>Reports have since emerged that the U.S. government has been monitoring Russia’s tests of its still-in-development nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile,

>Reports have since emerged that the U.S. government has been monitoring Russia’s tests of its still-in-development nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, which the Kremlin says will be nuclear capable. These launches have occurred from Novaya Zemlya and would, by definition, involve a nuclear reactor smashing into the ground at the end of each test, whether it is successful or not. it sounds like real reactors. One would hope that it were mock-ups. Wrt. the nuke warheads testing - Russia being that behind in supercomputer capabilities which are required for simulation probably tries/looks for various sneaking approaches of actual testing. I mean all that glorious super-duper-"wunderwaffe" revealed by Putin in the last couple of years means nothing without working warheads. The improved delivery precision allowed US to produce even further yield tuned-down versions of W76 and W88 which normally would require actual testing and was done using simulation instead. The Russia seems to still stuck with the aging models of its warheads. It makes me wonder that there seems to be no stories on attempted export of HPC stuff to Russia similar to China https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/10/us_intel_china_ban/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/10/us_intel_china_ban/