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“The Arms Control Association and all of the staff I've worked with over the years … have this ability to speak truth to power in a wide variety of venues.”
– Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment
June 2, 2022
April 2011
Edition Date: 
Friday, April 1, 2011
Cover Image: 

Iran Prepares Improved Centrifuges

Peter Crail

Iran intends to begin its first full-scale testing of its second-generation centrifuge models, according to a Feb. 25 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, a move that could allow Tehran to increase the rate at which it enriches uranium.

Even after the testing process, however, Iran would not be able to raise the rate significantly unless it were able to mass produce and operate new machines on a large scale. Current and former U.S. and IAEA officials said they doubted Iran maintained the capabilities to do that.

“Our understanding is that these advanced centrifuges are not yet ready for mass production,” Robert Einhorn, the Department of State’s special adviser for arms control and nonproliferation, said during a March 9 Arms Control Association briefing. “The Iranians don’t yet have sufficient confidence” in the new centrifuges to mass produce and operate them, he said.

Gas centrifuges spin at high speeds to increase the concentration of the fissile isotope uranium-235 from the levels found in natural uranium, a process called enrichment. Low-enriched uranium (LEU) commonly is used to fuel nuclear reactors while highly enriched uranium (HEU) can be used in the core of a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA report said that Iran informed the agency in January of its intention to install two 164-machine cascades of its newly developed centrifuges, called the IR-2m and the IR-4, at its pilot enrichment plant for testing. To date, Iran has tested these improved models only in cascades of up to 20 machines.

The cascades at Iran’s commercial-scale Natanz plant, where it produces its enriched uranium, operate in 164 linked machines using an older, crash-prone centrifuge model called the P-1.

An eventual move to make use of the new centrifuge models would likely increase Iran’s uranium-enrichment capacity. “The increase from 20- to 164-machine cascades for the second-generation centrifuges heightens concern that Iran may be on the edge of a breakthrough that would sharply reduce the timeline for HEU production,” Mark Fitzpatrick, former deputy assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, said in a March 21 e-mail.

Although the performance of Iran’s newer centrifuge models is unclear, former IAEA safeguards chief Olli Heinonen indicated in a March 2 presentation that the IR-2m has about three times the potential capacity of the P-1.

Tehran obtained the P-1 centrifuge, as well as the more advanced P-2 model, from the nuclear smuggling network run by Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan, who stole the designs from Europe. Both the IR-2m and IR-4 are believed to be derived from the P-2 machine. Iran developed other models based on the P-2, but has since abandoned them.

Iran’s decision to continue developing two different models of second-generation centrifuges might point to continued difficulties in their development and deployment. Fitzpatrick said that running the new designs in parallel “suggests that they have not yet ironed out all the bugs in either model.”

Heinonen said in a March 21 interview that Iran also may have decided to pursue both designs because of material constraints. He said he would not be surprised if Iran were to install both sets of machines for regular operations, expanding them as access to resources allowed.

Unlike the IR-2m, the IR-4 uses a key component called a bellows, made of carbon fiber, to connect multiple centrifuge rotors. Iranian technicians initially determined that they were unable to manufacture this sensitive part, opting instead for single-rotor machines such as the IR-2m. Iran appears to have overcome its initial difficulties in manufacturing bellows, but may still face constraints building them in sufficient numbers.

Last April, Iran unveiled what it called a third-generation centrifuge capable of enriching uranium five times faster than the P-1. Although Iranian officials said at the time that they would begin testing the machines within several months and might need a year to install a cascade, Iran has not conducted any work on this new model at its declared nuclear facilities. The February IAEA report said that Iran has not provided the agency with any information about the announced third-generation machine.

Iran has claimed to have carried out work on its P-2-based centrifuge designs intermittently since 1995, when it received the initial design and components from the Khan network. In 2006, Tehran announced that it was working on newer centrifuge models at undeclared sites, and in January 2008, it began testing these models at its pilot plant under IAEA safeguards. Since that time, Iran slowly has worked to develop and test its design modifications.

 “It’s taken quite a long time for [Iran] to graduate from the P-1’s to more advanced centrifuges,” Einhorn said at the March 9 event. He added that Iran’s delays in developing the newer machines “lengthened the amount of time in which Iran could ‘break out’ in a meaningful way,” referring to the process by which Iran might eject IAEA inspectors, leave the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and build nuclear weapons.

Einhorn suggested that it would not make sense for Iran to take those actions while relying on the P-1 centrifuge, “which produces material so inefficiently.”

Heinonen agreed, stating that the P-1’s design flaws were “technically obvious” and provided a poor route for quickly producing material for nuclear weapons. He said that Iran would need both a longer time frame to enrich uranium to weapons grade and more material if it decided to use the P-1, due to the amount of waste that would occur.

In an apparent attempt to address some of its problems with the P-1, Iran has expanded 12 of the 53 installed cascades at its commercial-scale Natanz plant to hold 174 machines, rather than 164, the recent IAEA report said. Heinonen indicated that doing so would reduce the impact of centrifuge failures, which lower the enrichment levels for the cascade.

The move follows Iran’s admission last fall that the commercial-scale enrichment facility had been infected with the Stuxnet virus, widely believed to have been an industrial sabotage effort by Western countries, including the United States. (See ACT, January/February 2011.) Iran’s acknowledgment coincided with a halt to centrifuge operations for a week in mid-November.

Continued IAEA Frustration

In addition to noting Iran’s intentions regarding its improved centrifuges, the IAEA report signaled continued frustration with Iran’s lack of cooperation with the agency. The report describes itself as “focus[ing] on areas where Iran has not fully implemented its binding obligations.” Fulfillment of those obligations “is needed to establish international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” the report says.

An annex to the report includes a detailed list of those obligations, which are drawn from Iran’s safeguards agreement with the agency and UN Security Council resolutions.

Iran claims that the council’s demands to suspend its sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle activities are illegal and that it is cooperating fully with the IAEA investigation.

In a March 9 statement to the agency’s governing board, Iranian IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said that the Security Council references in the IAEA report prove Iran’s assertion that the goal of the resolutions is “the suspension of the entire nuclear fuel cycle, paving the way for the ultimate cessation of all nuclear activities in Iran.” That would deprive Iran of its rights under the NPT, he argued.

The so-called P5+1, comprising the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Germany, issued a joint statement to the board the same day reaffirming their commitment to continue diplomatic engagement with Iran while calling on the country to make its nuclear activities more transparent to the IAEA. The six countries also appeared to counter Soltanieh’s claim about the council’s aims, stating, “It remains our wish to establish a cooperative relationship with Iran in many fields including that of peaceful nuclear technology—where of course we fully recognize Iran’s rights under the NPT.”

Under the NPT, non-nuclear-weapon states have broad rights to develop peaceful nuclear energy programs, but they must accept IAEA safeguards to ensure that there is no “diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”

Bushehr Reactor Fuel Removed

The IAEA report also revealed that Iran intended to unload the fuel from the core of its first nuclear power reactor due to a last-minute technical hurdle that posed safety concerns.

A Feb. 28 statement by Russia’s state-run nuclear energy conglomerate Rosatom, which is responsible for the reactor’s construction and initial operations, said the fuel is being removed from the reactor because “internal elements belonging to one of the four cooling pumps were found damaged,” raising the risk that small particles could get into the reactor fuel assemblies during operations.

A diplomatic source said March 22 that the fuel unloading already had begun but that it was unclear how long it would take to unload and test the fuel.

The move is the latest in decades of delays that have plagued the reactor since its construction began near the city of Bushehr in 1975. Before this latest incident, Iran intended to begin generating electricity from the reactor April 9, coinciding with its National Nuclear Technology Day.

Kraftwerk Union, the German firm that began constructing two reactors at the Bushehr site, withdrew from the project over a payment dispute in 1979 shortly after the Iranian Revolution. Russia took over construction in 1995, but due to technical, financial, and political delays, it was unable to finish construction until the fall of 2009.

Some of the technical problems have been the result of integrating the Russian technology with the original German components. The damaged cooling pump was left over from the Kraftwerk Union project.

The timing of Bushehr’s most recent technical problems, just weeks before a series of natural disasters crippled a Japanese nuclear power plant and spread radiation from the reactors, led Iranian officials to offer additional reassurance about the safety of the Bushehr project.

When asked during a March 15 Spanish public television interview if Iran’s nuclear reactor could withstand an earthquake and tsunami similar to the ones that led to Japan’s nuclear accident, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted, “We have observed all security measures at the Bushehr nuclear plant.”

 

Iran apparently is on the verge of starting full-scale testing of more powerful centrifuges, but a senior U.S. official and other experts said Tehran would not necessarily be able to produce and use those machines in large quantities.

Administration Budget Request for IAEA Rises

Daniel Horner

The Obama administration is requesting $85.9 million for its voluntary contribution to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for fiscal year 2012, an increase of about $20 million from the current level.

Because Congress has not approved spending bills for most federal agencies for fiscal year 2011, much of the government has been funded by a series of so-called continuing resolutions, which generally keep spending at the previous year’s level. The current spending bill expires April 8; the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

The congressionally appropriated funding for the U.S. voluntary contribution to the IAEA in fiscal year 2010 was $65.0 million. According to a Department of State budget document, the “significant increase” represented by the fiscal year 2012 request is “part of a multi-year commitment” to the IAEA.

The request for the IAEA voluntary contribution is included in the State Department’s foreign operations budget. The assessed contribution is part of the section of the budget covering State Department operations. The request for the assessed contribution to the IAEA for fiscal year 2012 is $107 million, a rise from the current level of $103 million, according to a State Department budget document.

