• Proliferation Analysis

Year End Nuclear Progress Report

• Ben Bain
• December 06, 2005

As 2005 comes to a close, there is good news to report on several government efforts aimed at stemming the spread of nuclear weapons. We are moving in the right direction, though not as fast nor as far as we could.

• The Nunn-Lugar program has destroyed 6,760 nuclear warheads and thousands of missiles and launchers.  “The experience of Nunn-Lugar shows that, with determination and hard work, we can deny terrorists access to these devastating weapons,” says Senator Lugar.  Carnegie experts in their report, Universal Compliance, recommend accelerating the program, “in partnership with Russia, to fully protect Russian nuclear weapon-usable material by 2008.”
  
• The Global Threat Reduction Initiative program has now secured 122kg of highly-enriched uranium from research reactors in 7 nations.  This program, too, should be accelerated, to completely secure the tons of nuclear material by the end of 2008.
  
• The Megatons to Megawatts program this year passed the halfway point in its goal to downblend 500 tons of Russian HEU.  Too much material remains in uncertain security, however, and “Russia and the United States should agree to double the pace from 30 to 60 metric tons of HEU per year,” according to the Carnegie report. (Read More)

• Proliferation Analysis

Coming Up Short

• Joshua Williams
• November 18, 2005

Earlier this week the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, an extension of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, reported on efforts to protect America from terrorists that seek nuclear weapons and materials.  Their verdict was not a happy one.  Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton cited “insufficient progress” in the race against time to prevent the world’s most dangerous people from getting the world’s most dangerous weapons.  In short, they wrote, “the size of the problem still dwarfs the policy response.”

Kean and Hamilton reported that less than half of Russia’s nuclear material has received security upgrades.  In real terms, this means that more than 300 tons of loose nuclear material remains unguarded in Russia and the former Soviet states.  That is enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium for tens of thousands of crude nuclear bombs.  In the past year, moreover, security improvements were completed twice as slowly as expected.  The Department of Energy’s nuclear security administration now estimates that this work will not be complete until 2020.  Securing nuclear material in the former Soviet Union is an essential front in the war on terror.  We must progress at a faster rate. (Read More)

• Testimony

The U.S.-India ''Global Partnership'': How Significant for American Interests?

• Ashley J. Tellis
• November 17, 2005

United States and India today are happily confronted by an unprecedented convergence of interests, values, and inter-societal ties in a way never experienced before in the close to sixty-year history of the bilateral relationship. Given India’s importance to the United States, the president should continue working with New Delhi toward a full partnership.

• Op-Ed

Should the U.S. Sell Nuclear Technology to India? Part II

• Ashley J. Tellis
• November 10, 2005
• YaleGlobal Online
• • 中文

Mechanisms to Increase Nuclear Fuel Cycle Guarantees

• Pierre Goldschmidt
• November 08, 2005
• November 8

At Carnegie's 2005 International Nonproliferation Conference, Pierre Goldschmidt discusses a mechanism that he says could form the basis of a guaranteed fuel supply concept to deal particularly with cases in which a state is found in non-compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement while ensuring against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

• Proliferation Analysis

Nonproliferation Turns 60

• Jane Vaynman
• November 01, 2005

Building the bomb was a feat of engineering and physics; controlling it would take politics and cooperation. This was clear to Harry S Truman when he tabled the first international nonproliferation proposal 60 years ago this November.

On November 15, 1945, President Truman joined with Prime Minister Clement Attlee of the United Kingdom and Prime Minister William Mackenzie King of Canada in a proposal for the future of atomic energy. The two-page statement called for careful planning by a new international atomic energy commission to be established by the United Nations. The statement itself also explicitly foreshadows the tension between energy needs and security imperatives that continues unresolved decades later. (Read More)

• Op-Ed

Lessons Lost

• Joseph Cirincione
• October 31, 2005

• Proliferation Analysis

Congress Cuts Nuclear Bunker-Buster

• Daryl Kimball
• October 26, 2005

On Tuesday, October 25, the Chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Pete Domenici (R-NM) announced that Senate Energy appropriators would recede to the House position and eliminate funds for the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) from the fiscal year 2006 budget.

As a result, for the second year in a row, a bipartisan coalition of forces has denied funding for the RNEP, which should effectively end the research on nuclear earth penetrators.

The catalyst for the RNEP program was the Pentagon's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which called for the United States to develop "new nuclear weapon capabilities" to deal with targets located in deep underground, hardened bunkers. The next year, the Bush administration requested funds for research for a modified, high-yield bomb for this mission. (Read More)

• Proliferation Analysis

Living in Limbo

• Stephen Young
• October 25, 2005

More than a year after the Bush administration’s self-imposed deadline for deploying an antimissile system, the program appears in limbo, with no signs that the system will be declared operational. There are even signs the administration is giving up on the system.

• Proliferation Analysis

Megatons to Megawatts

• Ben Bain
• October 20, 2005

One-tenth of America’s electricity comes from fuel made from Russian nuclear warheads.  The Megatons to Megawatts program converts highly-enriched uranium in Russian weapons into low-enriched uranium that is used in US civilian nuclear power reactors.  The program reached an important milestone in early October - converting 255 metric tons of warhead material, the equivalent of over 10,000 weapons. (Read More)