Articles

"If nuclear power is to grow on the scale required to be a significant part of the solution to global climate disruption or scarcity of fossil fuels, major steps are needed to rebuild confidence that nuclear facilities will be safe from accidents and secure against attacks."

"Our crystal ball is not clear enough to predict with confidence whether the global nuclear future will be characterized by peace and prosperity or by conflict and destruction. But we do believe that the choices made in the coming few years will be crucial in determining whether the world can have more nuclear power without more nuclear weapons dangers in the future."

"Keeping nuclear weapons and the difficult-to-manufacture materials needed to make them out of terrorist hands is critical to U.S. and world security — and to the future of nuclear energy as well. In the aftermath of a terrorist nuclear attack, there would be no chance of convincing governments, utilities, and publics to build nuclear reactors on the scale required for nuclear energy to make any significant contribution to coping with climate change."

"...[A] primary goal in the next decades must be to remove this risk of near global self-destruction by drastically reducing nuclear forces to a level where this outcome is not possible, but where a deterrent value is preserved — in other words, to a level of minimum deterrence. This conception was widely discussed in the early years of the nuclear era, but it drowned in the Cold War flood of weaponry. No matter how remote the risk of civilization collapse may seem now — despite its being so vivid only a few decades ago — the elimination of this risk, for this century and centuries to come, must be a primary driver for radical reductions in nuclear weapons."

Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism? Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily invested in nuclear power? The authors in this two-volume (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010) special issue of Dædalus have one simple and clear answer to these questions: It depends.

Hui Zhang argues that an effective universal Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) would make an important contribution to nuclear disarmament, the nonproliferation regime, and the prevention of nuclear terrorism. However, such a FMCT must have a credible verification regime. Dr. Zhang suggests that it should be technically feasible to establish an effectively verifiable FMCT at a reasonable cost, while protecting national security secrets.

Article in The Nonproliferation Review

The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union posed an unprecedented challenge: to keep tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium to make tens of thousands more, out of hostile hands. In this crisis, small groups of policy entrepreneurs launched major innovations to spur the nuclear complexes of the former rival superpowers to pursue their common interest in securing and dismantling nuclear stockpiles. Billions of dollars have now been spent pursuing these efforts, thousands of bombs' worth of nuclear materials have been permanently destroyed, and security both for thousands of nuclear weapons and for enough nuclear material for tens of thousands more has been substantially improved.

Nuclear terrorism is a realistic threat to all countries. First, this article describes the potential threats of nuclear terrorism including nuclear explosives, nuclear sabotage, and dirty bombs. Finally, this article recommends steps to secure nuclear weapons, nuclear materials, and nuclear facilities.

The appalling events of September 11, 2001, require a major international initiative to strengthen security for nuclear materials and facilities worldwide, and to put stringent security standards in place. This paper recommends a range of specific steps to upgrade security at individual facilities and strengthen national and international standards, with the goal of building a world in which all weapons-usable nuclear material is secure and accounted for, and all nuclear facilities are secured from sabotage, with sufficient transparency that the international community can have confidence that this is the case.