshahr Petrochemical Special Economic Zone.

The state-run Bandar Imam petrochemical complex, which produces chemicals, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), polymers and a range of other products, was struck and sustained damage, Iran’s Mehr news agency reported.

A provincial governor in Khuzestan added that the Fajr 1 and 2 petrochemical companies, as well as other nearby facilities, were also hit, according to the Fars news agency. The extent of damage is unclear.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it shot down an MQ-1 drone over central Isfahan province on Saturday, hours after authorities said they forced down two US warplanes.

Isfahan, which houses an underground uranium conversion and a research site, was one of three facilities bombed during US and Israeli strikes on Iran last June.

Former US Senior State Department official Jennifer Gavito argues why US attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities may be a sign that the war is coming to an end.

The anti-nuclear artists collective whose work is on display at Pitzer College in Claremont never predicted a nuclear proliferation crisis would break out in the Middle East during their exhibit, or how grimly topical their work would quickly become as a result.

“Atomic Dragons,” wrapping April 4 with a closing-day symposium of nuclear experts, is the work of SWANS, which stands for Slow War Against the Nuclear State. The group is made up of artists, activists and academics with ties to the nuclear industry, including children and spouses of nuclear industrial complex workers — putting a new spin on the “nuclear family.”

The show examines the environmental and human cost of the atomic era through an artistic lens, tracing present day nuclear risk back to its Cold War roots.

The SWANS’ warning call has always been clear, but ”Atomic Dragons” took on a whole new meaning when the United States and Israel launched a joint assault on Iran over its illicit stockpile of nuclear materials Feb. 28, three weeks after the show opened.

“We’re at the start of what will be an exceedingly dangerous period in terms of the Iranian nuclear program,” nuclear policy expert Scott Sagan, who co-directs Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said. “We’re likely to have a major, major conflict over this.”

In a time of acute nuclear anxiety, SWANS is an outlet through which the artists process the fear and gravity of our atomic reality.

Fiona Amundsen, “Yoshino Cherry Tree, Sanyo Buntokuden, Hiroshima (lovingly held),” 2025, from the series, “The Trees are Leaking Light,” 2024-25, 4 x 5 inch negative processed using seaweed, gathered from the ocean current of the Fukushima wastewater release, inkjet washi photograph.

(Chloe Shrager)

“My maybe-naive hope is that the artworks help to provide an avenue into that understanding of the severity of what it means to play with the nuclear,” said Fiona Amundsen, whose arresting film photography of three trees in Hiroshima that survived the 1945 nuclear bomb was developed using contaminated seaweed growing in the Fukushima wastewater release line.

The resulting images are dotted with delicate white flares: trace amounts of radioactive tritium that transferred to the film from the nuclear effluent during the chemical processing, bearing physical witness to the usually invisible effects of radiation.

Amundsen’s work is in keeping with the rest of the show, which fills two halls at the liberal arts school with visual and multimedia works that probe the persistence of radioactive materials. Artifacts from the birth of the nuclear age are also featured, including items recovered from postwar Hiroshima and a letter from the father of the nuclear bomb, Robert J. Oppenheimer.

The artworks are as likely to unsettle as they are to move.

Elin o’Hara slavick labored over an expansive series of photochemical drawings of every above-ground nuclear test — 528 in total, a selection of which are featured in the exhibit— on salvaged darkroom paper from Caltech, the institution that played a role in developing the detonators for the U.S. nuclear bombs dropped on Japan under the top secret Project Camel.

elin o’Hara slavick, selection from “There Have Been 528 Atmospheric Nuclear Tests to Date,” 2022, photo-chemical drawings on outdated and fogged silver gelatin paper.

(Chloe Shrager)

Slavick said she found the abandoned silver-gelatin paper, which was fogged despite being stored in closed boxes, in the basement of the university near a door labeled “Radiation Science,” which led her to believe radiation exposure from Caltech’s Manhattan Project past distorted the photographic paper.

SWANS seems to double as a support group for families impacted by the nuclear industry. Many members believe they’ve lost loved ones to radiation, or were themselves likely impacted by early-life exposure as children of Manhattan Project engineers. The tension between the anti-nuclear artwork and its artists’ familial ties to the production of the very technology they reject is an enticing dance of its own.

Judith Dancoff, “The Milk Pathway (still),” 2023, video, briefcase, antique milk bottles, and tempera.

