The Star Wars series contains space battles, light-saber duels, wisecracking scoundrels, Jedi knights, and stirring music. The latest installment, Rogue One, adds another item: what are essentially nuclear weapons.

On the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, here are four Bulletin stories that have endured—and one that shows Chernobyl’s story may always be a work in progress.

Many countries are exploring advanced nuclear reactors as a solution to the climate crisis. However, the proliferation of small reactors may heighten the risk of wartime attacks like those witnessed in the Russia-Ukraine war.

This Roundtable has highlighted very clearly the biggest problem faced by many journalists who cover nuclear issues. Journalists, who want only to fulfill their duty to inform the public, often find themselves in a battle with officials who believe that important national objectives can be advanced by hiding or distorting information. In these situations it … Continued

There are real reasons to be alert to the possibility of a dirty bomb at or near the Olympics.

En esta Mesa Redonda ha sido muy evidente el problema que enfrentan muchos periodistas que cubren temas nucleares. Los periodistas que sólo quieren cumplir con su deber de informar al público, a menudo enfrentan una batalla con funcionarios que piensan que los objetivos nacionales importantes se pueden alcanzar al esconder o distorsionar la información. En … Continued

En esta Mesa Redonda ha sido muy evidente el problema que enfrentan muchos periodistas que cubren temas nucleares. Los periodistas que sólo quieren cumplir con su deber de informar al público, a menudo enfrentan una batalla con funcionarios que piensan que los objetivos nacionales importantes se pueden alcanzar al esconder o distorsionar la información. En … Continued

Over the past month, as this roundtable has unfolded, South Asia has sometimes seemed on the brink of war. On September 18, in the Uri attack, militants killed 18 Indian soldiers in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Afterwards, New Delhi and Islamabad went back and forth about whether India responded to the attack with surgical strikes on Pakistani … Continued

Russia’s proposal to create yet another international treaty dealing with chemical and biological weapons doesn’t seem to properly address existing problems and runs the risk of creating fragmentation and legal uncertainties.

With all due respect to scientists and peer-reviewed journals, the notion espoused on the roundtable on September 22 that facts are only facts if uttered by a scientist or published in a peer-reviewed journal is foolish on its face. To help along those who might miss the real-world forest for the footnoted trees, here are … Continued

Today, at the other end of the long trek down the glacier of the Cold War, the nuclear threat has seemingly calved off and fallen into the sea. In 2007, the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project found that 12 countries rated the growing gap between rich and poor as the greatest danger to the world. HIV/AIDS led the list (or tied) in 16 countries, religious and ethnic hatred in another 12. Pollution was identified as the greatest menace in 19 countries, while substantial majorities in 25 countries thought global warming was a "very serious" problem.

How do we get our arguments out and win? That’s the million-dollar question, and a question that we’re right to continually strategize around. But in this regard, I’ve noticed two mistaken notions: (1) Believing that if we make a sufficiently clear moral and legal case against nuclear weapons, people will automatically flock to our banner; … Continued

The deal reached in Vienna is a tremendous success, but Tehran still faces economic and political problems at home

Of all the international nuclear-related challenges facing Israel, the most urgent and important is the possibility of a nuclear Iran.1 Israel's intense response to Iran tells us much about Israel's own existential predicament. The consensus in Israel is that the advent of a nuclear Iran, albeit depending on what this would mean exactly, would pose an unprecedented threat to Israel. For the first time, Israel would confront a hostile state in the region that possesses nuclear weapons.

Rose Gottemoeller, the former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, and Manpreet Sethi, a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, join Bulletin leadership.

Along with the risks of war triggered by escalation along the Line of Control in Kashmir or by attacks on Indian cities by Islamist militants backed by Pakistan, a new source of conflict between Pakistan and India has emerged, also centered on Kashmir. It is a struggle over access to and control over the water in the rivers that start as snow and glacial meltwater in the Himalayas and pass through Kashmir on their way to Pakistan as the Indus River Basin, ending in the Arabian Sea.

India and Pakistan are ultimately responsible for resolving their own crises, but the nuclearization of the subcontinent has internationalized their disputes. South Asian tensions are no longer just a regional matter because of the potentially catastrophic global humanitarian consequences of a nuclear exchange in South Asia. In my second roundtable essay I argued that Washington's … Continued

With Yucca Mountain dead and climate action resurrected, Biden has an opportunity to take a fresh run at America’s nuclear waste problem.

A talk with Princeton University's Zia Mian, recently honored with the American Physical Society's Leo Szilard Lectureship Award.