In the request for the assessed contribution for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, there is a slight decrease from the current level to the fiscal year 2012 request, from $25.3 million to $25.1 million.

 

The Obama administration is requesting $85.9 million for its voluntary contribution to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for fiscal year 2012, an increase of about $20 million from the current level.

Israel Passes Landmine Removal Bill

Farrah Zughni

The Israeli Knesset last month approved a bill paving the way for the removal of “non-operational” anti-personnel landmines in Israel through the establishment of a national mine action authority.

The March 14 vote was 43 to 0.

The Minefield Clearance Act, which marks Israel’s first effort to address landmine contamination at the national level, limits demining to areas deemed “not essential to national security” by the authority. The exact number of deployed landmines is not known, but at least 33 square kilometers are believed to be affected, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a nonprofit publication considered the authoritative source on landmines, cluster munitions, and other explosive remnants of war.

The legislation makes no mention of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, the most comprehensive international agreement pertaining to landmines. Israel is not a party to that pact. Unlike the Mine Ban Treaty, the act does not address the manufacture, trade, stockpiling, or future deployment of landmines.

Israel is party to another key international agreement—the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and its amended Protocol II, which regulates but does not prohibit landmine use. Israel declared a moratorium on the sale, transfer, and export of all anti-personnel mines in 1994 and has renewed the moratorium every three years since then. The size of the country’s landmine stockpile is not known.

The act’s passage took place one year after a mine detonation in the Golan Heights resulted in injuries to two Israeli children. One of them, Daniel Yuval, who was 11 years old at the time, underwent a leg amputation as a result. Yuval’s story and subsequent campaign efforts made headlines across Israel and beyond and are widely credited for the legislation’s ultimate success.

 

The Israeli Knesset last month approved a bill paving the way for the removal of “non-operational” anti-personnel landmines in Israel through the establishment of a national mine action authority.

Russia Ratifies African NWFZ

Peter Crail

The Russian Duma on March 14 approved a protocol that commits Russia not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons anywhere in Africa.

The protocol is part of the Treaty of Pelindaba, which establishes a zone free of nuclear weapons in Africa, prohibiting countries in the region from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons. Although Russia is not party to the treaty, the five nuclear-weapon states recognized by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—were requested to ratify protocols prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons in the zone as further incentive for states in the region to join the pact. Such protocols also are included in four other existing zones, located in South America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.

In remarks to Russian lawmakers March 11, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov noted that Russia’s signature included a reservation that Moscow does not believe the treaty applies to the island of Diego Garcia, a British-controlled island that houses a U.S. military base. Mauritius, a state-party to the treaty, claims the archipelago to which the island belongs.

The Russian ratification leaves the United States as the only nuclear-weapon state not to endorse the pact. Last year, the Obama administration reversed long-standing U.S. reluctance to ratify the zone’s protocol and pledged to seek Senate advice and consent for ratification.

The Pelindaba treaty was opened for signature in 1996 and obtained enough ratifications from countries in the region to enter into force in July 2009. (See ACT, September 2009.)

 

The Russian Duma on March 14 approved a protocol that commits Russia not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons anywhere in Africa.

South Korea Rejects Talks Offer From North

Peter Crail

South Korea has rebuffed a North Korean suggestion that multilateral denuclearization talks should resume without preconditions, including on the North’s uranium-enrichment program. South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan told reporters March 17 that Pyongyang’s offer for renewed talks “is far short of what is needed,” calling on North Korea instead to “show with action, not words, its sincerity about its commitment” to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.

In 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon all nuclear activities as part of six-party talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.

A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry quoted in the official Korean Central News Agency March 15 said that North Korea expressed its willingness to return to the six-party talks to visiting Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and was “not opposed” to discussing its uranium-enrichment activities, including accepting international inspections of an enrichment facility it revealed last year.

For several years, Pyongyang denied pursuing an enrichment capability. The issue was central to the collapse of a 1994 U.S.-North Korean denuclearization agreement in 2002.

The United States and its allies in the region have maintained that prior to restarting negotiations, North Korea must demonstrate its commitment to uphold previous denuclearization agreements and improve relations with South Korea.

North-South relations have remained tense since two incidents last year involving a suspected North Korean attack on a South Korean naval vessel and North Korean artillery strikes against its southern neighbor.

 

South Korea has rebuffed a North Korean suggestion that multilateral denuclearization talks should resume without preconditions, including on the North’s uranium-enrichment program.

The Low Politics of Nonproliferation

Reviewed by Zia Mian

Fallout: The True Story of the CIA’s Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking
By Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz
Free Press, 2011, 289 pp.

For most of the past 60 years, almost the only people who featured in books about how countries acquired nuclear weapons were politicians, generals, scientists, and strategists. These were powerful men who already were public figures, if not household names, in their own countries and often around the world. Nuclear history has been the stories of such men, of enormous struggles, great passions, and the fate of nations, reflecting how the bomb was introduced to the world by the United States.

The August 6, 1945, White House press release announcing the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima declared that the bomb was “a new and revolutionary increase in destruction” made possible by “a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.” The United States had been able to build the bomb because it “had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge…[and] the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project.” To drive the point home, the White House revealed that “employment during peak construction numbered 125,000” and observed, “We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history.”

The press release established the story line for how people and governments came to think about nuclear weapons and what was involved in building them. Describing the Manhattan Project, the White House declared that

the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before.… Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem.… It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history.

Ever since the Manhattan Project, would-be bomb builders have believed that if they could repeat the feat, some of this greatness would rub off on them.

The past five years have seen a wealth of books that tell a new and different story about the spread of nuclear weapons over the past 40 years. Notable among these recent books, some of which have been reviewed in these pages, are Shopping for Bombs by Gordon Corera, Deception by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, America and the Islamic Bomb by David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, and Peddling Peril by David Albright. The newest addition to this literature is Fallout: The True Story of the CIA’s Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking by the wife-and-husband team of Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz. It is a sequel to their earlier work.

In all these books, the focus is the trade in nuclear technology, particularly the network established by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist who trained and worked in Europe in the early 1970s before returning to lead Pakistan’s uranium-enrichment program. Khan set up a procurement network that provided crucial technology to Pakistan’s enrichment program and enabled the country to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The Khan network later sold this technology to at least three other countries. The key players are small-time businesspeople and bureaucrats, engineers and technicians, intelligence analysts and spies, customs officials, police officers, and magistrates. No scientific breakthroughs take place, motives are often venal, self-interest rules, and ambitions are petty. Enterprises are small, and not very secret. The amounts of money involved are surprisingly small. The new narrative is all about how the bomb has become increasingly ordinary.

Spy Story and Cautionary Tale

Fallout describes itself as “part spy story, part cautionary tale.” The book is certainly organized like a modern spy movie. Its three sections, engagingly titled “The Setup,” “The Cover-up,” and “The Endgame,” are divided into 22 short, brisk chapters that jump from city to city. Much of it reads like a movie screenplay. It begins, for instance, in JeninsSwitzerland, on June 21, 2003, with a CIA team breaking into a house belonging to a member of the Khan network. There are details of how the break-in team of five men and one woman, all with special skills, was assembled, how the lock was picked, the house methodically searched, and computer files hacked, revealing files on the design of a nuclear weapon. The leader is a suitably dramatic “driven and obsessive” agent dubbed “Mad Dog,” who recruited Friedrich, Urs, and Marco Tinner to serve as CIA informers from inside the Khan network.

The larger story of the Khan network and how it was exposed has been told often enough. Fallout offers a new level of human detail. The Tinner family is at the heart of the story. In 1999, Urs Tinner is described as “a plain-looking man with no distinguishing features [who] had barely finished high school [and] seemed incapable of holding a job.” Divorced, denied access to his children, with a second marriage on the rocks, without friends, and in debt, Urs Tinner was holding three jobs to make ends meet, including as a cook and a bartender, when his father Friedrich offered him a job working for Khan in Dubai. Soon afterward, Mad Dog began to pay Urs Tinner “small amounts of cash—five hundred dollars here, a thousand dollars there” to spy for the CIA.

Friedrich Tinner, a friend and supplier of Khan since the early 1970s, and Urs’ brother, Marco, who also worked for Khan, joined the CIA payroll in December 2002. The whole family, in effect, switched sides. Collins and Frantz note that, for all three, “the total payment…didn’t amount to much more than…a few hundred thousand dollars at the most.” The money bought details of purchases and sales of equipment, shipping invoices, engineering plans for at least three different kinds of centrifuges and for an entire enrichment plant, and technical blueprints of two nuclear weapons designs. The Tinners eventually were able to get more money out of the CIA by selling the agency two second-generation (P-2) centrifuges—for half a million dollars. All told, the CIA may have paid out perhaps several million dollars. It is all a far cry from the vast sums that most imagine must somehow be involved when nuclear weapons are for sale.

The larger “cautionary tale” part of Fallout is how, having penetrated the Khan network, the CIA lied to and misled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about the network’s activities, frustrated a Swiss government investigation and criminal prosecution of key members of the network, and extorted the Swiss to destroy crucial evidence (a copy of which, however, remained with the CIA). The book argues that the driver of this “political battle and power struggle” by U.S. officials against the Swiss government and the IAEA was the institutional culture and organizational interest of the CIA.

CIA Prevails

Collins and Frantz suggest that, in the internal policy debates against the Department of State and other arms control advocates about dealing with the Khan network, starting in the mid-1970s, “the CIA and its backers always argued that they needed more information, more evidence, more time.” This was because as long as the focus was on spying, the CIA was always in charge: “From [CIA] case officers…to senior officials providing daily intelligence briefings to the president of the United States, intelligence was the source of power that kept them in the game.”

