On Vladimir Putin’s order, the Russian army launched a new invasion of Ukraine in February.  That has inflicted tragedy on Ukrainians but, seven months later, has also proved a catastrophe for Russia.  By all appearances, Putin remains fixed on his war of choice, now betting the West’s will to support Ukraine will ebb with time.  The West should ensure that that becomes another one of his grievous miscalculations.

A War Gone Awry

On February 24, Russian forces attacked Ukraine from the north, east and south.  The assault vectors suggested they sought to occupy Kyiv and as much as the eastern two-thirds of Ukraine.  Staunch resistance drove the Russians back from the capital.  By early April, Russian forces had withdrawn from Kyiv and the north, though they occupied parts of southern Ukraine.  Moscow then proclaimed the downsized goal of taking Donbas, consisting of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, parts of which Russian and Russian proxy forces had occupied since 2014.

After more than three months of grinding fighting, the Russian army held most of Luhansk oblast.  In July, the Russians turned their military efforts to Donetsk oblast but made scant progress.  Western experts begin speaking of the Russian army’s “culmination”—the point where the combination of casualties (particularly of experienced personnel), loss of equipment, troop exhaustion and low morale make it difficult for a force to sustain a coherent offensive.

After six months of fighting, the conflict seemed to have become a war of attrition.  However, the Ukrainians launched a counteroffensive in Kherson, aimed at driving Russian forces from the only area west of the Dnipro River that they occupied.  They then struck in the Kharkiv region, routing Russian forces and liberating more than 2000 square miles in the first two weeks of September.  While the Russian military continues to occupy large swathes of Ukraine, the tide of war has shifted in Kyiv’s favor, as poor leadership, tactics and logistics hamper Russian forces.

Growing Losses for Russia

The war has meant heavy losses for Russia, first and foremost in its military ranks.  In mid-August, Western intelligence estimated that 15,000-25,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in action and another 45,000-60,000 wounded (the Russians have not reported casualty numbers since March).  These totals have certainly grown over the past month.  The Russian military has also lost substantial amounts of equipment, including confirmed losses of 1100 tanks, 1200 infantry fighting vehicles and thousands of other items.  The Russian defense budget will require many years to replace that equipment, and the Russian army increasingly must make do with older weapons, such as T-62 tanks first produced five decades ago.  Russian arms exporters will likely find that the Russian brand has lost much of its luster with overseas customers.

Western sanctions are exacting a growing economic price.  While the Central Bank of Russia has managed the crisis well, inflation still ran at a hefty 14 percent in September.  In August, the Central Bank reported that the Russian economy had contracted by 4 percent since 2021.  A confidential study purportedly done for the Kremlin provided a grim outlook, projecting an “inertial” scenario of the economy’s contraction bottoming out in 2023 at 8.3 percent below its 2021 level.  The European Union’s coming embargo on most imports of Russian oil and the G7’s planned price cap could significantly cut the revenues that Moscow earns from oil exports.

The West’s ban on export of semiconductors and other high tech products affects both Russia’s defense and civilian manufacturing sectors, and the impact will grow with time.  Since the beginning of the war, more than 1000 multinational companies have exited Russia altogether or substantially curtailed operations there.  There is also brain drain, with tens of thousands of IT specialists reported to have left the country.

Russia has also incurred steep geopolitical costs.  NATO is reenergized, and almost all members are increasing their defense spending.  Putin and the Kremlin did not like the small multinational battlegroups that NATO deployed as trip-wire forces in the Baltic states in 2015; they will like even less the scaled-up contingents being deployed there now.  And the entry of Finland and Sweden into the Alliance will make the Baltic Sea, in effect, a NATO lake.

In sum, Putin’s war has cost Russia much.

Disaster and Dilemma

A series of miscalculations led Putin to this disaster.  The Kremlin apparently did not believe the Ukrainians would resist and expected a quick victory.  Some invading Russian units crossed the border with only two-three days of food rations.  The Kremlin overestimated the might of its military.  Anecdotal reports, such as one that T-80 tank reactive armor was filled with rubber instead of an explosive charge, suggest that corruption, endemic in Russia, has not left the defense sector untouched.  The Kremlin also apparently did not expect NATO’s sharp response, the decisions by Finland and Sweden to seek to join the Alliance, the Western flow of arms to Kyiv, or the scale of economic sanctions.

