If you want to get a nuclear-powered submarine refitted, repaired or refuelled in Britain, there is only one place to go – Devonport dockyard in Plymouth, the biggest naval base in Western Europe.
Running across more than six kilometres of waterfront, the dockyard has been part of the landscape for generations. It dominates the western edge of the South West England city, encased by high fenced walls, security cameras and warning signs about police dogs and potential arrest for ‘unauthorized activity’.
The main refit and maintenance area is owned and operated by British defence company Babcock International, which in 2024 made $1,273 million in revenue from nuclear weapons work.1 In 2025, it celebrated a 51 per cent surge in profit.2
But Plymouth itself has not seen the same boost. ‘Most of the money generated goes out of the city,’ says local campaigner Tony Staunton, who is also the vice chair of the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Authorities say that Devonport generates around 10 per cent of Plymouth’s income, but neighbourhoods next to the dockyard remain among the poorest five per cent in the country.3,4
Devonport doesn’t just work on operational nuclear submarines, it is also a ‘graveyard’ for retired ones. Twelve out of the 16 decommissioned submarines at Devonport are still carrying their fuel – effectively a stockpile of nuclear waste.5
Over the last 30 years, at least 10 serious radioactive leaks have been documented at Devonport, and chemicals like plutonium, americium and tritium have been found on the Plymouth coastline, including at a wildlife reserve close to the dockyard.6,7 Staunton says he has met former dockworkers with cancer who are convinced that their illnesses date back to the time they worked at Devonport, but a ‘culture of secrecy’ about any negative impact of the docks pervades over this military city.
Local authorities have taken steps to prepare for a serious radiation leak at the dockyard, which is within a residential area. An investigation by Declassified UK found that in 2018 the Ministry of Defence distributed 60,900 iodine tablets to schools, emergency services and healthcare settings in local areas.8
Nuclear-powered submarines are not only able to carry warheads; they are an essential part of the nuclear warfare infrastructure. And, as the British government jumps with both feet into the nuclear arms race, Devonport is key. The facility is set to receive £4.4 billion (just over $5 billion) in government investment over the next 10 years.9
In 2024 the UK spent a larger percentage of its military budget (13 per cent) on nuclear weapons than any other country.1 The 2025 Strategic Defence Review described them as ‘the bedrock of the UK’s defence and the cornerstone of its commitment to NATO and global security’.10
As the world becomes more insecure, nuclear-armed states are reaffirming commitments to the most destructive weapons humans have developed
The race is on
As the world becomes more insecure, nuclear-armed states are reaffirming commitments to the most destructive weapons humans have developed. During the first six months of 2025, five nuclear-armed countries were engaged in military hostilities or outright war.11 And, after decades of decline, the trend of more retired nuclear warheads being dismantled than new ones being deployed looks set to be reversed.
Nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states (US, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) have been busy modernizing and growing their arsenal. Over the past five years global spending on nuclear weapons increased by just over 32 per cent, with the US and UK’s spending rising by 45 and 43 per cent respectively between 2019 and 2023.1 One year of global nuclear weapons spending could feed 45 million people in danger of famine for 13 years.12
Meanwhile, nuclear-armed states are dialling up confrontational rhetoric. The threat posed by nuclear weapons was one of the factors leading the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to reset their ‘Doomsday Clock’ to 89 seconds to midnight in 2025 – the closest it has been in its 78-year history. ‘Continuing on the current path is a form of madness,’ the scientists’ statement said. ‘The United States, China and Russia have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink.’13
It seems that they weren’t listening. In August, in an escalation of a war of words between former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and US president Donald Trump, the latter said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to ‘be positioned in the appropriate regions’, presumably within reach of Russia.14 In October Russia claimed to have successfully tested the nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable Burevestnik cruise missile and the Poseidon underwater drone.15 It has previously been claimed that the Burevestnik could be ‘based anywhere in Russia and still be able to reach targets in the continental US’.16
Both the US and Russia have threatened to restart nuclear testing, despite the devastating legacy of such tests (see page 30) and the aims of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Russia revoked its ratification in 2023 and the US has never ratified it.15 ‘It’s short of threatening to directly use nuclear weapons,’ says CND chair Tom Unterrainer of the exchanges. ‘It’s about projecting power and signalling to your adversaries that we are ready to use these things.’
New START – the last remaining agreement limiting Russian and US deployed nuclear warheads – expires in 2026 unless renewed.
The war in Ukraine has also heightened nuclear anxiety. CND general secretary Sophie Bolt is concerned that the conflict is being prolonged by the world’s two biggest nuclear powers. ‘I think that it’s becoming more and more evident that that’s a proxy war… all the effort is going into rearmament, provocation and whipping up tensions. Where is the effort going into dialogue, and how to resolve that conflict and bring it to an end?’ More than 14,534 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion.16
At the centre of these tensions is the US, with its massive military might but waning political power. CND chair Tom Unterrainer argues that the US seeks to ‘redraw the nuclear order to its own advantage... massively increasing the risk of nuclear war’.