For Collins and Frantz, the role and power of the CIA in the Washington process ensured that “the intelligence imperative was driving U.S. policy.” As a result, for four decades “protecting the chess pieces in the game of espionage outranked punishing Khan and his associates.”

The key part of Fallout is how the CIA sought to protect its operatives and its sources in the Khan network─the Tinner family, who lived in Switzerland—from a Swiss investigation. It describes how, to squash a police inquiry into the Tinners, the CIA used U.S. officials including U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Pamela Willeford, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and possibly even former President George H.W. Bush to pressure the Swiss government.

Despite the efforts of Swiss export control officials, police officers, magistrates, and parliamentarians, the Swiss government followed U.S. demands and destroyed thousands of files the police had collected from the Tinners, amounting to 1.9 tons of paper and 1.3 terabytes of data on computer hard disks, CDs, and DVDs. Over a period of two days, almost all the paper files were shredded and incinerated, the hard drives and disks drilled and crushed. Kurt Senn, the head of national security for the Swiss police, the officer who had been in charge of the investigation into the Tinners, observed, “I thought I lived in a democracy.… This Switzerland is a banana republic now.” As a result, key members of the Khan network escaped prosecution or were released after short periods in prison.

How did the CIA get away with this? Collins and Frantz explain it by noting that a succession of U.S. leaders “traded strict standards against nuclear proliferation for other goals, starting with the Carter administration’s determination to ignore Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions in order to maintain the country’s assistance against the Soviets in Afghanistan in late 1979.” This is true enough, but one need not start the clock with Jimmy Carter. After all, as David Albright has pointed out in Peddling Peril, Israel and South Africa, both U.S. allies, were shopping on the nuclear black market before Pakistan even got started. Israel, Albright notes, “rivaled Pakistan in the extent of its nuclear smuggling.”

Like all the other recent books on the Khan network and proliferation, Collins and Frantz call for “a thorough review of the nation’s priorities in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.” The United States, they say, should make fighting proliferation its “highest priority.” Like the other authors on the subject, however, they do not suggest what would be involved in such a shift of policy priorities. It is difficult to see how such a shift can take place absent a much larger change in how the United States thinks about its own nuclear weapons. It is well understood, except perhaps by some in Washington, that until the United States gets serious about eliminating its own nuclear weapons, the incentives driving other states to keep or acquire their own weapons cannot be addressed properly.

There is no evidence that U.S. policymakers are rethinking their basic attitudes toward nuclear weapons. The hope raised by President Barack Obama in Prague two years ago already has faded from policy memory. In 2009, Obama suggested that the goal of a world without nuclear weapons “will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime.” In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared, “[O]ur goal [is] of a world someday, in some century, free of nuclear weapons.”

Washington’s real policy priorities are codified in budgets, and the news there is grim. The Obama administration has announced its support for a massive program of modernization of nuclear warheads, their research and development and production complex, and delivery systems. Over the next decade alone, $88 billion is to be spent on upgrading warheads and new weapons facilities, and $125 billion on a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, a new cruise missile, and a long-range nuclear bomber. Other nuclear-weapon states will follow. Unless it is stopped soon, this wave of nuclear weapons modernization will ensure that nuclear weapons and with them the problem of proliferation are here to stay for many more decades.

 


 

Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.

Zia Mian reviews Fallout, Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz’s account of how the CIA recruited the Tinner family as agents inside the Abdul Qadeer Khan network. In addition to adding detail to previous accounts of the Khan network, the book shows how the CIA sought to protect its dominant position in internal U.S. policy debates on Khan’s nuclear smuggling operation and shielded the Tinners from criminal prosecution.

The Stockpile’s Steward: An Interview With NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino

Interviewed by Tom Z. Collina and Daniel Horner

Thomas D’Agostino was sworn in on August 30, 2007, as the Department of Energy’s undersecretary for nuclear security and as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semiautonomous agency within the department. On September 3, 2009, President Barack Obama announced that D’Agostino would continue to hold those positions. From February 2006 to August 2007, he served as the NNSA’s deputy administrator for defense programs.

In December 2010, D’Agostino, Kazakhstani Deputy Foreign Minister Kairat Umarov, and their international partners were chosen in an online poll as the Arms Control Association’s Arms Control Persons of the Year for completing the job of securing material containing 10 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and three metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium from the BN-350 reactor in Kazakhstan.

Arms Control Today spoke with D’Agostino in his office on February 18. The interview covered NNSA weapons efforts such as plutonium pit production and warhead life extension programs, including experiments that use nuclear weapons materials without generating a nuclear explosion. On nonproliferation issues, Arms Control Today asked about the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which aims to reduce and secure vulnerable nuclear materials at civilian sites around the world, and the disposition of surplus plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

The interview was transcribed by Xiaodon Liang. It has been edited for clarity.

ACT: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. You have just submitted your fiscal year 2012 budget to Congress, and we would like to ask you some questions that go to the NNSA’s role in supporting U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, reducing nuclear arsenals, and maintaining the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Let’s start with the NNSA’s role in U.S. nuclear weapons policy. First, on the test ban treaty:

The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] reaffirmed that “the United States will not conduct nuclear testing and will pursue ratification” of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The United States has not conducted a nuclear test explosion for almost 19 years.

Last November, the administration outlined its plan to increase funding for NNSA weapons activities, totaling more than $85 billion over the next 10 years. The directors of the three nuclear weapons laboratories wrote Dec. 1 that the proposed budgets provide “adequate support to sustain the safety, security, reliability and effectiveness of America’s nuclear deterrent.”

In your opinion, is there any technical reason that the United States should not ratify the test ban treaty and forgo testing for the foreseeable future?

D’Agostino: No. In my opinion, we have a safe and secure and reliable stockpile. Every year, we go through a very detailed annual assessment process where we evaluate the condition of the stockpile. We get independent input from our laboratory directors that comes through a variety of processes both within the Department of Energy and NNSA and at the Defense Department. Both of those come through independently at the top. It’s very consistent on the policy message that you described: There’s no need to conduct underground testing.

There is continued work that has to be done, and that’s what is great about the budgets that have been submitted by the president in the past two years. They represent a very consistent view that we need to increase surveillance work because if we’re going to maintain the deterrent and get into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we actually have to have the data in order to ensure that we understand the condition of the stockpile as it currently exists and as we expect it will progress out into the future. Because with that [surveillance] data, we use our people and put it into our machines to understand and simulate and do subcritical experiments [which utilize high explosives and fissile materials, including plutonium, but do not generate a nuclear yield] and the like in order to ensure that we can continue to maintain the stockpile without testing.

So, I feel very strongly that we have the right plan in place. The president has submitted this plan. He’s been true to his word with respect to the 1251 report—the report that we submitted last year to Congress describing what kind of program and plan needs to happen.

[The report] shows increased investments across a variety of fronts, increased investments in work on modernization and work on the stockpile itself to make sure we extend the life of the existing stockpile. It shows increased investments in scientific work that has to happen—I mentioned subcritical experiments. It shows increased investments in surveillance activities to gather data.

Importantly, it shows investments—and this applies more broadly, not just to the warheads themselves, but in the facilities—that the nation needs in order to do nuclear security work generally. This is nuclear security work on the warheads, nuclear security work on nonproliferation, nuclear security work on nuclear counterterrorism and nuclear forensics and intelligence analysis.

All of those [areas] are pieces that we know we need in order to have a safe world out into the future. It’s a very nice wrap, frankly, between the warheads and nonproliferation activities and people. Those things come together in a very tight way with this program and budget.

ACT: The NPR pledged that “the United States will not develop new nuclear warheads” and that, regarding any decision to proceed to engineering development for warhead life extension programs [LEPs], “the Administration will give strong preference to options for refurbishment or reuse. Replacement of nuclear components would be undertaken only if critical Stockpile Management Program goals could not otherwise be met and if specifically authorized by the President and approved by Congress.”

Does the NNSA have any plans to “replace” warheads or parts in the future, that is, introduce warhead designs that are not currently in the stockpile, but are based on tested designs?

D’Agostino: The United States has a plan to extend the life of the existing stockpile. As you mentioned, the Nuclear Posture Review very clearly directs our laboratory directors to study the full range of options to make sure that we get the benefit of their technical knowledge and capability. As I think you mentioned earlier, the laboratory directors have endorsed this as an acceptable approach to move forward with taking care of the stockpile out into the future.

So, to get right to your question, we’re in the very early study phases for the two life extension systems where your question might be appropriate. One is the B61 life extension program, and the second one is the W78 life extension activities. Both of these, particularly the W78 activity, have barely just gotten off the ground.

With the B61 [program], we are in the early phases, with the study examining that full range of options well under way. I don’t have the analysis yet because we’re in what we call the “phase 1-phase 2” area of the work on the B61 life extension. When that data comes back to us, we’ll look at all of the options that are being proposed, and then we will decide whether option A, option B, or option C is the best track. If it’s option C, we’ll need to go back up. We’re not at that stage on these life extensions yet.

ACT: Okay. Do you see at this point any potential missions that could not be achieved with refurbishment or reuse?

D’Agostino: At this point, right now, I don’t have the data, so I can’t answer that question directly. The mission space is a responsibility of the Defense Department, but the president has made clear that what we’re doing right now is not adding new missions to the warheads. We’re taking care, extending the life, of the warheads that we have right now. So, the analysis is currently under way on whether replacement is the way to go, or refurbishment, or reuse.

