Nuclear Issues

In October, 2012, at the foot of a rocky hillside in eastern Kazakhstan, a group of American, Russian, and Kazakh nuclear scientists and engineers gathered for a ceremony marking the completion of a secret 17-year, $150 million operation to secure plutonium in the tunnels of Degelen Mountain—an abandoned site of Soviet underground nuclear testing.

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.

The Summer 2013 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s expanding work on complex cybersecurity issues and Middle East challenges, offers reflections on the role of the U.S. in Iraq, and spotlights work being done by the Center and its affiliates on environment and energy issues.

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 Winter 2011-2012 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features news, analysis and insight by Belfer Center scholars on issues that include increasingly important info-tech policy challenges and the first U.S.-Russian joint threat assessment on nuclear terrorism. The Center’s deepening impact on defense policy is highlighted with an article about the recent appointments of Ashton B. Carter and Eric Rosenbach to senior Pentagon posts and a Q&A with Carter, the new deputy secretary of defense. Additional articles focus on issues ranging from the Palestinian bid for statehood to Calestous Juma’s role in Lagos’ launch of the first innovation advisory council in Africa.

High-Ranking U.S. Official To Discuss HEU Removal from Ukraine; Bunn on Lessons Learned at Fukushima; Heinonen Proposes Empowering IAEA to Probe Trafficking of Dual Use Items; NATO and Russia Urged to Start Building Security Alliance; more.

The Winter 2010/11 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights a major Belfer Center conference on technology and governance, the Center's involvement in the nuclear threat documentary Countdown to Zero, and a celebration of Belfer Center founder Paul Doty.

Russia, the United States, and other countries must cooperate to enable large-scale growth of nuclear energy around the world while achieving even higher standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation than are in place today. This will require building a new global framework for nuclear energy, including new or strengthened global institutions. The Belfer Center's Managing the Atom (MTA) Project and the Russian Research Center's Kurchatov Institute developed these and additional recommendations in a new collaborative report, published in October.

When the Academy Award-winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth,Lawrence Bender, wanted to create a new nuclear proliferation film, he turned to leading experts at the Belfer Center.

Belfer Center Director Graham Allison, with members of the Bipartisan Commission on U.S. Policy towards Russia, met in March with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and high-level officials in the Obama administration to discuss the future of U.S.-Russia relations.