(Chloe Shrager)

Writer Judith Dancoff links her hyperthyroidism and long-term reproductive issues from a pituitary gland tumor to childhood radiation exposure during a summer spent at the Oak Ridge uranium enrichment site in Tennessee where her father worked as a student of Oppenheimer. Her father died young of cancer, and the story is woven into her featured SWANS work.

One of the largest pieces on display at “Atomic Dragons” is Nancy Buchanan’s interactive full-wall exhibit of documents her father brought home from his government work as a Manhattan Project physicist, alongside material from the FBI file on his mysterious death, on display for viewers to read under looming red letters spelling out “SECURITY.”

Nancy Buchanan, “Security,” 1987, installation with file folders, photos, map pins, and documents.

(Chloe Shrager)

The current crisis in Iran has sent memories bubbling to the surface for the collective, and chills down the spines of viewers.

Many have expressed fears of an Orwellian-style forever war, or worse, the use of the atomic weapon invented “to end all wars” in a twisted attempt to do so, poisoning the region as a byproduct. But nuclear policy expert Sagan said the likelihood of the conflict escalating to involve nuclear weapons is “exceedingly low,” even if Iran has the capability to build them.

Iran possesses enough 60% highly-enriched uranium to build about 10 nuclear weapons if further enriched to 90% weapons grade, he said. This could take a matter of weeks to complete depending on the state of Iran’s enrichment centrifuges, which Trump claimed to have “obliterated” during air strikes in June.

Iran could also craft a primitive nuclear device out of minimally enriched materials for an offensive attack (“60% could actually create an explosion, it just wouldn’t be a very efficient one,” according to Sagan), but George Perkovich, senior fellow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program and author of “How to Assess Nuclear Threats in the 21st Century,” points out that “you have to build more than one for it to be useful,” especially under the wrath of a nuclear-armed West’s expected response.

What is more likely, and probably more dangerous, experts say, is the now-heightened long-term risk of global proliferation. “This war is going to suggest to some countries that if they want to secure their sovereignty, they need nuclear weapons,” Sagan said.

elin o’Hara slavick, selection from “There Have Been 528 Atmospheric Nuclear Tests to Date,” 2022, photo-chemical drawings on outdated and fogged silver gelatin paper.

(Chloe Shrager)

Since 1968, the world nuclear order has rested on the delicate architecture of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, enforcing the international norm that countries without nuclear weapons won’t try to get them, and countries with nuclear weapons won’t help arm their allies. Now, experts say the rulebook has been thrown out.

“What this does is it breaks the old system that was based on the non-proliferation treaty,” said Perkovich, who has worked on nuclear issues for 44 years. “It’s now ‘might makes right,’ everybody’s on their own, friends versus enemies. I think the terms now change, and we’re not bargaining.”

Though the timing of the military operation in Iran with the “Atomic Dragons” exhibit could not be described as kismet as much as brutally ironic, slavick said the “sick and sad thing” is that “it’s always topical when you’re an American.”

“We do this. We wage wars. We are the leading nuclear country,” she said, speaking to the heart of the SWANS message: In a world where nuclear materials exist, it is not a matter of if humans will be harmed, but when.

There is a historic relationship between visual art and nuclear war, said Jim Walsh, a senior research associate at the MIT Security Studies Program on nuclear weapons risk issues in Iran and North Korea, who is also a speaker at the exhibit’s closing symposium. As the world enters a “more disruptive period” after the post-Cold War cooling of nuclear tensions, he expects to soon see “a flowering of artistic projects,” as nuclear risk reaches a local peak. “It’s a super powerful thing involving life and death, the planet, the entire environment, love and hate,” he said.

“Atomic Dragons,” which also features work created decades ago, highlights questions that are as relevant today as they were at the dawn of the nuclear era: Can we make the world safe enough so we can once again dream? Is the strength of a country found in its military rather than its culture? Is fear our gross national product?

March 27 (Asia Today) — The United States and South Korea have established a new joint command unit aimed at integrating nuclear and conventional forces to strengthen deterrence against North Korea, according to defense officials.

The unit, known as J10, has been set up within U.S. Forces Korea headquarters at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek. It is designed to move beyond the traditional concept of a “nuclear umbrella” and enable real-time operational coordination between U.S. strategic assets and South Korean conventional forces.

Originally separated from the U.S. Forces Korea planning directorate in June 2024, J10 is led by a colonel-level commander and serves as a centralized command structure for combined nuclear and conventional operations.