It’s very clear, though, that the president’s direction and our direction to our laboratories is to study, make sure they have examined that full range of options. We want to give them, frankly, the benefit of doing that because we want the nation to have the safest, most secure stockpile technically possible. The decisions will get made to balance, do trade-offs. Trade-offs in cost, trade-offs in risk, trade-offs in political [terms], maybe some atmospherics that may be happening there. We’re not there yet; we’re far from that point on making those decisions.

ACT: Would future warheads with “intrinsic surety” require “replacement,” or are there other operational measures that can provide sufficient protection at lower cost? If you were to design warheads with intrinsic security, can you do that with refurbishment or reuse, or would you have to move to a replacement design?

D’Agostino: The answer is, “It depends,” frankly.

It depends on the technical details. Now we’re delving into the heart of work on the primary, and the answer will be, “It depends.” It’s not clear that you would have to use a particular approach. What’s clear is that we’re going to examine all of our approaches, because we do want to extract that benefit and that knowledge and then allow policy and programmatic decisions to get made after that.

ACT: The NNSA’s [fiscal year] 2012 budget requests [funds] to study “scaled experiments” for “improving predictive capability of performance calculations for nuclear weapon primaries.” Can you describe these experiments and explain what they are for?

D’Agostino: Certainly. Scaled experiments basically are a type of subcritical experiment. Scaled experiments involve plutonium, but like subcriticals, they’re subcritical, they’re not nuclear tests.

Subcritical experiments are done all the time in order to gather the data that we need to study how the plutonium ages and make sure that we understand the dynamic [properties of the material], how the material moves under extreme pressures and temperatures. It’s an additional set of inputs. Because the president has a commitment to maintain the stockpile without underground testing and pursue the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, our view as a technical organization is to make sure we examine all the technical approaches to get data so we can take care of the stockpile and fulfill that mandate.

An element of the resources we’re talking about here has to do with making sure and understanding, “Can a more robust set of activities in scaled experiments provide data that allows us in effect to ensure that we don’t have to conduct an underground test?” We don’t know the answer to that question. That’s why the JASONs [group of senior science and defense consultants] are looking at it. That’s why we’re examining it in depth within the administration. That’s why we’ve got some money set aside to go answer that question.

Before we decide to pursue a path of additional scaled experiments, we want to make sure we understand the benefit that it provides versus the costs, the financial costs, associated with doing that. It’s going to take us a few years to get to that point because this is the heart of the matter, frankly. The data from the primaries is the key point in being able to take care of the stockpile.

ACT: Would a new facility be necessary? And if so, how much might it cost?

D’Agostino: We don’t know if a new facility is necessary. We don’t know if a new scaled-experiments program is necessary, and therefore we don’t know what it would cost.

ACT: Okay, and just a clarifying question: scaled experiments have or have not been done up to this point?

D’Agostino: Scaled experiments are done by, have been done by states that have stockpiles of warheads.

ACT: But not in the United States?

D’Agostino: In the United States, we don’t have a very—no, we haven’t done scaled experiments in a long time.

ACT: Los Alamos National Laboratory currently has a relatively limited capacity to produce plutonium parts, or pits, for warheads. The planned future capacity is 50 to 80 pits per year.

Given that New START [the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] will reduce the deployed U.S. arsenal by hundreds of warheads, why do you believe this production capacity is still necessary?

D’Agostino: To be clear: pit production actually does not happen in the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility. Just to be clear on that. Pit production happens in one of our facilities within the technical area [at Los Alamos] that does this work.

Fifty to 80 pits per year is the throughput rate we expect that we might possibly need out into the future. [That] doesn’t necessarily mean we need it now, but we might possibly need it in order to take care of the stockpile, given the size of the stockpile.

The reductions of the New START treaty were factored into that particular analysis. So if you think about the need to conduct a life extension on a warhead and any modifications you might have to make to an existing pit in order to extend its life, and how long our life extensions would typically take—our life extension programs typically take 10 years or so on the average, because we do have a number of different warhead types in our stockpile—we believe that 50 to 80 provides a reasonable balance.

The last thing we want to do, because this is a very expensive facility, is—we don’t want to build a larger facility than we need. But we also need to be able to respond to a technical problem in the stockpile should we have to reconstitute a whole warhead type within a reasonable period of time, or respond to a geopolitical change that would require us to ramp up. These are all political decisions, of course, and technical decisions.

The nexus is that crossover between politics and technical, that sphere we’re operating in. But 50 to 80 is considered a reasonable throughput rate. It’s very small; it’s nothing at all like we were [doing] during the Cold War. It’s much smaller than the Cold War.

In fact, the point that is very important to remember on a Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility is that we’re trying to lay the groundwork for the future. Get out of two plutonium facilities and move down to one plutonium facility. [We don’t need] one at Los Alamos and one at [Lawrence] Livermore [National Laboratory]; we just want one for the nation, that’s all the nation needs. We have hundreds of thousands of [square feet of] plutonium lab space. We need 40 percent of that out into the future.

What we’re trying to do is drive efficiencies. But importantly, these investments are important in order for us to do our nuclear counterterrorism work and in order for us to do our nonproliferation work. The Chemistry and Metallurgy [Research] Replacement facility is a facility that is needed to do the analysis on the samples to make sure our stockpile is safe. It also—should there be a condition in the future where we get our hands on plutonium that’s been smuggled—allows us to do some nuclear forensics work.

ACT: In 2006 the NNSA published the results of a laboratory study that found that plutonium pits have lifetimes of at least 85 years. The NNSA [fiscal year] 2012 budget states that “a lifetime was established for a W88 primary, advancing our lifetime estimates beyond the pit lifetimes produced in 2006.”

Can you tell us what the new lifetime estimate is for the W88 pit?

D’Agostino: No. Sorry, I can’t. These [estimates] were general. If you recall, the 2006 study spoke in some generalities because there are ranges. In fact, I might add, we’re quite fortunate that we had these longer lifetimes. Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos did the detailed studies. If the lifetimes were significantly shorter, we would have been forced as a nation to accelerate our activities, and then we would have, of course, run the risk of potentially overbuilding the size of the pit production capabilities. So, longer lifetimes is good stuff.

ACT: What is the NNSA’s current opinion on how long pits last, in general?

D’Agostino: In general, we’ll stick by the data you talked about earlier.

ACT: Now we’d like to shift to the NNSA’s nonproliferation programs, particularly nuclear security and fissile materials disposition.

It has been almost two years since President Obama announced the effort to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” There have been a number of significant accomplishments in those two years. What are your priorities for 2011 and 2012? What can we expect to see by 2013—the end of the four-year block—and beyond that?

D’Agostino: The president has made it very clear what my priorities are. I love it when I get clear guidance. The clear guidance is to secure all the most vulnerable material in four years. And we have a plan. We are implementing that plan.

The plan, of course, needs to be resourced, and we’re resourcing that plan. The president’s budget requests for FY11 and 12 and the out-years do resource that plan. If numbers change, obviously we will look at our priorities to make sure the right thing happens given the priorities. If that means making some tough decisions, we’re ready to make those tough decisions.

ACT: What can we expect to see by 2013, four years since he made the statement? [Are there things] we should look for beyond that as well?

D’Agostino: Well, the plan that we have right now completes this effort in December of 2013. That’s the key. So we’re working to that plan. We’ve identified a scope of work to get this four-year material secured. Not just ourselves, of course; we’re doing this with the international community.

Last April at the nuclear security summit, there was a commitment that two years hence we would meet again in Seoul and see how well we’ve done. We’re tracking very closely against the commitments made by other nations on work that they would do in order to get this material secured and in some cases removed. For some of the work that they’re doing, we’re partners with them to make sure it happens. So, that is in our plan and in our budget.

It’s exciting work. What’s wonderful about this is there’s a reporting-back mechanism to the highest levels in government—to the presidents or the prime ministers—that says, “I said I was going to do this two years ago; well, how did I do?” The whole world is watching. This is great stuff.

ACT: As you said, though, there are likely to be some budget constraints. In its budget request for fiscal year 2011, the Obama administration requested an increase of more than $200 million from the fiscal year 2010 appropriation for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative. But because Congress has been funding the government with a continuing resolution [CR], spending for the first five months of fiscal year 2011 has been at the 2010 level.

What impact has that had on the effort to secure vulnerable nuclear material?

D’Agostino: Because the FY11 budget is still being negotiated, we don’t know where it’s going to end up. What I will say, what works with a continuing resolution is that the continuing resolutions provide us flexibility in the executive branch to move resources to the areas of highest priority.

Will there be some impacts? There likely will be some minor impacts associated with, “Well, we’ll have to move this shipment back a few months.” Our plan was to front-load that Global Threat Reduction Initiative work to get it under way robustly in 2011 so that as schedules change, we don’t lose track and we can still hit our December 2013 target. Our plan is still to do that. We’re down at the FY10 levels, but we can reallocate resources.

I would say if we’re at a situation where we’re going through a whole year [with a continuing resolution that does not provide the requested increases], there will likely be some greater impacts. We adjust our programs on a regular basis as a result of [the uncertainty of operating under a series of short-term continuing resolutions]. Do we anticipate another weeklong CR? How does it impact our plans? As a three-month CR becomes a six-month CR, becomes a full-year CR, there are actually different plans that have to be developed in each case. With the three-month CR, well, I can hold out, but with the one-year CR, I might have to delay some things. If I knew what the future was like, it would be easy, but I don’t. So, that’s why this is hard.

ACT: You mentioned reallocating. So, you’re already looking at areas other than the nuclear security efforts where you can draw money from and reallocate it to nuclear security, is that what you were saying?

D’Agostino: That’s right. What we have been doing is looking at areas where resources aren’t being spent at the pace we expected or may be of lower priority. At this point right now, all of our programs are running on track because we typically have a slight carryover balance that we bring in from the previous year. We’re on a one-year kind of an approach. So, we’re managing just fine, but things get harder as the year goes on.