Russia itself is not yet in crisis.  The economy, while grappling with growing problems, has not broken down, and the Russian military retains formidable capabilities.  But the Kremlin faces a far more difficult situation than it imagined in January, and it will get worse.

Whether Putin fully grasps this is an open question.  On September 7, he said that “we [Russia] have not lost anything and will not lose anything,” a bizarre assessment that the many thousands of Russian families who have lost loved ones in Ukraine surely do not share.  Russian officials have indicated that Kremlin conditions for ending the war remain unchanged from the total capitulation they demanded at the start.  Following a September 13 phone call with Putin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz noted “there was no indication that new attitudes are emerging.”

Putin faces limits in continuing the war, some self-imposed.  He termed the invasion a “special military operation” (calling it a “war” in Russia can lead to jail time), and he has sought to minimize the scale of the conflict in the eyes of the Russian public.  Despite heavy casualties, the Kremlin officials say they are “not discussing” mobilization.  Russia instead has scrapped the age limit for contract soldiers while scouring prisons for volunteers.  Calls outside the Kremlin have increased for a major mobilization.  However, that could alarm the broader Russian public, who will fear their sons will be drafted and sent to fight.  In any case, it would take considerable time to train new units and equip them with modern arms.

Putin’s Big Bet

The Ukrainian military may well rack up further gains before winter, when the pace of fighting should slow, but the war will continue for some time.  The question:  will the growing economic pain and agonizing flow of dead and injured soldiers home erode the Russian will to fight, or will a weak economy and lack of weapons and ammunition erode Ukraine’s ability to defend itself?

The West has a say in this.  If it continues to provide the arms and financial support the Ukrainians need, their military has the resolve to prevail and defeat the Russian invasion.  Putin is betting, however, that Western support will falter.  He hopes the rising price of energy and costs of assisting Ukraine will undermine European and U.S. support for Kyiv.

The West must stay the course and show Putin his bet is a loser.

The Russian nuclear saber-rattling that has accompanied the invasion of Ukraine represents a level of nuclear risk unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. One wonders how global nuclear politics will adapt to these changing circumstances. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war poses major challenges for several core international institutions and issues, from the upcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference to President Biden’s proposed arms control efforts with Russia and China. Read more at thebulletin.org

A vast array of critical new technologies rely on rare earth metals, a group of elements that are difficult to mine because they are so well dispersed in the earth and often contain radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium.

Over the last 20 years, demand for these elements in the U.S. has increased while domestic supply and production have fallen off. And globally, the supply chain is tightly controlled by just a few countries.

To explore the significant challenges created by this imbalanced supply chain, Gorakh Pawar, a visiting scholar at CISAC, and CISAC Co-Director Rod Ewing edited “Rare Earth Elements in Material Science,” a special theme issue of the MRS Bulletin, a journal of the Materials Research Society.

“With China's rapid rise and the reemergence of Russia as a major power, the global stage is set for multipolar competition to secure the critical materials supply chains and control the rare earth elements (REE) derived high-end products and relevant technologies,” Ewing and Pawar write in the introduction to the issue.

The issue includes six articles that delve into the material science aspects of the rare earth elements supply chain. Researchers from Australia, Germany, Korea and the US contributed articles on mineralogy, separation and extraction, mining economics and the environmental impact of rare earth element mining.

“REE recycling is no longer just a choice, but it has become necessary in a world where resources are constrained,” Pawar and Ewing write.

The MRS Bulletin includes recommendations that the US and other countries can follow to reduce dependence on China for rare earth elements.

The March issue of the MRS Bulletin can be found here. 

A recent study has found small modular reactors (SMRs) may actually produce more radioactive waste than larger conventional nuclear power reactors has drawn reaction from vendors and supporters of SMRs.