In 2021 it was estimated that there were 100 US-owned nuclear weapons stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Finland and Sweden have also entered into bilateral defence agreements which grant the US the right to station troops and weapons on their soil, signalling their openness to hosting nuclear weapons during wartime.17 It has also been widely reported that US nuclear weapons are now stationed in Britain for the first time since 2008, in Lakenheath, Suffolk, although the government is unlikely ever to officially confirm it.
Experts warn that states are becoming increasingly secretive about their nuclear weapons.18 Israel is perhaps one of the least transparent, maintaining a policy of nuclear ambiguity despite widely accepted evidence that it began developing nukes shortly after its founding in 1948. Israel has collaborated with several other countries’ nuclear programmes, including that of apartheid South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s (see page 38), ‘conditioned by a perceived common threat in the rise of post-colonial nationalism that drew the two states together’.19
‘You’ve got a nuclear-armed state that is carrying out a genocide, breaching international law – completely outside of any kind of international norms,’ says Bolt. ‘When you look at what Israel is capable of doing, why would it not use its nuclear weapons? If a country can get away with carrying out a genocide in full view, then what’s the next taboo?’
The myth of deterrent
They’re for our own protection. That’s how nuclear weapons are framed by the governments and arms companies that depend on them. They are said to deter attacks – the threat of annihilation is what will save us. And if a potential political leader refuses to say they will press the ‘nuclear button’ they are considered ‘weak’.
But as the threat of nuclear war looms closer, keeping up this illusion requires effort. Britain’s latest Strategic Defence Review recommended a PR campaign ‘that conveys the fundamental importance and necessity of the deterrent’.10
As described by Peace Science Digest: ‘Nuclear weapons are loaded with symbolism – of potency, protection and the power to “deter” ... such symbolism obscures the real point of the existence of these arms – to destroy’.20
Challenging this is essential. And there is plenty of evidence that the endgame will be catastrophic.
Nuclear weapons have been used in war twice, when the US bombed Japan in 1945. A uranium bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August, then three days later a plutonium bomb hit Nagasaki. More than 200,000 people were killed, but the true death toll is impossible to know.21
Mikio, who was then 13, emerged from his house in Hiroshima after the initial blast and saw a world of horror. ‘You couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Their faces were such a mess. The heat had shrivelled their hair making it stand on end,’ he told the BBC 80 years later.21
Nearly a quarter of Hiroshima’s residents were killed instantly, and in Nagasaki around 40,000 of 240,000 citizens died on impact.21 Many later succumbed to burns and the effects of toxic radiation.
Casualties from a major nuclear war between the US and Russia would reach hundreds of millions
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are considered ‘low-yield’ by modern standards. International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) estimates that casualties from a major nuclear war between the US and Russia would reach hundreds of millions.22 The use of less than one per cent of the world’s nuclear arsenal could disrupt the climate and threaten two billion people with starvation.22
Escalations in global conflict continue despite the existence of nuclear weapons. ‘This concept of nuclear deterrence is really a faith belief system – that having nuclear weapons is necessary to make sure they’re not used,’ says Alicia Sanders-Zakre, policy and research coordinator at ICAN. ‘As long as this theory continues to hold value within the political establishment of nuclear armed states, it’s not possible to get rid of nuclear weapons.’
One example raised in favour of nuclear weapons as a deterrent is Ukraine, which in 1994 gave up the USSR-owned nuclear weapons on its soil in return for security guarantees from the US, Britain, France, China and Russia.23 If it hadn’t, would Ukraine still have been invaded by Russia?
Sanders-Zakre dismisses this idea, highlighting that nuclear weapons have not always protected countries from attack. ‘Ukraine actually never had operational control over these weapons,’ she says. Several of Ukraine’s allies do have nuclear weapons, but that did not stop the invasion.
Building the movement
‘Countries that have nuclear weapons still continue to integrate them into their security doctrines,’ explains Sanders-Zakre. They ‘see them as essential tools of security, and that makes it very difficult to go from simply reducing numbers to zero.’
Overall, the world has far fewer nuclear weapons today than in the mid-1980s, largely due to the anti-nuclear movement that emerged following World War Two and resurged during the Cold War.
People power has won key treaties and agreements to limit the testing and development of nuclear weapons, from international ones like the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty to regional examples like the Treaty of Tlatelolco which established a nuclear-weapon-free Latin America and Caribbean.
While disarmament was not achieved, these mass movements certainly succeeded in slowing the race.
One of the most debated international agreements is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970, focused on limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Five countries – Britain, the US, Russia, China and France – already had nuclear weapons at the time. The NPT is criticised for its focus on non-proliferation over disarmament, entrenching the power of those five states. ‘Though presented as steps to disarmament, their over-riding purpose was to safeguard the interests of the major nuclear possessors,’ wrote activist and disarmament expert Rebecca Johnson in 2016.24
Today, as the British government itself admits, ‘the future of strategic arms control ...does not look promising’.10 But civil society has got behind the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which makes acquiring, proliferating, deploying, testing, transferring, using and threatening to use nukes illegal.
