No matter how hard we’d like to forget about them, nuclear weapons just don’t seem to go away.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence is coming under fire for plans to refurbish its aging fleet of ballistic missile submarines. A report from the National Audit Office, an independent parliamentary watchdog, says that the MoD’s current timetable has “little scope for contingency” and fails to account for possible cost increases due to currency fluctuations between UK shipyards and US parts suppliers.

Across the pond, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated his belief that the US needs to develop a new generation of “more reliable” nuclear weapons. The Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) would supposedly be built without testing, maintaining nuclear expertise in the nation’s weapons labs and, ultimately, leading to a new generation of bombs that can last longer without being used.

The UK is also quietly mulling its own version of the RRW, which they call the High Surety Warhead, but in a hearing in the House of Commons, Defence Secretary John Hutton denied that any active design work was underway at Aldermaston, the UK’s nuclear weapon’s laboratory in Berkshire.

Image: Lockheed Martin