6 Items

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- US-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

The U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism Newsletter: November 2019 - November 2020

| Nov. 26, 2020

 

  • Elbe Group Discusses Strategic Stability, Hybrid Warfare and Terrorism.
  • Mowatt-Larssen’s Book Details Lessons He Learned While Tracking Al-Qaida’s WMD Programs.
  • Experts on New START Extension and Other Nuclear Priorities of Biden Presidency.
  • Kazakhstan’s Last HEU Eliminated.
  • William Potter Joins Russian Academy of Sciences.
  • COVID, Nuclear Security On Agenda of IAEA’s 64th General Conference.
  • Mayak Aims to Process Entire range of SNF.
  • Atomguard Reports Foiling Unauthorized Access.
  • Allison: US Vital Interest in Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism Will Continue to Guide Its North Korea Policy.
  • Learning from COVID-19 to Prepare for Nuclear Attack.
  • Hecker, Kassianova Encourage Young US and RF Professionals to Explore Lessons of Nuclear Accidents.
  • Experts Weigh in on 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing.
  • A New Look at IAEA’s Nuclear Security Recommendations.
  • Azerbaijan Has Threatened to Strike Armenia’s NPP With Missiles.
  • IAEA Notified of 189 Incidents Of Material Being Out Of Regulatory Control in 2019.
  • Russia To Retrieve More Radioactive Debris from Bottom of Ocean.
  • Researchers Propose Fast Way to Detect Weapons Grade Materials.
  • Keeping Nuclear Power Plants Out of Reach of Terrorists During the Coronavirus Pandemic.
  • Bunn, Tobey and Roth Testify on Prevention of Nuclear Theft, Call for Cooperation With Russia.
  • Budapest Memorandum Parsed.
  • IAEA Holds A Ministerial on Nuclear Security.
  • Assessing Progress on Nuclear Security.
  • 12th GUMO Officer On Trial for Embezzlement.
  • Lukashenko: Pompeo Alerted Me to Nuclear Materials at Border.
  • US and Russia Reported HEU and Plutonium to IAEA.
  • IAEA Bank Receives LEU.
  • GICNT Hosted 8 Multilateral Activities in 2019.

 

 

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- US-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

The U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism Newsletter: November 2018 - November 2019

| Dec. 15, 2019
  • Russians View Terrorists as Third Most Probable Source of Nuclear Attack
  • U.S. Adopts New Strategy for Countering of WMD Terrorism
  • Elbe Group Calls for U.S.-Russian Cooperation against Terrorism
  • Belfer Center Experts on Combatting Complacency about Nuclear Terrorism
  • Can Threat Emanating from Jihadists of Central Asia Have a WMD Dimension?
  • NTI and CENESS on Radiological Risks in Central Asia
  • Hecker Assesses Probability of Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism
  • Luxembourg Forum: It’s Vital for US and Russia to Intensify Cooperation to Combat Nuclear Terrorism

The nuclear archive warehouse outside Tehran (Satellite image via Google).

Satellite image via Google

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

The Iran Nuclear Archive: Impressions and Implications

In mid-January, a team of scholars from the Belfer Center’s Intelligence and Managing the Atom Projects traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel to examine samples of, and receive briefings on, an archive of documents related to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The large cache includes some 55,000 pages of documents and a further 55,000 files on CDs that included photos and videos. A clandestine Israeli intelligence operation spirited the materials out of Iran in early 2018.

The documents that the Belfer group were shown confirm that senior Iranian officials had decided in the late 1990s to actually manufacture nuclear weapons and carry out an underground nuclear test; that Iran’s program to do so made more technical progress than had previously been understood; and that Iran had help from quite a number of foreign scientists, and access to several foreign nuclear weapon designs. The archive also leaves open a wide range of questions, including what plan, if any, Iran has had with respect to nuclear weapons in the nearly 16 years since Iran’s government ordered a halt to most of the program in late 2003. 

This brief report summarizes the group’s conclusions about what the archive reveals about Iran’s program and questions that remain open.

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Analysis & Opinions

Nuclear Security Summit: One Year On and Looking Ahead

We asked nuclear policy experts in Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs to summarize in one paragraph the achievements in the year since President Obama convened a summit on nuclear security on April 12-13, 2010. And we asked for a second paragraph on what needs to be done in the year before the follow-up summit planned for Seoul, South Korea.

President Barack Obama greets German Chancellor Angela Merkel during the official arrivals for the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, April 12, 2010.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

A Call for German Leadership in Combating Nuclear Terrorism

| April 12, 2010

"...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 mushroom cloud of an atom bomb rises among abandoned ships in Bikini lagoon on July 1, 1946 after the bomb was dropped from the Super Fortress "Dave's Dream." This photo was made from a tower on the Bikini Island by a remote control camera automatical

AP Image

Discussion Paper

The Armageddon Test

| August 7, 2009

How much nuclear material has leaked, and is it in the hands of terrorists, in storage somewhere, or still in circulation? No one knows for sure, but the task of cleaning up the nuclear black market amounts to an Armageddon test for global intelligence. The standard for success is unforgiving: all nuclear material must be recovered before it finds its way into an improvised nuclear device.