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The number of nuclear stockpiles around the world is growing for the first time since 1986. China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are increasing their arsenals.

The United Kingdom has raised its limit on nuclear weapon holdings from 225 to 260.

Global nuclear stockpiles since 1945

*World data consists of total inventory (military and retired) of nuclear weapons. Country data shows only military stockpile numbers.
Source: Federation of American Scientists

Rob Green, the nuclear regulator at the Environment Agency, doesn’t expect the UK stockpile numbers to drop any time soon.

“The only time that would ever change is if UK government policy changed, and they said, ‘Well, you know what? We don’t need a nuclear weapon anymore.’” he says.

Countries are not dismantling as many weapons as they used to, although Russia and the US are still reducing their vast arsenals.

The UK is now prioritizing expansion "without much transparency" about what weapons remain operational versus those in storage, says Dave Cullen of BASIC, a nuclear disarmament think tank in London.

And as some countries increase their stockpiles, or slow down the rate at which they decommission, embattled Ukraine wants to take back the nuclear weapons it gave up when the Cold War was ending.

Ukraine had the world’s third-biggest nuclear arsenal in 1991 before giving up its weapons as part of an agreement by the US, UK and Russia.

Now, almost three quarters of Ukrainians want them back according to a 2024 study.

Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure in 1994

Source: "Inheriting the Bomb" by Mariana Budjeryn

Mariana Budjeryn, a specialist in Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament and doesn’t believe the arsenal would have prevented Russia’s invasion. But she says Ukraine could have protected itself better.

Ukraine scrapped its nuclear weapons "in the spirit of: Oh, let’s do non-proliferation and international security for everyone." she says.

U.S. President Clinton, Russian President Yeltsin, and Ukrainian President Kravchuk sign the Trilateral Agreement in Moscow, January 1994

Photo from William J. Clinton Presidential Library

The promises of the Budapest Memorandum

When Ukraine signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, it surrendered approximately 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the US, and the UK. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and later launched a full-scale invasion, Ukraine found itself with no nuclear deterrent against an aggressor that had pledged to respect its borders. In 2022, President Zelensky bitterly noted that allies had provided only a small amount of diesel fuel, "probably so that we can burn the Budapest Memorandum."

While many in Ukraine regret the loss of nuclear weapons, in Japan the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings eighty years ago are still warning against their use.

“We have to keep telling and recording our stories to let people know what happened” insists Satoshi Tanaka, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize winning survivor group Nihon Hidankyo.

Number of recognised survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, since 1957

Source: Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare

The 81-year-old survivor of Hiroshima is concerned that amid the rise of nuclear risk, the number of people who can tell stories of what happens when the weapons are used is dwindling.

Satoshi Tanaka

Photo provided by Satoshi Tanaka

Loss, Illness, Discrimination: the survivors' fate

Satoshi Tanaka was one year old when his mother brought him into the destroyed city of Hiroshima the day after the bombing. She took him with her to look for her parents and relatives who were living about 900m from the epicentre. In the immediate aftermath and in the years that followed he lost eleven members of his family. Survivors were also plagued by discrimination: when Satoshi was a student, a worried flatmate asked him if he was infectious. In his fifties, he was diagnosed with the first of what would be six cancers. Illness is a constant worry for survivors. And with the rising nuclear threat, Satoshi says “they are not old stories. It is continuing today”. There were over 370,000 in 1980. Now, there are only just over 100,000. “It is said that in ten years, there will be no survivors left”, says Satoshi.

Hiroshima after the atomic bombing in 1945

Hiroshima after the atomic bombing in 1945, from the National Archives Catalog

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This article was written as a part of the MSc. Computational and Data Journalism course at Cardiff University.

The authors would like to thank Rob Edwards, Rob Green, Dave Cullen, Satoshi Tanaka, and Mariana Budjeryn for their participation, and Aidan O'Donnell and Martin Chorley for their supervision and guidance.

Code available on Github

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