Nuclear Issues

There are strong signs that nuclear weapons work continues. Understanding them is crucial to verifying and enforcing a new agreement. If we do not insist on answers before a comprehensive agreement is concluded, we will never get them.

Senior Fellow William H. Tobey evaluates the effectiveness of President Obama's policies to stem the threats of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Testimony by Belfer Center Senior Fellow William H. Tobey before the House Armed Service Committee on the importance of preventing nuclear weapon attainment by Iran for U.S. national security.

What would be the consequences if the interim deal became, de facto, permanent?  Does the interim deal have gaps that would be fatal to any long-term arrangement?  What are the consequences if no deal is reached?  And, are such consequences better or worse than those resulting from an extension of the interim deal, or from a deal that fails to meet minimum acceptable standards? These questions, among others, were addressed at a private roundtable discussion hosted by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control on April 25, 2014.

Over the past two decades, enormous progress has been made in securing nuclear weapons and fissile materials, Will Tobey writes. Complacency, however, would be a grave, perhaps fatal error.

Russia is violating Ukrainian sovereignty and international law by sending troops to seize communications, transportation, and governmental hubs on the Crimean peninsula. Soldiers violating borders to seize territory in Europe is a grave matter, reminiscent of a darker past that Europe has tried to escape.

What has Barack Obama's administration done to respond?

Each year, the Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School welcomes new pre- and post-doctoral fellows and visiting researchers to a select team of scholars exploring the critical role that science and technology play in everyday life.

Earlier this year, an 83-year-old Catholic nun, Sister Megan Rice, was convicted of breaking into the Y-12 National Security Complex near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the U.S. stores weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium. Sister Rice and two senior citizen companions cut through three fences before vandalizing the outside of the storage site. Fortunately, they were peace activists and not terrorists bent on causing mayhem, but this appalling lapse proves that no nation can be complacent about securing its nuclear materials.

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for December 14-21, 2012.

On June 11, 2012, the Belfer Center's William Tobey, Matthew Bunn and Simon Saradzhyan testified before Canada's upper house of parliament, the Senate, on the threat of nuclear terrorism and strategies to combat it.