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For years, the Belfer Center has been a leader in efforts to counter the threat of "loose nukes" in the former Soviet Union.
This spring, three new publications will draw attention to the continuing urgency of the threat and lay out comprehensive strategies to reduce the risks associated with the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.
A study on Managing the Global Nuclear Materials Threat: Policy Recommendations, from a bipartisan group chaired by former Senator Sam Nunn, has been released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
BCSIA Director Graham Allison served on the study''s Senior Policy Panel; Allison and Matthew Bunn, Assistant Director of the Science Technology and Public Policy Program, also served as chair and deputy-chair of Task Force I, which laid out a broad range of specific initiatives to address the loose nukes threat.
A second report, The Next Wave: Urgently Needed New Steps to Control Warheads and Fissile Material, drafted by Bunn, will be issued as a joint report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the BCSIA Project on Managing the Atom.
The report warns that while current programs to address this threat have made enormous progress, they "fall woefully short" if judged against the urgency of the threat to U.S. security. The report outlines a comprehensive agenda for action and offers much detail on the recommended steps.
Finally, a third report, being written by Bunn with Oleg Bukharin and Kenneth Luongo of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (RANSAC), zeroes in specifically on the material protection, control, and accounting (MPC&A) program.
MPC&A is the cooperative effort to improve security and accounting for nuclear material in the former Soviet Union. The report describes how the effort could be both accelerated and sustained over time, and how a new level of partner-ship can be forged with participants in the former Soviet states.