Nuclear-armed states have continued to expand and modernize their atomic arsenals amid a deterioration of the world's geopolitical situation, investing huge sums of money diverted from other development goals, an influential think tank said in a report published on June 12.
While the total number of the nuclear warheads dipped year-on-year from 12,710 to 12,512, the number of nuclear weapons ready for use at the start of this year -- 9,576, accounting for about two-thirds of the total --grew last year by 86, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.
The report said that several of the nine nuclear-armed states -- the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel -- deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems last year.
As a matter of official policy, Israel has declined to comment on whether or not it possesses nuclear weapons.
Separately, a report also published on June 12 by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said the nine nuclear-armed states spent a total of $82.9 billion on nuclear weapons last year, with the United States alone accounting for more than half of the amount ($43.7 billion). Russia and China were the second- and third-ranked nuclear spenders with $11.7 billion and $9.6 billion in expenditures, respectively.
Russia and the United States together account for more than 90 percent of all the world's nuclear weapons, SIPRI said, adding that transparency about both countries' nuclear weapons declined since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
China has also substantially increased the number of nuclear warheads that it possesses -- from 350 to 410 year-on-year, SIPRI said.
After many years of a slow decline in the number of nuclear weapons, SIPRI said the trend is reversing.
"The big picture is we've had over 30 years of the number of nuclear warheads coming down, and we see that process coming to an end now," SIPRI Director Dan Smith told French news agency AFP.