Military experts said the creation of J10 marks a shift from declaratory deterrence to operational readiness, allowing faster execution of joint responses in the event of a North Korean nuclear threat.

The unit is expected to play a key role in implementing decisions made by the bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group established under the Washington Declaration, with the ability to coordinate immediate response measures from the Korean Peninsula.

J10 will oversee operational planning that aligns U.S. strategic assets – such as long-range bombers and nuclear-powered submarines – with South Korean support forces. It is also expected to match response options to specific North Korean threat scenarios to accelerate execution speed.

Previously, U.S. nuclear operations were largely managed by command structures based in the United States. The new arrangement places a dedicated coordination function on the Korean Peninsula, enabling continuous, real-time management of response planning.

Analysts said the move is intended to strengthen integration between South Korea’s “three-axis” defense system and U.S. nuclear capabilities, increasing military pressure on North Korea.

However, officials noted that the effectiveness of J10 will depend on the level of real-time intelligence sharing between the two allies.

A senior official described J10 as “the final piece” in building an integrated extended deterrence framework, adding that its capabilities will be tested in upcoming large-scale joint military exercises.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260327010008515

March 27 (UPI) — The United Nations nuclear watchdog said Thursday it has begun discussions for another localized cease-fire for Ukraine‘s Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to allow for urgently needed repairs.

The plant, Europe’s largest, has been occupied by Russian forces since early in the war, which has repeatedly endangered and damaged the site.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that the situation at the plant is challenging and has warned about the risk the war poses to it.

The IAEA said Tuesday that the ZNPP lost connection to its sole remaining main power line after it was damaged and was now dependent on a single backup line that had only recently been reconnected to the plant.

On Thursday, the IAEA said in a statement that its director, Rafael Grossi, had begun discussions with Russia and Ukraine to secure a cease-fire so the necessary repairs could be conducted.

Although the timing for the necessary repairs remains uncertain, Grossi has confirmed that they have “proposed a cease-fire window to both parties, allowing for safe assessment and restoration of the damaged infrastructure,” it said.

The IAEA has brokered five localized cease-fires for Zaporizhzhia, the latest initiated late last month that allowed for repairs to the sole backup power line, which was reconnected to the nuclear power plant on March 5.

The plant is located in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in southeastern Ukraine. Russian forces seized the utility on March 4, marking the first time a civilian nuclear facility has been occupied.

On the grim anniversary of the plant’s fourth year of Russian occupation, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear energy enterprise said the facility “remains one of the most acute risks to European energy and nuclear stability.”

“The seizure of a nuclear facility and its use as a tool for political pressure is a violation of the fundamental rules of the industry,” Energoatom CEO Pavlo Kovtonyuk said in a statement.

“Our task is to protect people and be ready at any moment to resume safe operation of the plant.”

March 24 (UPI) — An unidentified projectile struck the grounds of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant on Tuesday night, according to Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, the second time in a little more than two weeks that the facility has been threatened by the ongoing war.

The projectile struck at 9:08 p.m. local time, resulting in no casualties or damage, it said in a statement.

“Attacking peaceful nuclear facilities is not only a violation of international regulations and rights, but also seriously endangers #regional security,” Iran’s AEO said in a post tagging the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“It is expected that international institutions will adopt a responsible and transparent stance in response to such actions.”

The IAEA said it was informed of the incident by Iran, adding that the plant was operating normally.

The agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, reiterated his call “for maximum restraint to avoid nuclear safety risks during conflict,” the IAEA said in a statement.

The incident comes eight days after an unidentified projectile struck near the plant on March 17, the first reported strike near Bushehr since the war between Iran and the United States and Israel began late last month.

Located near Bushehr city on Iran’s southwest Persian Gulf coast, the Bushehr plant began construction in 1975, but its original German contractor abandoned the project following the Islamic Revolution four years later. In the mid-1990s, Russia agreed to complete Bushehr Unit 1, Iran’s first reactor, which began operating in 2011, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Iranian missiles struck two communities in southern Israel, leaving buildings shattered and dozens injured in dual attacks not far from Israel’s main nuclear research centre.

The Iranian strikes late on Saturday came after Tehran’s main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz was hit earlier in the day. Israel denied responsibility for the strike on Natanz, nearly 220km (135 miles) southeast of Tehran.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the strike on Natanz, which was also hit during the first week of the war and the 12-day war last June. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova said such strikes posed a “real risk of catastrophic disaster throughout the Middle East”.