ACT: Turning to military fissile materials, you are working on the disposition of more than 30 metric tons of former U.S. weapons plutonium by building a plant at the Savannah River Site to turn it into mixed-oxide [MOX] fuel that is to be used in commercial reactors.

The MOX plant is the largest item in the nonproliferation budget; you are requesting $579 million for construction [of the MOX fuel fabrication plant and two supporting facilities] for fiscal year 2012.

Given that the United States has historically tried to discourage civilian use of plutonium and given that converting plutonium into reactor fuel is not the only option for disposition, please tell us why you see this as a major budgetary and policy priority.

D’Agostino: It’s a significant priority for a couple of reasons. One is, we’re talking about 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, probably the most dangerous stuff on earth. Using it up, putting it in a form that it can never be used for its original purpose, is a great goal. Two is that we’re going to be able to extract a significant amount of energy out of this material.

When we’ve done studies in the past, we’ve looked at immobilization, long-term storage. At the end of the day, with all of those other approaches, you still at the end of the day—after 50 years, at the end of 100 years—have this 34 metric tons of plutonium. Using the approach the nation is proceeding down right now, that material doesn’t exist in that particular form. It’s really, in my view, the ultimate swords-into-ploughshares program. It’s that conversion of that material and getting rid of that material.

The president’s plan, the plan that we have laid out right now, really focuses on the material. Securing the material at sites, detecting illicit transfers of material across borders or between geographic locations, not making more material, and getting rid of material that you don’t need. Obviously, this question you asked on mixed-oxide fuel falls into that last category and also has the added benefit of extracting some of the value out of the material that the nation put into it.

ACT: What’s the timetable for producing the MOX fuel and irradiating it in commercial reactors, especially that second piece?

D’Agostino: Well, the timetable right now is that we’re currently operating on a track to get the facility up and operating in 2016.

Now, just like very many complicated things, it’s not a light switch that flips “on” on day one. In making this many metric tons per year of material, there’s a ramp-up in its approach. What we’re doing right now, though, is focusing on project management; that’s a key element of what we want to do in order to make sure that we’re successful.

The NNSA’s fiscal year 2012 program and budget request has a significant number of large projects in it, and the focus now is going to be making sure that we deliver on those projects on time, on schedule, as committed once we hit our performance baseline.

That’s all about improving the way we do business, which is one of the three themes that I’ve mentioned in presentations in the past. The first theme is investing in our future. The second theme is implementing the president’s nuclear security agenda, the topic which we’ve talked about. The third theme is improving the way we do business. So, the focus is on getting that MOX plant together.

[On the question of when reactors will start loading MOX fuel,] there’s work we’re doing with Energy Northwest and with the TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] to reach some agreements on how we would use this fuel on what type of time period. With the Tennessee Valley Authority, we have a commitment with the NNSA to do a supplemental environmental impact statement to evaluate the use of this material in the five TVA reactors that can use it. Then the agreements will get modified, and we’ll go from there.

We expect this, in about the 2012 time frame to come to fruition, because we recognize that we need an end-stream user. With Energy Northwest, we’ve recently entered into an agreement to examine the use of this material. Typically what that involves is making the right types of components that can be irradiated so that they can be examined by the end user to make sure they’re comfortable in putting this fuel inside their reactors.

ACT: Just to be clear, they’re doing testing; you don’t have contracts with those utilities to go ahead yet. Is that correct?

D’Agostino: That’s correct. We have agreements to do the upfront work necessary before we can actually put a contract in place. Because before we put a contract in place—an agreement that I give you this, and you give me that on this type of timescale—the utilities, appropriately so, need to make sure [they know] what are they getting themselves into. They see value in taking the time and energy to examine this question, and our discussions with TVA are very promising in this area.

ACT: On the timetable, 2018, I think, is when you plan to start loading [MOX fuel] into reactors. Is that still the timetable, and does that allow time for testing of the assemblies and all the other preliminary [work] and licensing and everything that’s necessary to be ready to actually start loading commercial fuel elements into reactors of that kind?

D’Agostino: I believe so. I don’t have the exact date on the tip of my tongue. That sounds about right. It’s a period of time after, obviously, the MOX plant has to get up and running. It gives us the time to get these elements in place.

ACT: You talked about the five reactors at the TVA, that’s the two Sequoyah and three Browns Ferry [reactors], I assume. But if I recall, the two Sequoyah reactors are also backup reactors for the tritium mission. So, is there a potential juggle you’ll have to do?

D’Agostino: Those specific details will have to get handled if and when they’re needed at that particular time. That’s how I would view that.

ACT: Is there anything that we should have asked that we didn’t that you want to make clear?

D’Agostino: Well, first of all I want to thank Arms Control Today. I appreciate the honor of receiving this award [as an Arms Control Person of the Year]. I recognize it’s not because of me, frankly, it’s because of all the work of the men and women in the NNSA that work all over the world and in this country to get this work done. I think it’s actually a recognition that the NNSA is making the shift from a Cold War nuclear weapons complex to a 21st-century nuclear security enterprise, where nuclear security is the paramount watchword. Frankly, I’m very excited about it, and the people in the NNSA are as well.

ACT: I should say also that the award was voted on [by participants in an online poll], so we can’t take credit for choosing you.

Thank you.


Updated June 2, 2011: Shaw Areva MOX Services, the NNSA's prime contractor for the surplus-weapons-plutonium disposition program, has a contract with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to explore the potential use in the Columbia reactor of MOX fuel made with the surplus weapons plutonium. The reactor is located near Richland, Washington and is operated by Energy Northwest, which is considering a paper study with PNNL that would look at certain aspects of using MOX fuel at Columbia, including licensing, operational requirements, and security. As of June 1, 2011, Energy Northwest had not signed the subcontract for the study with PNNL.

 

 

 

 

 

The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration talks about the NNSA’s nuclear weapons and nonproliferation work, covering a range of topics that includes plutonium pit production, warhead life extension programs, scaled experiments, plutonium disposition, and efforts to reduce and secure vulnerable nuclear materials at civilian sites around the world.

The Urgent Need for a Seoul Declaration: A Road Map for the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit and Beyond

Kenneth N. Luongo

The April 2010 nuclear security summit in Washington raised the international profile of the threat of nuclear terrorism and focused attention on the need to better secure all weapons-usable nuclear materials in all corners of the globe. It will be followed by another summit in 2012 in Seoul, a decision that has set the stage for what could become a very important, biennial, high-level international political event.

Because they are attended by heads of state, these biennial summits have the potential to become the pre-eminent international forum where the state of global nuclear material security is evaluated and where new commitments are made to improve the world’s defenses against nuclear terrorism. They could become the nuclear security equivalent of what the UN climate change conference process is for transnational environmental challenges and what the Group of Eight (G-8) and Group of 20 (G-20) meetings are for global financial issues. To achieve this status, however, the nuclear security summit process needs to evolve, and participating counties need to be willing to accept changes that will strengthen the nuclear material security regime.

The lead-up to the 2012 summit provides an opportunity to begin this evolutionary process. The Washington summit solidified and underscored the key elements of the current nuclear material security regime, including UN Security Council resolutions, international agreements, and the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The South Korean summit can build on the success of its predecessor by moving beyond the current elements of the regime and endorsing some key new policy initiatives as part of a “Seoul Declaration” package.

This type of a declaration would utilize the inherent action-forcing value of the summit process, set a precedent for achieving further improvements over time at subsequent summits, and position South Korea as a global leader in the nuclear material security field. In particular, because South Korea is a contributor to the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction and a member of the G-20, it can serve as a bridge between these groups on this issue, encouraging contributions and action from the G-20 on global nuclear security priorities.

Some of the new policy initiatives for the Seoul summit could be prepared for implementation in the short term, and others would require further evaluation and development in order to be implemented at future summits. This additional work could be carried out by empowering a technical expert process at the Seoul summit that would complement the political “Sherpa” process that currently shapes and guides the summits. (A Sherpa is the representative of a government who leads its preparation for an event such as the nuclear security summit.) The current summit Sherpas are generally representatives of the foreign ministries of participating governments and not necessarily deeply knowledgeable about the technical aspects of nuclear material security practices and challenges.

If the Seoul summit could start the policy evolution process and if this step could be continued in subsequent summits, it would help strengthen and expand the existing nuclear and radiological material security regime significantly. This summit process then should be supplemented and coordinated with the related efforts of the G-8 and G-20, the IAEA, and the other national and multilateral programs and initiatives that are focused on the challenge of preventing nuclear terrorism. Therefore, it is important that the summit events not be viewed as an end in themselves, but rather as a facilitating mechanism for the journey toward a modern, stronger, more flexible, and responsive 21st-century nuclear material security architecture.

Acknowledging the Threat

One of the significant challenges in maintaining nuclear material security as a high global priority is that a number of nations do not see nuclear terrorism as a real threat. The Washington summit tackled this issue in its communiqué, in which all 47 participating countries agreed that “[n]uclear terrorism is one of the most challenging threats to international security.”

However, there is still skepticism in some governments. One issue is a belief that building even a crude nuclear weapon is beyond the capability of most terrorist groups. Also, virtually every country possessing fissile materials is reluctant to acknowledge that its security procedures may have shortcomings that could be exploited by terrorists.