Small modular reactors are often described as nuclear energy’s future. Nuclear power can generate electricity with limited greenhouse gas emissions, but large reactor plants are expensive, and they also create radioactive waste that pose a threat to people and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. In an attempt to address this challenge, the nuclear industry is developing smaller reactors that industry analysts say will be cheaper, safer and yield less radioactive waste than the larger ones.

The study on SMRs noted above was conducted by Lindsay Krall, lead author and a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and co-authors Allison Macfarlane, professor and director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, and Rodney Ewing, the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford and co-director of CISAC.

Summing up their findings, Krall wrote in the study, “Our results show that most small modular reactor (SMR) designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 per unit of energy generated for the reactors in our case study. These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”

In a recent interview, Krall, Macfarlane and Ewing elaborated on the fuller context of and industry reaction to their study:

What have you learned from publishing this research?

Lindsay Krall: I would like to emphasize the positive responses to this article, particularly among experts in Europe’s nuclear waste management and disposal community, who found the results surprising and very important. It appears that the article has swiftly brought the discussion of SMR waste issues (or lack thereof) to the forefront and attracted the attention of decision- and policy-makers in certain European countries. This makes me hopeful that the results of this study and follow-up research will have a real-world impact and improve the viability of nuclear energy, at least in Europe.

Nevertheless, it is also apparent that the scarcity of practical expertise in nuclear waste management in the U.S., exacerbated by the 12 year-long absence of a waste management and disposal strategy, may make it difficult for the results of the study to reach policy- and decision-makers here.

Did your research involve contacting NuScale for information or clarifications regarding NuScale fuel burnup. If yes or no, please describe why?

Lindsay Krall: As part of the background research to the study, I attended advanced nuclear events around Washington, D.C., where I discussed the study with vendors, NGOs, university researchers, national laboratories, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The reactor certification application that NuScale had already submitted to the NRC contained much of the information needed to estimate and characterize the waste streams for their reactor, with the exception of the fuel burnup, which was redacted.  In an attempt to obtain the fuel burnup, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NRC, but the burnup was not released. Therefore, I calculated the burnup as described in the appendix that was published with the article.

Why was the 160 MWth NuScale iPWR design chosen for study?

Lindsay Krall: The design certification application submitted to and reviewed by the NRC provided a comprehensive, high quality dataset for the iPWR analysis. In general, the analysis aimed to assess SMR designs that are undergoing or have undergone the regulatory approval process, rather than hypothetical future SMR designs that might be achievable provided significant technical or policy breakthroughs. Although the industry tends to market the benefits of SMRs around the latter “ideal” designs, these are not as “technologically ready” as the certified designs. Therefore, SMR vendors have levied some unfair criticism against this study, because the article and its accompanying appendix clearly state our preference for NRC-reviewed designs.

Please describe the challenges of completing your analysis in light of the lack of access to relevant design specifications?

Allison Macfarlane: It’s essential that quantitative analyses of waste production and management for new reactor designs be completed.  Our paper was an attempt to do so in an open way, to provide the beginning of the discussion of this issue.  Availability of quality data to do such analyses, especially by independent academic researchers, such as ourselves, will improve public confidence in small modular reactors.

What is your response to NuScale’s claim that its 250-MWt design does not produce more spent nuclear fuel than the small quantities typically observed in the existing light-water reactor fleet?

Rod Ewing: The fundamental point is that the information on the design and operational parameters for the 250MWth have not yet been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Our understanding is that the application will be submitted in December of this year. When the required data are available, then it will be possible to do the analysis.

What responsibility do the vendors, who are proposing and receiving federal support to develop advanced reactors, have in addressing concerns about the waste and conducting research that can be reviewed in open literature settings?

Allison Macfarlane: Vendors should have first-hand knowledge of all issues associated with their reactor designs.  These include waste production, of course (and all wastes – low-, intermediate-, and high-level), as well as fuel supply issues, supply chain issues, awareness of security challenges, and proliferation hazards (one assumes they understand safety issues already).  Many of these designers are early in their progress towards one day making their reactors a reality and so, perhaps, the blanks will be filled.  It will be important to do so transparently and in dialogue with other experts and the public to ensure public support of this technology.

