Nuclear Issues

On September 26, 2014, Matthew Bunn presented "Nuclear Security in Russia – and Current State of Cooperation" at the Harvard Workshop on Nuclear Security at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

Matthew Bunn presented "The threat of nuclear terrorism: What’s new? What’s true?" at a conference in Seoul, 3-5 November, 2011.

Matthew Bunn presented "Nuclear Security: What is Required" to a joint Harvard/Peking University workshop in Beijing.

The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the most significant challenges to global security in the twenty-first century. Limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials may be the key to preventing a nuclear war or a catastrophic act of nuclear terrorism. Going Nuclear offers conceptual, historical, and analytical perspectives on current problems in controlling nuclear proliferation. It includes essays that examine why countries seek nuclear weapons as well as studies of the nuclear programs of India, Pakistan, and South Africa.

"Concern over nuclear proliferation is likely to increase in the coming years. Many observers believe that the spread of nuclear weapons to one or two more states will trigger a wave of new nuclear states. More states may turn to nuclear power to meet their energy needs as other sources of energy become more costly or undesirable because they emit carbon that contributes to global climate change. As more nuclear reactors are built, the world's stock of nuclear expertise and fissionable materials is likely to grow."

Dr. Thomas M. Nichols gave the keynote address at a symposium on U.S.-Russian relations which was sponsored by Tufts University on April 10, 2009.

"Why should others be taken to task when the Nuclear Five are themselves failing to comply with treaty obligations under Article VI, as others see it?"

"CSIA's research on cooperative denuclearization began during the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. To those of us familiar with nuclear weapons, their construction, and command and control, and with the looming revolution about to sweep the then–Soviet Union, it was plain that a new and unprecedented danger to international security was emerging. An appropriate policy response to this new form of nuclear threat could not be fashioned from traditional Cold War tools of deterrence, arms control, and military preparedness alone. Safety could only be sought through new policies emphasizing cooperative engagement with the new states, new leaders, and military and industrial heirs of the former Soviet Union...."

Book by Ashton B. Carter, Kurt M. Campbell, Steven E. Miller, and Charles Zraket

What if the bomb that exploded in Oklahoma City or New York's World Trade Center had used 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium? The destruction would have been far more vast. This danger is not so remote: the recipe for making such a bomb is simple, and soon the ingredients might be easily attained. Thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from the weapons complex of the former Soviet Union, poorly guarded and poorly accounted for, could soon leak on to a vast emerging nuclear black market.