China leads nuclear powers in expanding atomic stockpiles in the last year

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Indicating the end of a 30-year trend toward reducing stockpiles of nuclear warheads, a new report shows that China took the lead among several countries which actively expanded their arsenals in the last year, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

In its annual report on the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Israel (which has not publicly acknowledged having an atomic bomb), the United States, the United Kingdom, and France did not expand their arsenals in the last year, TOI reports.

China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and North Korea did increase their stockpiles however, the SIPRI report said. China increased its arsenal by the most, from 350 to 410 warheads.

“We are approaching, or maybe have already reached, the end of a long period of the number of nuclear weapons worldwide declining,” Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said in a statement. “The stockpile is the usable nuclear warheads, and those numbers are beginning to tick up.”

While Smith noted the world’s nuclear stockpile is still far below what it was in the 1980s, he added: “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.”

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