Iran retaliated hours later.

Israel’s military said it was not able to intercept missiles that hit the southern cities of Dimona and Arad, the largest near the centre in Israel’s sparsely populated Negev desert. It was the first time Iranian missiles had penetrated Israel’s air defence systems in the area around the nuclear site.

The Israeli Ministry of Health said at least 180 people were wounded in the missile attacks on the southern city of Dimona and nearby Arad.

Dimona is about 20km (12 miles) west of the nuclear research centre, and Arad is around 35km (22 miles) to the north.

Israel is believed to be the only Middle East nation with nuclear weapons, though its leaders refuse to confirm or deny their existence. The UN nuclear watchdog said on X it had not received reports of damage to the Israeli centre or abnormal radiation levels.

An Iranian missile has struck the southern Israeli cities of Dimona, home to the country’s main nuclear facility, and nearby Arad, wounding dozens of people and causing significant damage, in one of the most dramatic escalations since the US-Israel war on Iran began.

Iranian state television quickly reframed Saturday’s strikes as a “response” to what it said was a strike on Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment complex earlier in the day, marking a stark new phase of tit-for-tat targeting in the conflict, now in its fourth week.

Nearly 100 people were wounded in the attacks, according to Israel’s emergency services, including a 10-year-old boy who paramedics said was in critical condition with multiple shrapnel wounds. Seven others are also in critical condition.

An Israeli military spokesman said Israel’s air defence systems activated during the attacks, but failed to intercept some of the missiles, even though they were not “special or unfamiliar”.

The country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the attacks which wounded nearly 100 people, called it a “difficult” evening for Israel, and again vowed to continue attacking Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had received no indication of damage to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona itself, and that no abnormal radiation levels had been detected in the area.

The nuclear watchdog said it was closely monitoring the situation, with Director General Rafael Grossi urging that “maximum military restraint should be observed, in particular in the vicinity of nuclear facilities”.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said that three separate impact sites had been identified across Dimona, with one three-storey building having completely collapsed and several fires breaking out.

Witness footage verified by Al Jazeera, which is banned from operating inside Israel, showed a missile striking the city, followed by a large explosion.

Arad, another town near the nuclear facility, was also directly attacked, Israel’s firefighting service said in a statement, with extensive damage reported in the city centre.

“In both Dimona and Arad, interceptors were launched that failed to hit the threats, resulting in two direct hits by ballistic missiles with warheads weighing hundreds of kilograms”, firefighters said.

School in the surrounding Ramat Negev Regional Council was cancelled for the following day.

Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli military announced it had struck a research and development facility at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which it said had been used to develop components for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The military said it “will not allow the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons”.

Iran said that the US and Israel had targeted its Natanz enrichment complex that morning, though it reported no radioactive leakage.

An unnamed Israeli official, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, denied that Israel was responsible for the Natanz strike, but the Israeli army has not released a full statement on the matter.

Dimona has been at the heart of Israel’s nuclear programme since its research centre, built in secret with French assistance, opened there in 1958.

Eye-for-an-eye approach

Israel is believed to have developed nuclear weapons by the late 1960s. Its policy of deliberate ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying their existence, was part of a deal quietly struck with Washington, which judged that an open declaration would risk triggering a regional arms race.

Abas Aslani, a senior fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran has been pursuing an eye-for-an-eye approach designed to re-establish deterrence.

“Tehran wants to reduce the gap between words and actions,” he said, adding that Iran’s goal was to make its threats credible enough to underpin a new long-term security arrangement, not to simply force a ceasefire, but establish deterrence.

The attacks came as the broader war grinds through its fourth week.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in Iran since the US and Israeli strikes began on February 28, including more than 200 children.

Iran has retaliated across the region, launching what it described as its 70th wave of attacks on Saturday, targeting Israeli and US military positions, as millions of Iranians marked the Persian New Year, Newroz, and Eid al-Fitr under the shadow of war.

No leakage of radioactive materials reported in the area in central Iran, Tehran’s atomic energy organisation says.

The United States and Israel have struck Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, according to its atomic energy organisation.

“Following the criminal attacks by the United States and the usurping Zionist regime against our country, the … Natanz enrichment complex was targeted this morning,” the organisation said in a statement carried by the Tasnim news agency on Saturday.

