The Korean Peninsula is of geostrategic importance to the United States (US) due to its proximity to US regional allies and the continued security threat from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) since the 1950 Korean War. The DPRK is plagued by humanitarian crises, including famine, human rights abuses, and natural disasters, whilst having continued to divert resources towards developing and modernising a nuclear weapons program. Given the current stalemate in denuclearising the Korean Peninsula and the worsening human rights situation, there is much debate on how best to diploma ..read more

In September 1981, in the midst of the Cold War and one year after the UK began the Trident programme, 36 women chained themselves to the fences of RAF Greenham Common to protest against the storing of 96 American nuclear missiles at the site in Berkshire. This heralded the start of the ‘Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp’ – an activist presence at the base that would last for nearly 20 years. This anti-nuclear weapons protest galvanised the British peace movement in the early-1980s. At its zenith, in 1983, 70,000 women encircled the Greenham Common site in a 14-mile-long human chain. The act ..read more

Nuclear conversations on timely topics Presenting at a conference can be daunting for anyone. The UK PONI Annual Conference is the first presentation experience for some the selected speakers and, for most of them, this event becomes an opportunity to shape their research and progress in their careers. Ekaterina Lapanovich, a PhD candidate, tells Ana Alecsandru why the UK PONI Annual Conference is an excellent forum for students and early-career professionals to discuss and debate a range of nuclear issues in an inclusive environment. Ekaterina’s presentation is available on RUSI’s platform ..read more

Nuclear conversations on timely topics Getting your first job in the nuclear field is hard work. Recent graduate Claudia Westwood tells Ana Alecsandru about some of the challenges and opportunities she has faced in her endeavour to find a role in the nuclear field. Did you work on nuclear issues at university? Claudia Westwood: I didn’t focus on nuclear-related issues in my university degrees, but I do think that my areas of study did lead me in this direction. I did my undergraduate degree in International Relations at King’s College London. Being in their War Studies Department, I gained a ..read more

What We’ve Got, What’s Needed, and Can Open Source Research Help? If you were designing a disarmament and non-proliferation verification system from scratch, what would it look like? What would you want it to do, and how could you make this happen? Existing verification systems – established within international treaties – can do well in demonstrating states’ compliance with international treaty obligations and in contributing to robust systems of global governance. Ideally, it would also be useful to have monitoring systems which go beyond negotiated treaty frameworks. Current open source inv ..read more

NewSpace is the latest and most innovative evolution of the space industry, which, through the reduction of legislative and financial barriers, has enabled companies and researchers to commercialise space via provision of scientific and functional capabilities. Limitless opportunities to operate in space coupled with advancements in satellite technology have led to a rapidly expanding marketplace with an out-of-date international legislative framework. The role of nuclear material within this expansion is currently undefined, and the advancement of nuclear technologies and materials provides ..read more

Challenging the established focus on renewable resources, environmental protection discourse has welcomed the nuclear industry and its expansion as valuable candidates in the fight against carbon emissions. Partanen and Korhonen legitimise the concretisation of a nuclear solution claiming that renewables and energy conservation tools are insufficient for achieving remarkable results. While providing solution to the problem of environmental security , a nuclear energy expansion heightens the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s verification sys ..read more

Soliciting broad buy-in on compliance with UN sanctions on North Korea must go beyond normative arguments and threats of punitive measures. Identifying country- and region- specific benefits of compliance and consequences of non-compliance is a valuable exercise. On Friday, the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea released its latest report, detailing continued North Korean sanctions evasion activity around the world. The broad scope of UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea has meant that almost all economic and financial engagement with North Korean entities is prohibited. T ..read more

It’s been a busy few weeks for us here in the UK PONI team, as it has no doubt been for all of you. As well as the upheaval and challenges we’ve all been dealing with, it’s become clear that we will have to think differently about our programme of activities for the next several months, if not longer. ‘Different’ does not mean ‘cancelled’ though: we’re not planning any face-to-face events until the autumn, but we’ve already run a couple of virtual events, we are working on a couple more, and, most importantly we’re going go virtual with our 10th Anniversary Annual Conference in June. We’re go ..read more

​​​​ Despite summit diplomacy between US and North Korean leaders, Washington’s efforts to increase sanctions pressure on Pyongyang continued throughout 2019 and has shown no signs of abating in 2020. In response North Korea has continued to evolve its sanctions evasion tactics, critical amongst which is an extensive cross-jurisdictional network of front and shell companies that allows it to obfuscate illicit revenue-raising and procurement. One interesting designation which shows how these networks operate came in June 2019 when the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) desig ..read more