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ON 20 October, Donald Trump announced that the US intends to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (see “President Trump says the US will pull out of a nuclear treaty”). The treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, pictured above, destroyed a whole class of smallish ground-launched nuclear missiles, in many ways the most destabilising and dangerous of the lot.

Just as the world requires a massive rechannelling of resources towards reinventing industry, agriculture and energy to combat climate change, a new, expensive arms race looms.

The US’s complaints – that Russia has (probably) broken the treaty by building the things, and that China has a few hundred of them too – may be justified. But the US can easily defend against either threat with similar missiles launched from air or sea.

Hopes for a diplomatic resolution are thin. A diminished Russia, seeing in the treaty a symbol of its cold war defeat, is only too glad to see the US get the blame for ripping it up. US National Security advisor John Bolton is fanatically opposed to arms treaties that restrict the freedom of the US to act unilaterally.

Results could be far-reaching. If the treaty goes, the remaining big nuclear treaties that limit global proliferation could go too. That would end all international weapons inspections and free other countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, to weapon up. And if nuclear weapons, why not chemical and biological weapons, too (see “Inside the European Union’s high-tech nerve agent attack simulation”)?

On nukes, Trump calls on everyone to “get smart” and not develop these “horrible weapons” $1.4 trillion to developing new ones. His actions seem to stem from the ideology that we will only all be safe when everyone has a gun, writ large. Anything but a smart move.

This article appeared in print under the headline “End of an agreement”

NORTH KOREA may have made the first move to scrap its controversial nuclear weapons programme, according to new satellite images. The pictures were taken on 20 July and analysed by 38 North, a Washington DC think tank.

The images seem to show the dismantling of a building where space launch vehicles are prepared and a test stand where liquid-fuel engines are developed for ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. Both are integral to developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, says 38 North.

But US intelligence leaks earlier in July suggested that clandestine work to upgrade Pyongyang’s nuclear capability continues at the officially acknowledged Yongbyon nuclear enrichment facility, at two or more secret sites and at other facilities developing mobile launch vehicles for ballistic missiles.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “reaffirmed” his commitment to denuclearisation in a joint statement issued after his meeting with US President Donald Trump last month.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Is North Korea denuclearising?”

US President Donald Trump has left the 2015 deal that limited Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons. Although Iran has complied with every requirement of the (JCPOA), the US won’t keep its side of the agreement: Trump plans to re-impose heavy trade sanctions.

The other parties to the deal – the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia – still support it. But the threat of US penalties is expected to massively discourage firms from trade and investment in Iran, which could cause the JCPOA to collapse.

Under the deal, Iran is able to enrich uranium to a limited extent for use in nuclear power plants, but it cannot make highly enriched uranium, which could be used to make a bomb. Trump’s main complaint is that the stringent limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment end in 2031 – whereupon, says the US, it can resume making highly enriched uranium. But that ignores technology being developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency that could keep such safeguards in place beyond then.

“A lot of the JCPOA lasts forever,” says Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association in Washington DC. When extra-stringent inspections end in 2031, Iran switches back to normal IAEA monitoring rules under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In the past that monitoring, based on infrequent inspections, didn’t stop Iran covertly enriching uranium and working towards developing a bomb. But that may not be the case in the future.

Remote monitoring

The IAEA plans to update the rules for all countries in the treaty without nuclear weapons – not just Iran – to require secure, remote monitoring of the flow of uranium isotopes through enrichment plants. For that it is developing new, remote monitoring technology that should be ready by 2031.

One such monitoring system, developed at in Tennessee, has even debuted in Iran. The uses a gamma ray detector to measure U-235 – the isotope enriched in highly enriched uranium – in the gas passing between centrifuges in an enrichment plant.

Combining these readings with temperature and pressure sensors allows the system to determine how much the gas has been enriched. It could be stationed at the start and finish of an enrichment line. If it detects too much U-235, it is possible the plant is being used to create material for a weapon.

This monitor alone isn’t fool-proof. “It can be spoofed by adding or removing uranium at points in the process that are not monitored,” says of Princeton University.

Enrichment warning

But Goldston and his colleagues have modelled ways this could happen and say a under development could together provide near-real time warning if a plant operator tries to break the rules.

Load monitors being would let the IAEA measure how fast uranium enters and leaves the enrichment process, says Goldston. Tools being in Seattle automatically measure the mass in cylinders of material that enter and leave the plant. Together, these could account for all the uranium passing through enrichment. Cameras with pattern recognition focused on pipework and detectors for unusual neutrons, gamma rays or chemical release could also reveal illicit changes to the enrichment process.

All this can be made tamper-proof using technologies the IAEA has already developed for monitoring plants that store or reprocess spent nuclear fuel, ranging from , to backup electrical power so it cannot be unplugged. Data would be sent securely to the IAEA. Anything unusual could trigger an “unannounced access” inspection.

The technology isn’t quite ready yet. The 2031 JCPOA deadline would give the IAEA time to put such a stringent monitoring regime based on these devices in place, says Goldston. But if the deal collapses now, Iran will at best go back to the infrequent monitoring that allowed it to work on a bomb before – and will have little incentive to trust international promises again.