Nuclear security

Report: U.S., Russia Slowly Reducing Nuclear Arsenals

A Sweden-based nonproliferation think tank says the world’s biggest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, are slowing reducing their nuclear arsenals but are modernizing their capacities.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says in its annual report on June 13 that there were 455 fewer nuclear warheads at the start of 2016 among nine nuclear states than a year earlier.

It said the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea had a total of 15,395 nuclear warheads at the start of 2016, including 4,120 that were deployed operationally.

It said the total number of nuclear warheads in those countries at the start of 2015 was 15,850.

Researchers Shannon Kile and Hans Kristensen wrote in the report that global nuclear-weapon inventories "have been declining since they peaked at nearly 70,000 nuclear warheads in the mid-1980s."