US AND NUCLEAR ISSUES
DOE
September 30, 2008
Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Goals, Strategies, and Challenges
Report
"This report is intended for all those who are concerned about the need for assuring fuel for new reactors and at the same time limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. This audience includes the United States and Russia, other nations that currently supply nuclear material and technology, many other countries contemplating starting or growing nuclear power programs, and the international organizations that support the safe, secure functioning of the international nuclear fuel cycle, most prominently the International Atomic Energy Agency."
Professor Matthew Bunn served on the Committee on Internationalization of the Civilian Nuclear Fuel Cycle, a National Academy of Sciences–Russian Academy of Sciences joint committee which produced this report.
August 22, 2008
Memo to President-elect McBama
Memorandum, Aspen Strategy Group
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Graham Allison writes in a memo to a fictional President-elect McBama on the suject of nuclear terrorism, "You pledged that you would make preventing this catastrophe an organizing principle of your administration. This memo provides a brief outline of strategy and organization to fulfill that promise."
August 19, 2008
Former U.S. Diplomat R. Nicholas Burns Appointed to Harvard Kennedy School Faculty
Press Release
By Doug Gavel
R. Nicholas Burns, formerly the highest-ranking career diplomat at the U.S. Department of State, has been appointed Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics. He will serve on the Board of Directors at Belfer Center.
August 14, 2008
"Strengthening our Strategy Against WMD"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Dr. Ashton B. Carter, Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project, Harvard & Stanford Universities and The Honorable Robert G. Joseph, Senior Scholar, National Institute for Public Policy
Dr. Ashton B. Carter and Ambassador Robert G. Joseph discuss recommendations stemming from recommendations in final report of the review they co-chaired of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and other DOD efforts to counter weapons of mass destruction.
August 5, 2008
Defense Strategy & Budget in the Post-Bush Era
Paper
By Dr. Ashton B. Carter, Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project, Harvard & Stanford Universities
A key challenge for the next administration's national security leadership concerns the management of investment in the U.S. national security future. In this paper for the Aspen Strategy Group, Dr. Ashton Carter discusses the challenges of defense budgeting and program selection, and the current mismatch between resources and strategy.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
July 2008
"Expanded and Accelerated HEU Downblending: Designing Options to Serve the Interests of All Parties"
Conference Paper
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
Accelerating and expanding the downblending of highly enriched uranium (HEU) beyond the current 500-ton U.S.-Russian HEU Purchase Agreement would have significant security benefits. Russia will still have large quantities of HEU not needed for military purposes after 500 tons of HEU has been blended to low-enriched uranium (LEU). But no agreement to expand and accelerate the downblending of Russian or U.S. excess HEU will succeed unless it is structured in a way that serves the interests of all sides. Russia has made clear that it has no interest in extending the HEU Purchase Agreement on its current terms. This paper outlines key Russian, U.S., and industry interests relating to expanded and accelerated HEU downblending.
AP Photo
July 11, 2008
"Why U.S. Could Lose Out on India Nuclear Trade"
Media Feature
By Xenia Dormandy, Senior Associate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Xenia Dormandy, Director of the Project on India and the Subcontinent, was interviewed by Brajesh Upadhyay for BBC News on July 11 regarding the implications of the U.S.-India nuclear deal for international trade.
Summer 2008
"The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s—A Research Note"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 33
By Pavel Podvig
The Soviet strategic modernization program of the 1970s was one of the most consequential developments of the Cold War. Deployment of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and the dramatic increase in the number of strategic warheads in the Soviet arsenal created a sense of vulnerability in the United States that was, to a large degree, responsible for the U.S. military buildup of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the escalation of Cold War tensions during that period. U.S. assessments concluded that the Soviet Union was seeking to achieve a capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Estimates of missile accu¬racy and silo hardness provided by the U.S. intelligence community led many in the United States to conclude that the Soviet Union was building a strategic missile force capable of destroying most U.S. missiles in a counterforce strike and of surviving a subsequent nuclear exchange. Soviet archival documents that have recently become available demonstrate that this conclusion was wrong. The U.S. estimates substantially overestimated the accuracy of the Soviet Union's missiles and the degree of silo reinforcement. As the data demonstrate, the Soviet missile force did not have the capability to launch a successful first strike. Moreover, the data strongly suggest that the Soviet Union never attempted to acquire a first-strike capability, concentrating instead on strategies based on retaliation.
Summer 2008
"Divining Nuclear Intentions: A Review Essay"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 33
By William C. Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova
Although projections of nuclear proliferation abound, they rarely are founded on empirical research or guided by theory. Even fewer studies are informed by a comparative perspective. The two books under review—The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy, by Jacques Hymans, and Nuclear Logics: Alternative Paths in East Asia and the Middle East, by Etel Solingen, are welcome exceptions to this general state of affairs, and represent the cutting edge of nonproliferation research. Both works challenge conventional conceptions of the sources of nuclear weapons decisions and offer new insights into why past predictions of rapid proliferation failed to materialize and why current prognoses about rampant proliferation are similarly flawed. While sharing a number of common features, including a focus on subsystemic determinants of national behavior, the books differ in their methodology, level of analysis, receptivity to multicausal explanations, and assumptions about decisionmaker rationality and the revolutionary nature of the decision. Where one author emphasizes the importance of the individual leader’s national identity conception in determining a state’s nuclear path, the other explains nuclear decisions primarily with regard to the political-economic orientation of the ruling coalition. Notwithstanding a tendency to overinterpret evidence, the books represent the best of contemporary social science research and provide compelling interpretations of nuclear proliferation dynamics of great relevance to scholars and policymakers alike.
May 5-6, 2008
"Safety, Security, Safeguards: Enabling Nuclear Energy Growth"
Presentation
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
Matthew Bunn presented "Safety, Security, Safeguards: Enabling Nuclear Energy Growth" to the Global Nuclear Future Workshop at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Cambridge, Mass.
