Nuclear Issues

Despite substantial progress in improving nuclear security in recent years, there is more to be done.  The threats of nuclear theft and terrorism remain very real.  This paper recommends learning from the much stronger national and international efforts in nuclear safety, and in particular taking steps to build international understanding of the threat; establish effective performance objectives; assure performance; train and certify needed personnel; build security culture and exchange best practices; reduce the number of sites that need to be protected; and strengthen the international framework and continue the dialogue once leaders are no longer meeting regularly at the summit level.

Through structured interviews and a literature review, we assess which approaches to protection against insider thefts in the casino and pharmaceutical industries could be usefully applied to strengthen protections against insider theft in the nuclear industry, where insider thefts could have very high consequences.

Before the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, China had big nuclear expansion plans, with more than 40 reactor units under construction or in planning. The Fukushima disaster led China to conduct safety inspections of all its reactors and to suspend nuclear project approvals until a new nuclear safety plan could be adopted. Under Beijing's new safety regulatory system, reactors that are operating or under construction will be spared major redesign, but future projects will face re-engineering, perhaps leading the Chinese to adopt safer third-generation reactor designs created by Chinese firms.

The risks posed by the proliferation of cyber weapons are gaining wide recognition among security planners. Yet the general reaction of scholars of international relations has been to neglect the cyber peril owing to its technical novelties and intricacies. This attitude amounts to either one or both of two claims: the problem is not of sufficient scale to warrant close inspection, or it is not comprehensible to a non-technical observer. This seminar challenged both assertions.

"Nuclear proliferation is a crime that pays well. Those involved in the Khan network were made very wealthy for their efforts, and the inability of the international community to effectively punish them has resulted in a missed opportunity to provide a deterrent against future black-market salesmen."

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.

"...Germany has an opportunity at the Washington summit — and thereafter — to step up and lend non-American leadership to the problem. Recognizing that in many of the world's capitals the threat of nuclear terrorism is not yet being taken seriously, and when in some of them the very notion is even considered an American pretext for an entirely different, potentially hostile political agenda, non-American leadership is most urgently needed."

"The United States is the most developed and strongest nation in the world. China is the largest and fastest developing nation. In the multilateral effort to overcome these challenges, a good and productive relationship between the United States and China is essential. Indeed, no bilateral relationship among major powers today would be more crucial in shaping global order and agenda than the one between China and the United States."

The only thing that can keep nuclear bombs out of the hands of terrorists is a brand-new science of nuclear forensics.

Failure to develop a comprehensive contingency plan, such as the one proposed here, and inform the American public, where appropriate, about its particulars will only serve to amplify the devastating impact of any nuclear attack on a U.S. city