The U.N. Security Council met this week in New York to discuss, among other things, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The U.N. released a summary press release of a portion of the meeting, in which U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned that “geopolitical tensions [are] escalating the risk of nuclear warfare to its highest point in decades.”
In prepared remarks at the meeting on Monday, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. representative to the U.N., criticized China for “rapidly and opaquely” expanding its nuclear arsenal, Russia for being unwilling to engage in arms control discussions and for “dangerous nuclear rhetoric” during its ongoing war in Ukraine and Iran for expanding its nuclear program “without any credible civilian justification.”
China’s ambassador to the U.N., Zhang Jun, said in his prepared remarks Monday that “the road to nuclear disarmament remains long and arduous” and that the AUKUS submarine partnership between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. “carries a high risk of nuclear proliferation” and “undermines regional peace and stability.” The parties to the agreement need to take “corrective measures,” Jun said. Meanwhile, Russia’s representative to the Security Council Dmitry Polyanskiy, said in prepared remarks Monday that the U.S. and its allies are “undermining the international architecture of arms control, disarmament, and [Weapons of Mass Destruction] nonproliferation” and have created “risks of escalation that threaten to trigger a direct military confrontation among nuclear powers.”
The Aiken City Council last week took a step toward spending $8.5 million of the $25 million it received from the federal government as part of a 2020 settlement involving the Department of Energy’s failure to remove plutonium from the state by legally binding deadlines.
On March 11, the council gave a first reading to an ordinance that would amend the city budget for the fiscal year that ends June 30 “to Include Plutonium Settlement Funds,” according to the agenda for the March 11 council, which was broadcast on YouTube. The ordinance will require a second reading before it can be passed. The next council meeting was scheduled for March 25 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, according to the council’s website.
During the meeting, City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh said the ordinance would provide a total of $7.25 million in funding: $1 million for Smith-Hazel Park; $3 million for Generations Park; $2 million for pedestrian improvements including sidewalks and accessibility; $500,000 for a playground equipment for Children’s Place, a local organization offering care and therapy for needy families and children; $200,000 for the Pinelawn Cemetery; $500,000 for bike lanes; $50,000 for the Aiken Downtown Development Association. There is still $1.25 million in funding remaining from the plutonium settlement to allocate, Bedenbaugh said.
The local Knoxville police department is having a tough time retaining officers because qualified people can get better pay elsewhere, including at the Y-12 National Security Complex, the local Knoxville News Sentinel reported.
In its report last week, the News Sentinel cited a police department spokesperson as the source of the information.
The Australian Government Department of Defence on Friday announced that a joint venture of Australian submarine builder ASC Pty Ltd and the U.K.’s BAE Systems will build the country’s indigenous nuclear-powered, conventionally armed attack submarines in Osborne, South Australia.
Meanwhile, during a members-only question-and-answer session in the Australian Senate this week, the Minister for Defence Richard Marles said Australia’s Labor government “won’t rule out any state or territory” as the future host for long-term storage of decommissioned reactors from Aukus submarines. “The one statement that we’ve made up to this point in time about where is that it will happen on the current or future Defence estate,” Marles said.
Australia’s first nuclear-powered attack submarines under the trilateral AUKUS pact will be U.S.-made Virginia-class submarines that the commonwealth plans to acquire in the 2030s. It plans to field its own boats, powered by U.K.-made Rolls-Royce reactors, in the 2040s.
Notable obituaries
James Thomas, 80, former nuclear plant manager for Union Carbide at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and, in between, a corporate manager at Allied Chemical, died March 14 at his home about four years after he was diagnosed with cancer, according to an obituary posted online.
Mikkel Borlaug Johnson, 81, former theoretical physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, died in Los Alamos on Match 7, according to an obituary posted online.
