Energy

In the lead-up to the nuclear security summit, Advancing Nuclear Security: Evaluating Progress and Setting New Goals outlines what was accomplished in a four-year effort launched in 2009 to secure nuclear material around the globe—and what remains to be done. The effort made significant progress, but some weapons-usable nuclear materials still remain “dangerously vulnerable." The authors highlight the continuing danger of nuclear and radiological terrorism and call for urgent action.

"In today's world, nations' access to middle or advanced range technologies such as car industries or nuclear technology, their increased national defensive and deterrent capabilities and thus their more regional political and economic clout, enable them to sway more influence on international and regional public opinion, and thereby express their ways of progress and national confidence. This can challenge the hegemony and power monopoly of great powers such as the United States and pave the way for creating new opportunities to establish regional coalitions by rising states."

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Project on Managing the Atom Co-Principal Investigator Matthew Bunn provides a comprehensive assessment of global efforts to secure and consolidate nuclear stockpiles, and a detailed action plan for securing all nuclear materials in four years.  Securing the Bomb 2010 was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The full report, with additional information on the threat of nuclear terrorism, is available for download on the NTI website.

As nuclear energy becomes a viable alternative to carbon-based fuels, security is a vital concern. Here’s how private markets might be able to help.

"Seeking ways to dissuade more states from contemplating launching their own uranium enrichment programs...the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is considering different mechanisms to assure these states that they can obtain fuel supplies from the market without political interference."

"...a new look at global atomic energy supplies is sorely needed."

"In 1707, England and Scotland completed their union. Yet more than a quarter of a millennium later Scottish nationalism made a reappearance...."

"CSIA's research on cooperative denuclearization began during the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. To those of us familiar with nuclear weapons, their construction, and command and control, and with the looming revolution about to sweep the then–Soviet Union, it was plain that a new and unprecedented danger to international security was emerging. An appropriate policy response to this new form of nuclear threat could not be fashioned from traditional Cold War tools of deterrence, arms control, and military preparedness alone. Safety could only be sought through new policies emphasizing cooperative engagement with the new states, new leaders, and military and industrial heirs of the former Soviet Union...."