Nuclear Issues

Leading up to and during the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, Belfer Center experts released reports, published commentary, and provided insight and analysis into global nuclear security. In advance of the Summit, the Project on Managing the Atom set the stage for discussion with the report Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?

An in-progress compilation of the expert commentary and analysis is available here.

This seminar considered how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reacted to nuclear crises. The IAEA often appears not just to have weathered such crises, but to have successfully leaped through windows of opportunity presented by them. This has resulted in periodic expansions of its mandate, capabilities, and resources. The 2011 Fukushima disaster appears to be a puzzling exception, raising the question of what concatenation of factors needs to be present for the IAEA to take advantage of nuclear crises.

Professor Trevor Findlay spoke at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on the verification and compliance challenges of nuclear disarmament on October 18, 2011.

How can large states deter small nuclear powers—and how should they respond if successfully attacked by a smaller aggressor with WMD, especially nuclear weapons? This paper considers conventional alternatives to in-kind nuclear retaliation, which may be impossible in the modern era.