In this issue, new Belfer Center Director Ash Carter and Co-Director Eric Rosenbach describe their vision for the Center’s next chapter: sustaining its core mission while enhancing its unique ability to leverage science and technology to meet global challenges and priming the next generation of leaders in both scholarship and policymaking.

We highlight two new initiatives: the Defending Digital Democracy (D3P) Project and the Arctic Initiative, and welcome 12 new senior fellows. Ash Carter gives a definitive history of the campaign to defeat ISIS, and Center experts offer insight into the North Korean nuclear threat and into the Iran nuclear agreement.

In this essay, Hui Zhang reviews the status of spent fuel storage in China.  He suggest that China should take steps to improve physical protection, reduce insider threats, promote a nuclear security culture, and improve nuclear cyber security. He also recommends China, South Korea, and Japans’ nuclear security training centers should cooperate and exchange best practices on insider threat reduction, contingency plans for emergency response, and discuss regional cooperation for long-term spent fuel storage, including building a regional center of spent fuel storage.

UxC's Jonathan Hinze, Executive Vice President, International, recently interviewed Dr. Hui Zhang, a respected Harvard University expert, regarding the current state and future prospects for China's nuclear energy program.

Dr. Zhang is a Senior Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Zhang has deep knowledge and insights into all aspects of China's nuclear energy program.

On April 25, 2017 China put on public display the Changzheng-1, its first Type 091 Han-class nuclear powered attack submarine. It entered service in 1974 and was decommissioned in 2013.

China launched its nuclear-powered submarine program in 1958, soon after starting its nuclear weapon program. To avoid the nuclear submarine program competing with the nuclear-weapon program for scarce HEU, according The Secret Course, an authoritative book on China's nuclear history, the decision was made to use LEU fuel for naval reactors.

North Korea’s 3,000 to 6,000 hackers and the 10 to 20 percent of its military budget going toward online operations mean the country’s cyberthreat to the United States stands only behind that of China, Russia and Iran. If the current tensions continue to escalate, could the United States or North Korea use their cyber-capabilities as a “force multiplier” to conventional military systems?

Hui Zhang presented "Thoughts on China’s Nuclear Reprocessing Policy" at the Conference of Assessing the International Nuclear Agenda, June 16-17, 2017, in Beijing.

China initiated its nuclear weapon program in 1955 and began to construct its fissile-material production facilities in the late 1950s. China has produced highly enriched uranium (HEU) for weapons at two complexes: Lanzhou gaseous diffusion plant (GDP, also referred as Plant 504) and Heping GDP (the Jinkouhe facility of Plant 814).

In 1958, China started the construction of the Lanzhou plant with advice from Soviet experts. Moscow withdrew all its experts in August 1960, however, forcing China to become self-reliant. On January 14, 1964, the GDP began to produce 90% enriched uranium, which made possible China’s first nuclear test on 16 October 1964.

China has produced plutonium for weapons at two sites: 1) Jiuquan Atomic Energy Complex (Plant 404) in Jiuquan, Gansu province. This site includes China’s first plutonium reactor (reactor 801) and associated reprocessing facilities. 2) Guangyuan plutonium production complex (Plant 821), located at Guangyuan in Sichuan province. This “third line” site also included a plutonium reactor (reactor 821) and reprocessing facility. While China has not declared officially that it has ended HEU and plutonium production for weapons, it appears that China halted its HEU and plutonium production for weapons in 1987.1

"We should remember that the JCPOA, by design, was not a treaty or a deal to guarantee security for all, and for all time; it is not war settlement or a border agreement. Rather it is a delicate and detailed technical agreement. In fact, one of the main purposes of this agreement was to allow all parties the opportunity to build mutual trust and enhance dialogue, so that when necessary, new (or old) worries and concerns could be negotiated, leading to potential additional agreements in the future. The theory underlying the JCPOA is incrementalism."

Tillerson is serving a president who is genuinely clueless about foreign policy yet seems to think he's some sort of a strategic genius.