It added that there was “no leakage of radioactive materials reported” at the Shahid Ahmadi Roshan enrichment facility in Natanz in central Iran, one of the country’s most important uranium enrichment sites, about 220km (135 miles) southeast of Tehran.

No radioactive material was released, Tasnim reported, quoting Iranian officials. There is no danger to the population living near the facility, according to the report.

The Natanz nuclear facility was also targeted by Israel in the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, said the Iranian nuclear organisation’s statement did not say how Saturday’s attack happened and what types of bombs were used in it.

“We know that Natanz is one of the key nuclear sites in Iran, towards the middle of the country, along with the Isfahan nuclear facilities,” he said.

“And we know a major goal of this war by the Americans and Israelis was about the nuclear programme of Iran, how to destroy it and prevent Iran from producing a nuclear bomb.”

Call for restraint

In a post on X, the International Atomic Energy ⁠Agency (IAEA) said Iran has ⁠informed it about the US-Israeli attack on the ⁠Natanz site.

No increase ⁠in off-site radiation ⁠levels was reported, the United ⁠Nations nuclear ⁠watchdog said, adding that it was looking into ‌the report.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi repeated his “call for military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident” during the war on Iran.

The White House has said a key objective of the war it launched alongside Israel on February 28 is to prevent Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Natanz site was previously hit in the first week of the 22-day war, and several buildings were damaged, according to satellite images at the time.

The UN nuclear watchdog said on March 3 that the nuclear site suffered “recent damage”, a day after Iran said the underground uranium enrichment plant was attacked.

Russia has condemned the latest attack ⁠on the Natanz facility, calling it “a blatant ‌violation of international law,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned the US and Israel would intensify their strikes on Iran in the week starting Sunday.

“This week, the intensity of the strikes to be carried out by the IDF [Israeli army] and the US military against the Iranian terror regime and the infrastructure on which it relies will rise significantly,” Katz said in a statement on Saturday.

March 18 (UPI) — Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power said Wednesday that new CEO Kim Hoe-chun has officially taken office to lead the state-run company over the next three years.

The chief executive said that he would establish a dual-track strategy of focusing on large-scale nuclear reactors and small modular reactors, or SMRs, at the same time to gain a stronger foothold in the global market.

SMRs refer to next-generation nuclear power plants, which are smaller but considered safer than traditional massive reactors. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, or KHNP, has worked on its own models, known as “innovative SMRs.”

“We will successfully carry out already secured overseas projects while pursuing tailored bidding strategies to enter new markets,” Kim said during an inauguration ceremony at the firm’s head office in Gyeongju, around 180 miles southeast of Seoul.

“We will develop the KHNP-style integrated management model as an export product and take a leading position in the international nuclear power market through innovative SMR technologies,” he said.

In June 2025, KHNP signed a contract to build two nuclear reactors in the Dukovany region of the Czech Republic. The agreement is estimated to be worth about $18 billion.

The company also has been competing with global players to win nuclear contracts in other countries.

Before taking the helm at KHNP, Kim spent decades at Korea Electric Power Corp., where he held a series of key positions after joining it in 1985. Between 2021 and 2024, he served as CEO of Korea South-East Power, an affiliate of KEPCO.

March 17 (UPI) — An unidentified projectile struck the premises of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant on Tuesday evening, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said, raising fresh concerns about the risks the U.S.-Iran war poses to nuclear facilities in the region.

Little information about the strike was made public in the carefully worded and brief statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said it had been informed that “a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening.”

“No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported,” it said.

The IAEA’s director general, Rafael Grossi, reiterated his call “for maximum restraint during the conflict to prevent risk of a nuclear accident,” the agency said.

Located near Bushehr city on Iran’s southwest Persian Gulf coast, the Bushehr plant began construction in 1975, but its original German contractor abandoned the project following the Islamic Revolution four years later. In the mid-1990s, Russia agreed to complete Bushehr Unit 1, Iran’s first reactor, which began operating in 2011, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, said the projectile struck near the metrology service building in the vicinity of the plant’s operating power unit at 6:11 p.m. local time, according to Russian state-run TASS news agency.

“There were no casualties among personnel of the Rosatom State Corporation. Radiation levels at the site are normal,” Rosatom General Director Alexei Likhachev said.

The strike was the first on the premises of the nuclear power plant since the war between Iran and the United States and Israel began late last month, he noted.

This is a developing story.