What were your most significant findings in this research that people and the nuclear industry should be aware of?

Rod Ewing: The most important point of our paper is that with different reactor designs with new and more complex fuels and coolants, there will be an impact on the approaches that are required for the safe, final disposal of fuels and activated materials. Of particular significance is that at this time the United States has no long-term strategy for dealing with its highly radioactive waste streams, even from its present reactor fleet.

What have you learned from the reaction to this paper?

Rod Ewing: That many of the negative comments have been misplaced in that our paper has been taken as being anti-nuclear. Our paper had a simple purpose, that is to understand the implications of SMRs for the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly for the permanent and safe disposal of nuclear wastes from SMRs. Although the question is a reasonable and an obvious question to ask, I now understand that it was an unwelcomed question to pose. We have been criticized for not seeing and acknowledging the bigger picture – the role of nuclear power in reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and instead focusing only on the nuclear waste issue. I see no reason why a paper about nuclear waste and disposal should also be a cheerleader for nuclear power. These are really two separate issues.

Another surprise was the lack of a technical response. Letters were written to the editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (which published the study), but these letters were not copied to the authors. Letters appeared on the web, but were not copied to the authors. This was a public relations response not a technical, scientific response. Public relations may win the day, but I do not think that this builds public confidence in nuclear power. The public has to see that important issues are discussed openly and in a way that converges on solutions rather than polarized positions.

There was one important, bright spot during the past week. Jose Reyes (chief technology officer and co-founder) of NuScale published his letter to the editor of PNAS in the Nuclear Newswire of the American Nuclear Society. We prepared a response to Dr. Reyes and submitted it to Nuclear Newswire, and it was accepted and published promptly on June 13.  This effort to foster discussion certainly reflects well on the American Nuclear Society.

Any other points?

Allison Macfarlane: I would like to emphasize a point Lindsay Krall made: no country has an operating geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel yet.  A few countries are moving in that direction, but the U.S. has fallen to the back of the pack in this regard.  The U.S. is at a stalemate with regards to developing a deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste and is largely uninterested in solving this problem.  Since a waste issue essentially brought us the climate catastrophe, is it responsible to ignore the waste problem from another energy source?

The 12th main directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense operates a dozen central storage facilities for nuclear weapons. Known as “Object S” sites and scattered across the Russian Federation, they contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with a wide variety of explosive yields. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. Read more at The Atlantic.

The June 16, 2021 meeting in Geneva between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a positive impulse to a bilateral U.S.-Russia relationship that was plumbing post-Cold War depths. Both sides made modest progress in the following months, only to be wholly derailed by Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine. It will be a long time before the U.S.-Russia relationship can approach anything that resembles “normal.”

Early on in the Biden presidency in 2021, administration officials made clear their readiness to push back against Russian overreach, including with the use of additional sanctions. At the same time, they noted the value of guardrails to keep in check the adversarial aspects of the relationship. Less than one week after Biden took office, he and Putin agreed to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to 2026.

Read the rest at brookings.edu.

During a period of greater hope for Russia tempered by uncertainties, President Bill Clinton sought both to enlarge NATO and build a strategic partnership between the Alliance and Moscow. As part of his National Security Council staff, we three worked on the approach that produced the 1997 “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” It formalized a NATO-Russia relationship that we thought of as a potential “alliance with the Alliance” and contained security assurances for Moscow.

While the Founding Act produced tangible results in its early years, Europe today faces an aggressive, revanchist Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions have destroyed the basis for cooperation. NATO should suspend the Founding Act and, in particular, renounce its assurance regarding the stationing of conventional forces on the territory of new member states.

Read the rest at The Hill

In 1999 Nina Tannenwald, a political scientist at Brown University, wrote a paper analysing something she had observed among generals, politicians and strategists: the “nuclear taboo”. This was not, she argued, simply a matter of general queasiness or personal moral qualms; it had important consequences. The lack of nuclear wars in the years since America’s destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she argued, was not simply a matter of deterrence. It had also relied on a growing sense of the innate wrongness of nuclear weapons putting their use beyond the pale.

Read the rest at The Economist