Nuclear Issues

During the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, Belfer Center experts published reports and provided commentary and analysis on successes and continuing challenges in nuclear security around the world. Following are some actions they believe are needed to improve the security of nuclear facilities and reduce the possibility of nuclear theft and terrorism.

[Some recommendations are edited for space.]

In the months and weeks before the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., Belfer experts promoted a series of ideas to strengthen measures to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons or the essential ingre­dients to make them.

Matthew Bunn is a professor of practice at Harvard Kennedy School and co-principal investigator for the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. Bunn’s research focus is on nuclear theft terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and innovation in energy technology. During the Clinton administration, Bunn served as an advisor to the White House Office of Science Technology Policy, where he played a major role in U.S. policies related to the control and disposition of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the United States and the former Soviet Union. We asked Bunn about the current crisis in U.S.-Russian relations and its impact on nuclear security.

As the United States and Iran approach an historic moment in their relations (or lack thereof), smart diplomatic interaction has never been more important. Belfer Center postdoctoral fellow Robert Reardon highlights the communications trap into which many policymakers fall when trying to explain this issue to the American public.

In preparation for next year’s Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands, the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) is rolling out a series of reports on strengthening international efforts to secure nuclear material around the world. Matthew Bunn and William Tobey, along with other staff and fellows at the Belfer Center, have also begun briefing officials from key states attending the summit on priority steps for reducing nuclear security risks.

Most of the global growth of nuclear power over the coming decade will occur in China. The safety and security policies guiding that growth are significant far beyond China, since an accident or act of terrorism would affect the use of nuclear energy around the world. In January, the Managing the Atom Project (MTA) held a workshop in Shenzhen, China, to discuss safety and security at China’s nuclear power and fuel cycle facilities.

When President Barack Obama hosted nearly 50 heads of state in Washington, D.C. for the first global Nuclear Security Summit in 2010, the Belfer Center made available to the leaders and their sherpas a range of relevant background materials and information. With the arrival of the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, the Center created www.nuclearsummit.org – an online Nuclear Security Summit dossier.

The Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) has received a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support a fellowship and training program aimed at helping prepare the next generation of nuclear policy leaders.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.

Researchers from the United States and Russia issued in June a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences.