The destructive potential of nuclear weapons is so great that decisions impacting them should be made in a fully conscious, objective manner. Unfortunately, there is significant evidence that this is not the case. One of my Stanford course handouts¹ lists almost two dozen assumptions which underlie our nuclear posture, but warrant critical re-examination. This column applies that same kind of analysis to the current Ukrainian crisis.

It is surprising and worrisome that almost none of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Ukrainian crisis has mentioned its nuclear risk. With the West feeling that Russia is solely to blame, and Russia having the mirror image perspective, neither side is likely to back down if one of their red lines is crossed. Add in America’s overwhelming conventional military superiority and Russia’s 8,000 nuclear weapons, and there is the potential for nuclear threats. And, where there is the potential for nuclear threats, there is also some potential for nuclear use.

I’m not saying a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis is likely, but given the potential consequences, even a small risk of the Ukrainian crisis escalating to nuclear threats would seem too high.

The frequency with which we find ourselves in such confrontations is also a factor. A low probability nuclear risk that occurs once per century is ten times less likely to explode in our faces than one that occurs once per decade. And the latter hypothesis (confrontations occurring approximately once per decade, instead of once per century) is supported by the empirical evidence, as the Georgian War occurred just six years ago.

While both Russia and the West are wrong that the current crisis is solely the other side’s fault, this article focuses on our mistakes since those are the ones we have the power to correct.

An example of the West’s belief that the crisis is all Russia’s fault appeared in a July 18 editorial ² in The New York Times which claimed, “There is one man who can stop [the Ukrainian conflict] — President Vladimir Putin of Russia.”

Another example occurred on September 3, when President Obama stated: “It was not the government in Kyiv that destabilized eastern Ukraine; it’s been the pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia. And the Russian forces that have now moved into Ukraine are not on a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission. They are Russian combat forces with Russian weapons in Russian tanks. Now, these are the facts. They are provable. They’re not subject to dispute.” (emphasis added)

So what’s the evidence that the New York Times and the president might be wrong? In early February, when the crisis was in its early and much less deadly stages, Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, wrote³: “I believe it has been a very big strategic mistake – by Russia, by the EU and most of all by the U.S. – to convert Ukrainian political and economic reform into an East-West struggle. … In both the short and long run only an approach that does not appear to threaten Russia is going to work.” (emphasis added)

A month later, on March 3, Dmitri Simes, a former adviser to President Nixon, seconded Ambassador Matlock’s perspective when he said in an interview⁴: “I think it [the Obama administration’s approach to the Ukraine] has contributed to the crisis. … there is no question in my mind that the United States has a responsibility to act. But what Obama is doing is exactly the opposite from what should be done in my view.”

Two days later, on March 5, President Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, wrote:⁵ “Each [Russia, the West, and the various Ukrainian factions] has made the situation worse.”

A number of other articles by foreign policy experts also question the Times and President Obama placing all the blame for the crisis on Russia, but I hope I’ve made the point that Putin is not the only man who could end the fighting. Indeed, he may not be capable of doing that without us also correcting some of our mistakes.

Further evidence that the New York Times and President Obama might be wrong can be found in an intercepted and leaked phone conversation⁶ in which Estonia’s Foreign Minister, Urmas Paet – clearly no friend of Russia’s – stated that the sniper fire on February 20, which killed dozens of Maidan protesters and led to calls for Yanukovych’s head, appeared to have been a false flag operation perpetrated by the most violent elements within the protesters – for example, the ultra-nationalist Right Sektor, which is seen as neo-Nazi in some quarters.

Here is the exact wording of Paet’s key allegation in that phone call: “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind [the] snipers … it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” That “new coalition” is now the Ukrainian government.

While this allegation has received little attention in the American mainstream media, German public television sent an investigative reporting team which reached the same conclusion⁷: “The Kiev Prosecutor General’s Office [of the interim government] is confident in their assessment [that Yanukovych’s people are to blame for the sniper fire, but] we are not.”

This is not to say that Paet and the German investigators are correct in their conclusions – just that it is dangerously sloppy thinking about nuclear matters not to take those allegations more seriously than we have.

While Putin has exaggerated the risk to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine for his own purposes, the West has overlooked those same risks. For example, on May 2 in Odessa, dozens of pro-Russian demonstrators were burned alive when an anti-Russian mob prevented them from fleeing the burning building into which they had been chased. According to the New York Times⁸: “The pro-Russians, outnumbered by the Ukrainians, fell back … [and] sought refuge in the trade union building. Yanus Milteynus, a 42-year-old construction worker and pro-Russian activist, said he watched from the roof as the pro-Ukrainian crowd threw firebombs into the building’s lower windows, while those inside feared being beaten to death by the crowd if they tried to flee.  … As the building burned, Ukrainian activists sang the Ukrainian national anthem, witnesses on both sides said. They also hurled a new taunt: “Colorado” for the Colorado potato beetle, striped red and black like the pro-Russian ribbons. Those outside chanted “burn Colorado, burn,” witnesses said. Swastikalike symbols were spray painted on the building, along with graffiti reading “Galician SS,” though it was unclear when it had appeared, or who had painted it.”

Adding to the risk, on August 29, Ukraine took steps to move from non-aligned status to seeking NATO membership, and NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he would “fully respect if the Ukrainian parliament decides to change that policy [of  non-alignment].” Somewhat paradoxically, it is extremely dangerous – especially for Ukraine – for Rasmussen to encourage its hopes of joining NATO since Russia would likely respond aggressively to prevent that from occurring.

Also adding to the danger is an escalatory spiral that appears to be in process, with NATO taking actions that are seen as threatening by Russia and Russia responding in kind, with Putin reminding the world⁹ that, “Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations. This is a reality, not just words.”

We also need to question whether it is in our national security interests to ally ourselves with the Kiev government when, on September 1, its Defense Minister declared that, “A great war has arrived at our doorstep – the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War Two.”¹⁰

Also on September 1, a group of former CIA intelligence analysts warned¹¹that: “Accusations of a major Russian invasion of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the intelligence seems to be of the same dubious, politically fixed kind used 12 years ago to justify the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.” (The group also warned about faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War.)

These former intelligence analysts are not saying that our government’s accusation is wrong. But they are reminding us that there is historical evidence indicating that we should be more cautious in assuming that it is correct.

In a September 4 article in Foreign Policy, “Putin’s Nuclear Option,” ¹² Jeffrey Taylor argues that: “Putin would never actually use nuclear weapons, would he? The scientist and longtime Putin critic Andrei Piontkovsky, a former executive director of the Strategic Studies Center in Moscow and a political commentator for the BBC World Service, believes he might. In August, Piontkovsky published a troubling account of what he believes Putin might do to win the current standoff with the West – and, in one blow, destroy NATO as an organization and finish off what’s left of America’s credibility as the world’s guardian of peace.”

I strongly encourage readers to read the full article. Again, Piotkovsky’s scenario is not likely, but given the consequences, even a small risk could be intolerable.

Defusing the Ukrainian crisis will require a more mature approach on the part of all parties. Focusing on what we need to do, we need to stop seeing Ukraine as a football game that will be won by the West or by Russia, and start being concerned with the safety of all its residents, of all ethnicities. If we do that, we will also reduce the risk that we find ourselves repeating the mistakes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when neither side wanted to stare into the nuclear abyss, but both found themselves doing so.

As noted earlier, our mishandling of the Ukrainian crisis is unfortunately just one instance of a larger problem – dangerously sloppy thinking about nuclear weapons. Given that the survival of our homeland is at stake, our government needs to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the assumptions which underlie our current nuclear posture and correct any that are found to be wanting.

Dr. Martin E. Hellman is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Nuclear Risk Analysis at FAS. Hellman was at IBM’s Watson Research Center from 1968-69 and an Assistant Professor of EE at MIT from 1969-71. Returning to Stanford in 1971, he served on the regular faculty until becoming Professor Emeritus in 1996. He has authored over seventy technical papers, ten U.S. patents and a number of foreign equivalents.

Along with Diffie and Merkle, Hellman invented public key cryptography, the technology which allows secure transactions on the Internet, including literally trillions of dollars of financial transactions daily. He has also been a long-time contributor to the computer privacy debate, starting with the issue of DES key size in 1975 and culminating with service (1994-96) on the National Research Council’s Committee to Study National Cryptographic Policy, whose main recommendations have since been implemented.

His current project, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, is applying quantitative risk analysis to a potential failure of nuclear deterrence. In addition to illuminating the level of risk inherent in threatening to destroy civilization in an effort to maintain the peace, this approach highlights how small changes, early in the accident chain, can reduce the risk far more than might first appear. This methodology has been endorsed by a number of prominent individuals including a former Director of the National Security Agency, Stanford’s President Emeritus, and two Nobel Laureates.

Nearly two years into Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s second stint at governing Japan, his tenure has been characterized by three primary themes. The first two themes include his major legislative priorities: enabling Japan’s economic revival and bringing Japan closer to the status of a “normal” country that takes on a greater share of its own security needs. Both of these priorities are largely celebrated in the United States, which longs to see Japan become a more able and active partner in the region.  A third theme has not been well received in Washington: the prime minister’s apparent efforts to whitewash Japan’s wartime past.  Through personal expressions of admiration for convicted war-criminals, an official reinvestigation of past apologies for war-time atrocities, and appointments of hardline nationalists to prominent posts (such as the NHK board of governors), the prime minister’s actions have raised the spectre among wary neighbors of a Japanese return to militarism and begun raising eyebrows even among friends in Washington.

It is against this backdrop that Japan is now attempting to reinstate its nuclear energy program.  Japan, which, not long ago, had planned to generate half of its electricity from nuclear power by 2030, has watched its nuclear reactors sit largely idle since the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Abe’s government views nuclear restarts as a critical pillar of his first legislative priority—Japan’s economic recovery.  However, observers both outside and inside Japan note that, in addition to providing Japan the baseload electricity that its economy craves, the country’s sophisticated nuclear energy program effectively serves a dual purpose, providing Japan a latent nuclear weapons capability as well.

Citing Abe’s particular treatment of historical issues, some have begun to question whether reinstatement of Japan’s nuclear program is really more about the prime minister’s security goals than his economic agenda. China, for one, has hinted at allegations of a Japanese nuclear weapons program—after a recent incident in which Japan negotiated to repatriate an aging store of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the United States, Chinese media propagated a narrative that twisted the event into evidence of Japan’s militaristic intentions.¹ Koreans have begun expressing similar concerns.²

In fact, Japan’s current movement towards a more normal military posture is not entirely unrelated to the push to restart the country’s nuclear energy program—it was the Fukushima nuclear disaster that both idled Japan’s nuclear fleet and helped enable the return of the more hawkish LDP government. But the relationship likely ends there.  As a legacy of World War II, Japanese society’s discomfort with the idea of a “normal” Japan has restricted Abe’s normalization efforts to steps that are only modest by any comparable measure.³ Events that have conspired to suggest the possibility of Japanese nuclear weapons are reflective of awkward timing and, perhaps, less than acute politics, but not likely of some new militant spirit in Japanese society. Unfortunately, as Japan pushes to restart its nuclear energy program in the months and years ahead, circumstances are aligning that will amplify—not mitigate—alarm over Japan’s nuclear intentions.

Japan’s Plutonium Economy

For a tangle of social and legal reasons, the restart of Japanese reactors is tied together with operation of Japan’s nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho Village in Aomori Prefecture.  Under agreements with reactor host communities, utilities cannot operate reactors unless there is somewhere for nuclear fuel to go once it has been used.  Because Japan lacks a geological repository and nearly all plant sites lack dry cask storage facilities,⁴ Rokkasho is currently the only viable destination for spent fuel from Japan’s reactors. Unless this situation changes, Japan is effectively unable to operate reactors without Rokkasho.