‘TPNW is really significant,’ explains Sanders-Zakre. A nuclear-armed state joining it must agree to a time-bound programme for eliminating its arsenal.
‘I think we see how powerful these treaties are in how nuclear-armed countries react to them,’ says Sanders-Zakre. ‘We saw a really concerted effort by the US, France, Russia and other nuclear-armed countries to stop the TPNW from even being negotiated… if this treaty didn’t have any impact, didn’t challenge nuclear armed states and their ability to maintain their arsenals in some way, they wouldn’t bother.’
Thanks to the decades-long anti-nuclear weapons movement, less than five per cent of countries have developed nuclear weapons.1 ‘They are the minority. They are the outlaws,’ says Sanders-Zakre. ‘The fact is, most countries have chosen not to get these weapons.’ Half of the world’s nations have signed, ratified or acceded to the TPNW.1
In order to build a future where nuclear weapons are a thing of the past, fully delegitimized and dismantled, we need to build coalitions. We need a strong global movement united by a commitment to a safer world (see page 41). ‘Nobody is coming to save us, no government,’ says Unterrainer. ‘It’s about building movements with a clear understanding of what’s going on, which can join up strategically and tactically together to push forwards. Because we haven’t got time for the egos to sort themselves out.’
- Alicia Sanders-Zakre and Susi Snyder, ‘Hidden costs: Nuclear weapons spending in 2024’, ICAN, June 2025, a.nin.tl/hid
- Babcock, ‘Babcock announces preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2025’, 25 June 2025, a.nin.tl/result
- Ministry of Defence, ‘Royal Navy's nuclear submarine support facility upgraded’, UK Government, 12 September 2024, a.nin.tl/navy
- UK Government, ‘Deprivation in England’, 2025, a.nin.tl/imd
- Navy Lookout, ‘Babcock awarded contract to begin defueling decommissioned nuclear submarines stored at Devonport’, 5 June 2025, a.nin.tl/look
- CND, ‘CND and Plymouth residents protest Britain’s nuclear weapons at Devonport Dockyard and say “Invest in Peace not Nukes”’, 5 June 2025, a.nin.tl/devon
- CND, ‘Devonport naval base’s nuclear role’, December 2019, a.nin.tl/brief
- Phil Miller, ‘Radiation pills distributed in nuclear submarine ports’, Declassified UK, 18 January 2022, a.nin.tl/ports
- Plymouth City Council, ‘Plymouth commissions strategic economic research to prepare for once-in-a-generation investment’, 2 June 2025, a.nin.tl/prepare
- Ministry of Defence, ‘The Strategic Defence Review 2025 – Making Britain Safer: secure at home, strong abroad’, UK Government, 8 July 2025, a.nin.tl/sdr
- Jon Letman, ‘Threat of Nuclear War Is Rising, But Scientists Say the Public Can Change That’, Truthout, 4 August 2025, a.nin.tl/pub
- ICAN, ‘Get the facts’, a.nin.tl/get
- Adam Dombovari, ‘Doomsday Clock set at 89 seconds to midnight, closest ever to human extinction’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 28 January 2025, a.nin.tl/clock
- Jaroslav Lukiv, ‘Trump moves nuclear submarines after Russian ex-president's comments’, BBC News, 1 August 2025, a.nin.tl/moves
- Georgia Cole, ‘Russia and the US put nuclear testing back on the table. Is time running out for arms control?’, Chatham House, 11 November 2025, a.nin.tl/table
- Jake Lapham, ‘Russia says it has tested nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile’, BBC News, 26 October 2025, a.nin.tl/says
- United Nations, ‘Ukrainian civilian casualties rise 27 per cent compared to last year’, 12 November 2025, a.nin.tl/rise
- Hans M Kristensen and Matt Korda, ‘World nuclear forces’, in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2025: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, Oxford University Press, Oxford, a.nin.tl/forces
- Julian Schofield, ‘Israel and South Africa – Nuclear Collaboration’, in Strategic Nuclear Sharing, Global Issues Series, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014, a.nin.tl/sharing
- Peace Science Digest, ‘Gender and Nuclear Weapons’, a.nin.tl/psc
- Jordan Dunbar, ‘What Happened at Hiroshima 80 years ago – BBC Africa’, BBC News Africa, 4 August 2025, a.nin.tl/80
- ICAN, ‘What happens if nuclear weapons are used?’, a.nin.tl/used
- Paul Adams, ‘Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Now it's asking why’, BBC News, 5 December 2024, a.nin.tl/asking
- Rebecca Johnson, ‘Ban the Bomb: from 1950s activism to the General Assembly, via Greenham Common’, in Civil society and disarmament 2016: Civil society engagement in disarmament processes, the case for a nuclear weapons ban, UNODA, 2016, a.nin.tl/johnson
