Nuclear Issues

On October 11, 2018, Harvard Kennedy School Professor of Practice Matthew Bunn presented "For Security's Sake: Saving U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

On June 12, 2018, Professor of Practice Matthew Bunn presented "Today's nuclear dangers and the implications for long-term disarmament" at Oslo University in Norway.

On June 12, 2018, Professor of Practice Matthew Bunn presented "Managing the dangers of Iran's nuclear program" to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Norway.

Hui Zhang presented "Thoughts on China’s Nuclear Reprocessing Policy" at the Conference of Assessing the International Nuclear Agenda, June 16-17, 2017, in Beijing.

The last couple of years have seen mixed progress in non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament. On the positive side, we can applaud the Ministerial-level Nuclear Security conference in December 2016 and actions emanating from that.

High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. The talk will outline key insights from the new book Insider Threats (https://www.belfercenter.org/publicat...), which was co-edited with Scott Sagan of Stanford University. The book offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the US Army. It also includes an unprecedented analysis of terrorist thinking about using insiders to get fissile material or sabotage nuclear facilities. The talk will discuss cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and “worst practices” from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.
 

The High Level Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty’s (FMCT) Expert Preparatory Group held an open-ended informal consultative meeting at the United Nations in New York on 2-3 March 2017. The purpose of the meeting was to engage all UN Member States to share their views through interactive discussions on the scope of a future treaty, its definitions, verification requirements, and associated legal and institutional arrangements. As the FMCT is still at the stage of a proposed agreement, the purpose of the consultative meeting is not to negotiate the Treaty but prepare the terrain on future negotiations. The Group, which submits its report to the UN General Assembly in 2018, draws from the Governmental Experts Group (GGE) Report of 2015, further details issues, and looks at various options, inter alia, on the definitions, scope, verification alternatives, and their implications. The GGE participants agree that the future FMCT needs to be internationally and effectively verifiable, and is an important step in nuclear disarmament. The GGE identified a number of key issues related to verification, which are being summarized in this presentation.

As the IAEA Director General Emeritus, Hans Blix put it “A nuclear accident anywhere is an accident everywhere”. Fukushima revealed that no one state is immune from fallacies that resulted both before and after the nuclear accident. That will be also true with any nuclear terrorism event, which we have been spared thus far.

RSIS Distinguished Public Lecture by Dr Olli Heinonen, S. Rajaratnam Professor of Strategic Studies, RSIS, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore,
on 2 November 2016.