A number of U.S. blue-ribbon commissions and analyses have underscored the threat of nuclear terrorism.[1] The cables that were released by WikiLeaks in late 2010 indicate that other countries beyond the United States and its NATO allies are concerned about this threat.[2] The root of the threat is the very large and still growing stockpile of weapons-usable fissile material around the globe. Rough estimates put it at 1,600 metric tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and 500 metric tons of plutonium.[3] About one-half of the world’s fissile material is in military stockpiles; the remaining 50 percent is in civilian stockpiles. The exact amount of this material is not known with any precision; the margin of error on the estimates is as much as 300 metric tons for HEU and as much as 25 metric tons for plutonium.[4] Even with the imprecise estimates, it is clear that there is enough material for 100,000 to 150,000 nuclear weapons today.[5]

The HEU has prompted particular concern because it is used in a number of nonmilitary applications, and a crude HEU gun-type device is considered to be the type of nuclear weapon most accessible to terrorists.[6] It is estimated that it would take 40-50 kilograms of HEU to make such a device.[7] However, it likely would be large and heavy, and creating it would require some basic infrastructure support, such as a machining capability. A plutonium device is much more difficult to develop without a more sophisticated technical infrastructure and experts, and terrorists likely would need more technical assistance with this type of a weapon.

Nuclear smuggling is another window into the threat and its reality. According to the IAEA, there have been 1,600 cases of illicit nuclear trafficking since 1993.[8] There have been 18 cases of the theft or loss of HEU or plutonium. None of the HEU that was recovered was reported missing from the facility from which it disappeared. Recently, there have been three cases of holding radiological sources for ransom.

Irrespective of the possession of fissile materials, virtually every country possesses and uses radiological sources for industrial and medical purposes. Some of these sources are very high intensity. Radiological terrorism is considered to be a higher-probability event than a nuclear attack.[9] Radiological devices do not result in nuclear explosions, but they do spread toxic radioactive materials. A radiological attack is much less sophisticated than a nuclear terrorist attack and would cause much less physical damage, but its impact on the global economy could be very significant depending on the location. There is a significant problem with the security of radiological sources around the world. The IAEA estimates that there are 100,000 to 1 million radiological sources around the globe, but no one knows for sure.

In the wake of the nuclear emergency that occurred in Japan, it is important to recognize that nuclear crises can erupt without warning, generate devastating results, and carry extremely high price tags. In the case of nuclear terrorism, the cost of the damage and response would dwarf the price of prevention. It would be very sobering if, at the next nuclear summit, an analysis of this cost was provided to the assembled nations. It likely would have a dramatic impact on developed and developing nations.

Nuclear Material Security

Despite the agreement at the Washington summit on the importance of nuclear material security, there still seems to be some lingering confusion in the international community about what nuclear material security actually is and how it relates to other nuclear power, nonproliferation, and arms control objectives.

Nuclear material security involves the accounting of plutonium and HEU and the protection of those materials against theft or diversion to use by terrorists, other nonstate actors, and non-nuclear-weapon states. By comparison, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the nonproliferation regime are concerned with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to new states, primarily through the diversion of nuclear materials or the clandestine use of an existing nuclear infrastructure by a state for weapons purposes. The IAEA safeguards program is the primary way that compliance with the NPT is monitored.

Because nuclear material security is widely considered to be the responsibility of the country that possesses the materials, and these materials are considered to be sensitive, a number of international agreements, national regulations and laws, and nonbinding recommendations are applicable in this area and constitute the foundation of the current regime. One result of this disaggregated approach, however, is that there are no standardized international rules governing nuclear material security, and each country creates its own system.

A Seoul Declaration

Two very important decisions need to be made at the outset of the planning for the South Korean summit: What will be the scope of that event, and how will the summit expand the nuclear material security regime beyond its current limits? In December, the Korean government gave some indication of the issues that it was interested in seeing addressed. These included a progress report on implementing the Washington summit commitments, developing HEU management guidelines, enhancing security culture, countering nuclear smuggling, strengthening nuclear forensics cooperation, and securing radioactive materials.[10] The issues of enhancing transportation security and information sharing and security may be added to this list. There also is the very sensitive issue of how to address the issue of North Korea in the context of the Seoul summit (see box).

Recently, the Japanese nuclear crisis has created pressure to add nuclear safety to the agenda. This issue, and its relationship to the future of nuclear power, could obscure the unique focus of the summit on nuclear material security unless it is used to advance the security agenda. One important step is to follow the example of the European Union, which recently agreed to conduct voluntary “stress tests” to assess the safety of the 143 nuclear reactors in EU countries. The tests will be conducted by national regulators based on agreed upon criteria, and the results will be made public. This is an important precedent that overcomes concerns about borders and sovereignty to ensure that there is uniformity in EU safety procedures and technology.

Nuclear security summit participants could agree in advance of the Seoul meeting to perform similar stress tests for nuclear material security based on agreed upon criteria, and participating countries could report back on the results at the summit. Alternatively, the summit attendees could agree at the summit to perform these stress tests and then report back after the meeting. In either case, any deficiencies found should be identified and corrected immediately. This process will significantly strengthen the state of global nuclear material security.

The South Korean government has established an interministerial preparatory committee headed by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik to organize the summit and has opened a preparatory office led by Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan to oversee general planning, management and protocol for the event.[11] There also seems to be movement toward the creation of an advisory committee that would include representatives from leading South Korean think tanks. As presently envisioned, the Seoul summit would be anchored by the government summit, but as in last year’s event in Washington, there would be two satellite events—one for the nuclear energy industry and the other for nongovernmental and academic experts.

As South Korean officials and their counterparts from other countries discuss the upcoming summit, they should consider how to build the summit process into a strong and lasting initiative that will serve global nuclear security objectives. All the new proposals for the Seoul summit that have been identified are important. In keeping with the current regime, however, they are discrete elements without a connecting thread; one goal of the Seoul summit should be to tie them together by articulating more-encompassing themes. The participating governments have the opportunity to endorse these themes and to package them as part of a Seoul Declaration[12] that will be a concrete step toward a 21st-century nuclear material security architecture.

This declaration could include six key issue areas that are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. If actions were implemented under each of them, they would significantly improve the global security of nuclear and radiological materials.

Track commitment implementation. The participants in the Washington summit made more than 50 commitments. Although virtually all the pledges were nonbinding, the participants did agree to make best efforts to implement them. Tracking the implementation of these commitments is an important effort that could be reported on at the Seoul summit. There is some controversy among the summit participants on how transparent this reporting should be. Making all of this information public would be valuable, but it may be easier to share some information behind the scenes.

By the 2012 summit, it is unlikely that all countries will have implemented all commitments. Even the United States probably will not achieve that goal. In particular, Washington is not likely to fulfill its pledge to ratify an amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material before the Seoul summit. (The amendment would extend and strengthen the convention’s physical protection requirements by including materials in storage or use at domestic nuclear facilities as well as materials in transit.) Some of the other commitments, such as ending the use of HEU in civil applications in the countries utilizing it for this purpose, have long lead times.

The South Korean summit could announce the establishment of some type of a transparent display, such as a Web site, that allows the public to assess progress. Such a step is essential to maintaining the credibility of the summit process.

Strengthen the regime. Although there seems to be some international fatigue with the current set of nuclear material security activities, this is partly because of the large number of initiatives undertaken in the past 15 years. These efforts were developed as the opportunity or need presented itself, rather than as part of a rational planning process. Now, the threat has been validated, the gaps in the existing regime identified, and the need to harmonize and strengthen the current unwieldy system demonstrated.

In addition to nuclear material security stress tests, one step that the South Korean summit could take is recognizing that the Obama administration’s four-year objective to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the globe was an important motivator of international action but that the goal is unlikely to be accomplished by 2013. There is even a danger in strictly hewing to this goal because it conveys the sense that this mission requires only four years when it in fact is a lifetime objective. The security of nuclear materials must evolve and be strengthened as long as these materials exist. That should be one key statement in the 2012 communiqué.

Another step is to organize some of the new ideas that have been put forth in the Sherpa process for strengthening the regime. These ideas could include developing HEU management guidelines, countering nuclear smuggling, strengthening nuclear forensics cooperation, and enhancing transportation security.

A third step is to consider endorsing the development of a nuclear material security architecture that will provide cohesion and a driving force. The current nuclear and radiological material security regime does not have an essential organizing document. One proposal is to package the current regime and new initiatives in an international framework agreement. A nuclear material security framework agreement would identify the threats to humankind from vulnerable fissile and radiological materials, especially the threats posed by terrorists, and list actions and commitments required to mitigate them. It especially would allow the subject to be acknowledged at a very high political level as a global priority and then require the adherents to take specific steps to achieve the agreement’s objectives.

This could streamline the existing components of the regime and allow new initiatives to be folded into the agreement over time. It would alleviate some of the overlapping meeting and reporting burdens that are currently placed on governments by the broad spectrum of existing programs.

This type of agreement may run into serious opposition because of bureaucratic resistance or concerns that it could turn into a never-ending multilateral negotiation. Nevertheless, rationalizing the current regime should be a priority at future summits and should be included as an objective in the next communiqué. It also could authorize a small diplomatic working group to prepare a recommendation for the following summit or focus the development process on a coalition of those countries committed to the framework proposal.

Standardize nuclear material security. Each country protects its nuclear materials differently. The IAEA provides detailed technical recommendations for the securing of nuclear facilities, domestic regulations are developed and approved by individual nations, and international conventions provide norms for nuclear material protection, although not all have been approved by all countries. Even with these interrelated guidelines, no universal standard exists for securing nuclear materials and weapons.

There are reasons that the nuclear material security system is not standardized, including sovereignty and national security concerns, but the question is whether these motives outweigh the danger. The need for more-standardized methods to implement nuclear material security and to judge its effectiveness is an important issue that merits further examination in advance of the next summit.

The establishment of these standards would eliminate gaps in implementation and help to ensure accurate assessments of security across borders. These standards could include performance-based and security-specific criteria[13] as well as suggestions for regulations. However, they would have to be constructed carefully so they do not conflict with national laws and regulations or undermine the legitimacy of the security recommendations provided by the IAEA, including the recently revised Information Circular on the physical protection of nuclear material.[14]

Discussions are taking place inside and outside the IAEA on the subject of nuclear security standards, but there are differing views that are not easy to reconcile. Development of a baseline standard is almost certainly too controversial to be completed before the 2012 summit. Yet, the summit communiqué could endorse the objective of creating a baseline standard and then task a technical working group with convening the discussions and performing the assessments that will be needed to begin the process of moving countries toward a unified standard by a possible 2014 summit or perhaps even beyond that date.

Fund global nuclear security. The United States currently spends about $1.5 billion per year on international nuclear material security efforts, including physical improvements to storage facilities, removals of material, and prevention of nuclear smuggling. These activities are supplemented by the Global Partnership, which has more than 20 G-8 and non-G-8 contributors, including South Korea. At present, however, the partnership is funding activities only in Russia and Ukraine; most of those activities deal with chemical weapons destruction, submarine dismantlement, and nuclear safety.

The U.S. programs and those funded by the Global Partnership currently face a budget backlash. In the United States, ballooning deficits have caused Congress to consider cutting the programs by more than $300 million from the budget proposed for 2011 by the president. In addition, just weeks after the Washington nuclear security summit, the proposed extension of the Global Partnership for another 10 years and its expansion to other globally focused missions was delayed, primarily because of economic turmoil in Europe. The Global Partnership’s future activities now are under discussion by a group of experts from G-8 countries. It seems that they are considering approving an extension of the Global Partnership without requiring any substantial new funding.

Both of these efforts are important and should be continued, but they may need to be better harmonized and include contributions from new countries, including those from the G-20, to maintain strong and broad international political support. One new initiative that the participants in the South Korean summit could take is to endorse a robust and enduring Global Nuclear Security Fund. The fund should total $2.5-3.0 billion per year for all weapons of mass destruction-related efforts over the next 10 years, with roughly 75 percent ($1.9-2.3 billion per year) of that devoted to nuclear security activities.

If the United States continues its current yearly contributions of about $1.5 billion in this area, the remaining contribution for nuclear security required from all other countries would be $400-800 million per year. As objectives are accomplished, the overall amount needed would be reduced.

In addition to endorsing this integrated fund, the 2012 summit communiqué should identify specific objectives to be achieved by the following summit. One target should be the IAEA Nuclear Security Fund, with the goal of doubling its annual budget from about $25 million to $50 million. That would allow this IAEA office to upgrade its efforts to assist countries in improving the security of all nuclear and radiological materials. The communiqué also should support the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which has a broad and important mandate but few resources to command compliance.[15] Also, to entice broader participation in the global fund, the cost of a country’s domestic nuclear security improvements above its current standards should be counted as part of that country’s donation to the fund.

The creation of this fund would need to be coordinated with the Global Partnership countries, but by making it a global fund with new contributors and rules, it could overcome some of the current donor fatigue that exists in some G-8 countries.

Secure radiological sources. The issue of radiological material security was not afforded a high priority at the Washington summit. Although the communiqué and the work plan made reference to the issue, several counties would have liked to have placed higher priority on this work. Comments by the South Korean government clearly indicate it is interested in raising the profile of this issue.

The upcoming summit could endorse several actions in this area, beginning with an international commitment to secure all high-intensity radiological sources in public buildings with an immediate focus on major metropolitan hospitals. The United States should take the lead by announcing that it will secure all radiological sources in such hospitals before a potential 2014 summit. This would include about 500 buildings at a cost of approximately $125 million.[16] The summit also could endorse the establishment of regional radiological zones of security, where the countries in the region work together to ensure the security of radiological sources. Initial work could be done on the Korean peninsula or in the Middle East. All these activities, which could be financed through the Global Nuclear Security Fund, would demonstrate the unique value of the nuclear security summit process.

Enhance technical and educational engagement. At the summit, participants could take several steps to address the human element of nuclear material security.

The first is the promotion of best practices, education, and security culture. The Washington summit communiqué and work plan placed a significant emphasis on these subjects, and some actions have been taken to date.[17] For example, China, India, Japan, and South Korea have created or are in the process of establishing centers of nuclear security excellence where best practices can be shared. Also, at least a half-dozen workshops on issues including nuclear forensics, guard force improvement training, and detection of and response to nuclear smuggling have been held around the world. In addition, France and Italy have incorporated nuclear security education into their academic curricula. Much more can be done in these areas and others, and the 2012 summit communiqué should identify specific countries that intend to host meetings, workshops, and trainings.

A second goal should be the establishment of a multilateral technical working group that would complement the current Sherpa process. This group could work through the details of issues that the South Korean summit endorses but that would not be ready for implementation before a 2014 summit. These could include nuclear and radiological security standards and elimination of civil HEU. This group could provide reports on progress to the periodic Sherpa meetings and allow that political body to help resolve difficulties that may arise in the technical discussions. The establishment of a technical working group would provide a mechanism for moving some essential but complex issues forward between summits.

The third objective is better partnering among government, industry, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Government, civil society, and the private sector all play important roles in responding to 21st-century nuclear proliferation threats, and each sector offers a vital contribution the others lack. These key stakeholder groups need to be brought into more regular contact as part of a new, multidisciplinary nuclear material security “Iron Triangle.” The NGO and industry events that took place around the 2010 summit are examples of how this conceptual triangle is beginning to take a concrete form. The goal would be to exchange ideas among the key stakeholders and to plan and implement common or mutually reinforcing policies, events, and actions. The Seoul summit communiqué should encourage a deeper dialogue among these parties between the 2012 and 2014 summits by establishing a government-industry-NGO conference against nuclear weapons proliferation that could meet periodically between summits.[18]

Conclusion

The nuclear security summit process is a new and unique opportunity to begin to build a stronger 21st-century nuclear material security architecture. The Washington summit was a watershed event. The decision to continue the summit process in 2012, and possibly beyond, creates the opportunity to extend these meetings into a policy-building process that should be utilized to the maximum extent possible.

As a first step, there should be a decision to continue the summit process until significant improvements beyond the scope of the current nuclear material security regime are implemented. The Washington summit initiated a very important and high-level political process that did not exist before, and continuing it can exert useful pressure on bureaucracies to deliver results. The summit forum also offers an opportunity for making progress on a scale that otherwise would not exist because of the large number of countries involved and the attendance by national leaders.

A second priority is to use the 2012 summit to begin to reframe the nuclear material security debate and to initiate some key changes in strategy and policy. Each summit needs to be viewed as a chance to strengthen and improve the nuclear material security regime further beyond its current limits. The Seoul summit and whatever comes after it will allow for a package of ideas and activities to be placed before at least 47 leaders for approval by all at the same time. That is an unparalleled opening.

Finally, South Korea is an important choice for the second summit because of its unique position as a significant domestic consumer of nuclear energy, a rising exporter of nuclear technology, a member of the G-20 and contributor to the Global Partnership, and a non-nuclear-weapon state with a nuclear-armed state on its border. The 2012 summit provides South Korea with the opportunity and the imperative to seize international leadership in improving the security of nuclear and radiological materials. This can be done most effectively by creating a Seoul Declaration for the 2012 summit.

If successfully initiated and implemented, the declaration can significantly improve the security of nuclear and radiological materials worldwide and create a much stronger barrier against nuclear terrorism over time. This should be the primary objective of the nuclear security summits.


Kenneth N. Luongo is president of the Partnership for Global Security and was a senior adviser on nonproliferation policy to Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary. He is a member of the Arms Control Association’s board of directors.


ENDNOTES

1. See, for example, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, “The 9/11 Commission Report,” July 22, 2004, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/index.htm; Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, “World at Risk,” December 2008, www.preventwmd.com/report.

2. Heidi Blake and Christopher Hope, “WikiLeaks: Al-Qaeda ‘Is Planning a Dirty Bomb,” Telegraph, February 2, 2011.

3. International Panel on Fissile Materials, “Global Fissile Material Report 2009: A Path to Nuclear Disarmament,” p. 8, www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/gfmr09.pdf.

4. Ibid., p. 8.

5. Ibid., pp. 8-20.

6. Matthew Bunn, “Securing the Bomb 2010: Securing All Nuclear Materials in Four Years,” BelferCenter for Science and International Affairs, April 2010, p. 16, www.nti.org/e_research/Securing_The_Bomb_2010.pdf.

7. Union of Concerned Scientists, “Weapon Material Basics,” August 17, 2004, www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/nuclear_terrorism/technical_issues/fissile-materials-basics.html.

8. Tim Andrews, “Strengthening Global Nuclear Security: The Role of the IAEA” (presentation to the Nuclear Security Conference, King’s College London, February 18, 2010).

9. “Radiological Terrorism Tutorial,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2004, www.nti.org/h_learnmore/radtutorial/chapter01_02.html.

10. Cho Hyun, “Preparation for Nuclear Security Summit 2012 and Possible Deliverables” (presentation at the 9th ROK-UN Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Issues, Jeju, December 3, 2010).

11. Martin Matishak, “Next Nuclear Security Summit Could Take on Radiological Threat,” Global Security Newswire, March 18, 2011.

12. The concept of a Seoul Declaration was developed by the Partnership for Global Security in collaboration with staff at the Johns Hopkins University U.S.-Korea Institute. The elements of the declaration in this article are the author’s conception.

