Nuclear Issues

New sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council on September 11 in response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test are “not significant enough,” according to R. Nicholas Burns, an Atlantic Council board member who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the George W. Bush administration.

Sanctions must be part of a “patient long-term strategy” that includes deterrence, working closely with allies, and negotiations, said Burns, laying out the United States’ options for dealing with the North Korean crisis.  

In its attempts to deter North Korea from developing the capability to credibly threaten the continental United States with a nuclear weapon, Washington now finds itself in a crueler version of the strategic dilemma Israel faced in 2011 amid what it saw—or at least presented—as a closing operational window of opportunity to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. In his piece for Iran Matters, Daniel Sobelman argues that the basic structure of the crisis between the United States and North Korea is analogous to the challenge Israel faced when trying to dissuade or stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Steve Brill’s terrific article “Are We Any Safer?” – the cover of the September Atlantic – describes both the progress and the follies of homeland security in the 15 years since the tragedy of 9/11.  Brill provides a readable (and highly opinionated) overview of vulnerabilities that have been largely fixed, areas where hundreds of billions have been wasted, and remaining gaps.

Andrei Zolotov at Russia Direct (RD) has published an interview with U.S. Representative to the IAEA and former National Security Council Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism and Threat Reduction, Laura Holgate (LH). I have posted some excerpts.

This week the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that 546 kilograms of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) shipped from Japan arrived in the United States.

In mid-July, as an attempted coup was taking place in Turkey, many in the United States wondered whether U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stored at the Turkish airbase, Incirlik, were adequately protected against theft. Congressional Research Service Nuclear Weapons Policy Specialist, Amy Woolf, recently published a short article describing some of the security systems surrounding those weapons.

On May 8, after more than a decade, the 2005 amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) entered into force.The amendment summarizes nuclear security principles and obligates states to develop rules and regulations for physical protection.

Matthew Bunn and Gary Samore just published an op-ed arguing that the program to build a factory that converts excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons into plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel for nuclear reactors has become too expensive. Although the two helped to launch the program in the mid-90s, they argue "It is time to stop throwing good money after bad and pursue cheaper alternatives that will serve our national security better" and "whatever we do with this plutonium in the long term, we should move to put it under international monitoring, and commit never again to use it in weapons..." You can read their complete argument here.

The Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT) is an informal international partnership dedicated to combatting nuclear and radiological terrorism. It was launched by Russia and the US at the G8 meeting in 2006, based on their shared concern about that threat, as well as determination to develop partnership capacity to address it. Over time, the GICNT has evolved into a vibrant international partnership with an action-oriented approach to enhancing nuclear security within and among its 86 partner states.

The sports world was recently in a tizzy over revelations by the former head of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory – who has now fled the country – that he helped run a massive doping operation and cover-up that contributed to Russia’s impressive haul of medals at the 2014 Olympics.  (Russian officials and athletes denied the charges.)