13. Matthew Bunn of HarvardUniversity’s Managing the Atom Project has written in several of his reports about this proposal, including in the “Securing the Bomb” series published by the Project on Managing the Atom, HarvardUniversity, and Nuclear Threat Initiative. See www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/overview/cnwm_home.asp.

14. IAEA Information Circular (INFCIRC) 225 provides guidance and recommendations for the physical protection of nuclear material against theft in use, storage, or transport and contains provisions relating to the sabotage of material or facilities. INFCIRC 225 was released in 1975, and its fifth revision was completed in 2011.

15. The resolution was unanimously passed by the UN Security Council in April 2004 under its Chapter VII authority to address issues dealing with international peace and security. The resolution requires that all member states create and enforce measures to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction materials and equipment, including through export controls and criminalization of misuse. States are required to report on their efforts to implement the resolution and are encouraged to request or lend assistance as necessary. For a list of the national reports that have been submitted, see www.un.org/sc/1540/nationalreports.shtml.

16. Kenneth N. Luongo, “Right-Sizing the ‘Loose Nukes’ Security Budget: Part 2,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 25, 2010, www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/right-sizing-the-loose-nukes-security-budget-part-2.

17. Robert Golan-Vilella, Michelle Marchesano, and Sarah Williams, “2010 Nuclear Security Summit Commitment Implementation: Status Report” (forthcoming).

18. This is a permutation of an idea that was proposed as a government-industry forum in a new Brookings Institution study’s survey and was deemed to be acceptable to many of the industry respondents. See Brookings Institution, “Non-Proliferation and the Nuclear ‘Renaissance’: The Contribution and Responsibilities of the Nuclear Industry,” May 2010.

Including North Korea in Nuclear Security Summits

With the approach of the 2012 nuclear security summit in South Korea, an obvious question is what role, if any, North Korea will play at the event. Pyongyang was not invited to the 2010 Washington summit, and its nuclear weapons program, which is estimated to include enough plutonium for five to eight nuclear weapons, is a focus of serious international concern. The six-party talks on North Korean denuclearization have been stalled for years, and their future is unclear. The relationship between North and South Korea has deteriorated during the past year with the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, the North’s shelling of YeonpyeongIsland, and the unveiling of the North’s uranium-enrichment capability.

Therefore, it is not clear how South Korea will want to approach the issue of North Korea in the context of the Seoul summit. One option for tying the North into the summit’s substantive scope is to utilize one or more of the centers of nuclear security excellence as a venue for discussions. The establishment of these centers was announced at or soon after the 2010 summit by China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

On April 21, 2010, just a week after the Washington summit, in a memorandum on the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, the North Korean Foreign Ministry stated that North Korea “has a willingness to join the international efforts for nuclear non-proliferation and on nuclear material security on an equal footing with other nuclear weapons states.”1 The members of the six-party talks have indicated that North Korea will not be recognized as a nuclear-weapon state. By expressing its willingness to join international efforts on nuclear material security, however, North Korea has opened the door to dialogue, although it likely would have to be in the context of the resumption of the denuclearization talks.

The process could develop as follows:

One or more of the five countries that had been involved in multilateral talks with North KoreaChina, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States—or even one or more nongovernmental institutions could invite Pyongyang to participate in a dialogue on best practices in nuclear material security. The location could be the new nuclear security centers in China, Japan, or South Korea or the existing Russian Methodological and TrainingCenter in the science city of Obninsk, which Russia and the United States have used for these types of activities for a number of years. The discussions could be held before the South Korean summit.

The substance of the meetings could be a series of discussions on the protection of direct-use materials, perhaps initially focusing on plutonium, or best practices for radiological material security. The workshops could focus on the technicalities of providing modern security for stockpiles using computer-based accounting methods; physical security systems that utilize cameras, fences, and intrusion detection technologies; emergency management and communications techniques; guard force training; and protection of materials in transit. They also could include border security and prevention of nuclear smuggling. These issues are at the heart of the summit’s objectives.

There is no need to engage with the North Koreans on the specific materials or facilities that they possess. In similar discussions of sensitive facilities, the United States and Russia have used mock-ups or computer-based animation of a “typical” facility very successfully.

The 2010 summit called for high levels of protection in all countries, not just the 47 countries that attended the event. Reaching out to North Korea would serve that objective. It also would provide a low-profile, technical way of beginning to renew discussions with the North Koreans on sensitive nuclear issues.

Furthermore, it would provide Pyongyang with the opportunity to take steps to implement specific improvements that would serve its internal needs for security and demonstrate to the international community that it is a responsible possessor and protector of its nuclear materials. For example, North Korea could install modern physical protection equipment and invite experts to see it and verify its effectiveness. This would give the North Koreans an opportunity to demonstrate that they are addressing international concerns about the potential migration of their materials to other states or to nonstate actors.

If successful, this process could open the door for North Korea to engage with the 2012 summit and potentially could result in an agreement for the establishment of a Korean Peninsula Nuclear Material Security Zone. Such a step would form a concrete basis for further dialogue on nuclear issues on the peninsula and lead Pyongyang back to the six-party talks and the resumption of the denuclearization process detailed in prior agreements. —KENNETH N. LUONGO

 


 

ENDNOTE

1. “Foreign Ministry Issues Memorandum on N-Issue,” Korean Central News Agency, April 21, 2010, www.kcna.co.jp/item/2010/201004/news21/20100421-27ee.html.

 

Reconsider the Nuclear Test Ban

Daryl G. Kimball

Ten years ago, President Bill Clinton asked Gen. John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review issues surrounding the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the aftermath of the Senate’s 1999 rejection of the treaty. His 2001 report concluded that “the advantages of the Test Ban Treaty outweigh any disadvantages, and thus that ratification would increase national security. For the sake of future generations, it would be unforgivable to neglect any reasonable action that can help prevent nuclear proliferation, as the Test Ban Treaty clearly would.”

Today, a growing, bipartisan list of national security leaders agrees that it is past time to heed the general’s advice and reconsider the value of the CTBT. After 1,030 U.S. nuclear test explosions, there is simply no technical or military rationale for
the United States to resume nuclear explosive testing. At the same time, U.S. ratification of the treaty would reduce the risk that other countries might conduct nuclear tests that could improve their nuclear capabilities.

In China’s case, a new round of test explosions would allow it to miniaturize warhead designs and put multiple warheads on its relatively small arsenal of strategic ballistic missiles—a move that could allow a rapid increase in its nuclear strike capability. Without nuclear weapons test explosions, potential nuclear-armed countries such as Iran would not be able to proof-test the more advanced, smaller nuclear warhead designs needed to deliver such weapons using ballistic missiles.

Given Tehran’s advancing uranium-enrichment and missile capabilities, it is important to establish additional barriers against a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons capability in the years ahead.

U.S. action on the CTBT would prompt a chain reaction of ratifications by the eight other holdout states, including China and India, and advance the prospects for entry into force.

Yet, in order to explode the myths and misperceptions that have blocked progress toward U.S. ratification in the past, President Barack Obama must step up his efforts and engage the Senate in an in-depth dialogue on the treaty. For their part, all senators must take their national security responsibility seriously and thoroughly review the new evidence that has accumulated in favor of approving the CTBT.

For instance, in 1992 then-Rep. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) claimed, “[A]s long as we have a nuclear deterrent, we have got to test it in order to ensure that it is safe and it is reliable.” Now it is abundantly clear that this assertion is wrong.

The nuclear weapons laboratory directors report they now have a deeper understanding of the arsenal than ever before. Since 1994, each warhead type in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal has been determined to be safe and reliable; life extension programs have refurbished and modernized major warhead types. A 2009 study by JASON, the independent technical review panel, concluded that the “lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence.” Age-related defects in non-nuclear components can be expected, but nuclear explosive testing is not needed to discover these problems or address them.

The Obama administration’s unprecedented $85 billion, 10-year plan for upgrading the nuclear weapons complex should give senators greater confidence that there is a long-term strategy and more than enough funding to continue to maintain the U.S. arsenal effectively. The administration’s $7.6 billion request for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons activities for fiscal year 2012 is almost 19 percent higher than the $6.4 billion appropriated by Congress for fiscal year 2010. As NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino recently told Arms Control Today, “[I]n my opinion, we have a safe and secure and reliable stockpile. There’s no need to conduct underground [nuclear] testing.”

Despite a decade of advances in national and international nuclear monitoring capabilities, Sen. Kyl and a few other critics repeat the age-old charge that the absence of clandestine tests cannot be verified with absolute certainty. This argument misses the point on verification and implies that low-yield tests are worth the high risk of getting caught. No would-be cheater could be confident that a nuclear explosion of sufficient yield to possibly threaten U.S. security would escape detection.

The United States’ ability to detect and deter possible clandestine nuclear testing will only increase with the CTBT’s global monitoring network and the option of short-notice on-site inspections. Many of the 337 monitoring stations are inside Russia, China, and other sensitive locations—places where the United States simply cannot gain access on its own.

Failure to ratify the CTBT diminishes the United States’ ability to detect, deter, and confront proliferators. The United States stands to lose nothing while gaining an important constraint on the nuclear weapons capabilities of others that could pose a threat to U.S. security. The time to reconsider the CTBT is now.

Ten years ago, President Bill Clinton asked Gen. John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review issues surrounding the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the aftermath of the Senate’s 1999 rejection of the treaty. His 2001 report concluded that “the advantages of the Test Ban Treaty outweigh any disadvantages, and thus that ratification would increase national security. For the sake of future generations, it would be unforgivable to neglect any reasonable action that can help prevent nuclear proliferation, as the Test Ban Treaty clearly would.”

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