Rokkasho itself is, in turn, effectively dependent on Japan’s operating reactors.  According to a sort of public-private arrangement that has been in place since before Fukushima, Japanese utilities send spent nuclear fuel to Rokkasho, where it is separated into waste and fissionable MOX (mixed uranium and plutonium oxides) powder.  MOX is processed into fresh reactor fuel and sent back to Japan’s reactors.  High-level waste is ultimately sent to a geological repository that is to be built in a different prefecture (one of Aomori Prefecture’s conditions for originally agreeing to host the reprocessing plant). Of Japan’s reactors, 16 to 18 of the 54 that were operating prior to the Fukushima accident would, after receiving local government consent, consume MOX in an effort to maximize use of Japan’s limited energy resources.  That was the plan—prior to the Fukushima disaster, anyway.

As a legacy of the Fukushima disaster, Japan’s nuclear reactors currently sit idle.  The six at Fukushima Daiichi will never operate again, nor will a number of others that are older, particularly vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis, or for other reasons not worth the trouble and expense of restarting.  While impossible to predict for certain, a consensus seems to be emerging among experts and industry watchers that post-Fukushima, somewhere in the order of half of Japan’s original 54 reactors will return to service under Japan’s new regulatory regime. Currently, two reactors (Sendai 1 and 2 in southwestern Japan) have cleared safety reviews from Japan’s new regulator, the Japan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (JNRA), and now appear headed towards restart this winter.  Eighteen more reactors await review from the JNRA. Of those 20 reactors, only five⁵ have received consent to use MOX, but that was prior to Fukushima.  All 20 reactor restarts depend on the promise of a functioning Rokkasho. But if Rokkasho were to restart on a similar timeframe as the reactors, one thing is certain—there will be far fewer than the originally envisioned 16 to 18 reactors available to consume the MOX when the plant starts up.⁶

Reactor Restart X-Factors

As with Rokkasho, the question of when the JNRA will conclude its reviews of the next eighteen reactors remains quite murky.  However, it stands to reason that ultimately most, if not all, of the reactors that have applied for restart will ultimately pass safety inspections.  Japan’s electric power companies are unlikely to have invested the time and resources in plant upgrades and regulatory application had they less than a high degree of confidence that they would qualify under Japan’s new regime.  Likewise, there is little question that Japan’s LDP government (assuming an LDP government at the time of restart) would stand in the way of restarts.  But the JNRA and national government are only two of the three main factors in restarting Japan’s reactors—leaders of the towns and prefectures that host nuclear power plants have a de facto say in the matter as well.

The conventional wisdom is that local leaders have strong financial incentives to restart the nuclear power plants that they host: government and industry have historically lavished incentives on host communities and prefectures in order to overcome any inclination toward local resistance. In one sense, local governments have over time become dependent on plants and can ill afford to forego not only the government and utility incentives, but also the base of jobs and tax revenues they represent.  On the other hand, communities need now only look to the example of the towns that have been rendered uninhabitable by the Fukushima disaster to see a terrifyingly clear picture of their tradeoff.

In some cases, apparently including the Sendai reactors, it is unlikely that local government would stand in the way of restarts.  Earthquakes are less common in Kyushu,⁷ the geography on the west coast is less prone to large tsunamis, and local residents may take comfort in the fact that Sendai reactors are pressurized water reactors—not the boiling water rector type used at Fukushima Daiichi.  But in other cases, local approvals may not be as certain. Take for example TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Nagano prefecture, where Governor Izumida has very publicly challenged TEPCO.  He has insisted that, irrespective of the findings of the JNRA, with the Fukushima Daiichi reactor cores still too highly radioactive to investigate and verify the true nature of the accident, he will be unwilling to allow the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors to restart.

In addition to the local government factor, an X-factor may be emerging—preemptive lawsuits against reactor restarts. Earlier this year, in Fukui prefecture where political leadership otherwise favors nuclear power, a citizens group brought a lawsuit alleging an inadequate basis for confidence in the restart of the Oi plant.⁸ More recently, a second lawsuit has been brought by the city of Hakodate (Hokkaido prefecture) against the yet-to-be completed Ohma plant in nearby Aomori prefecture.⁹ In the case of Oi, a local judge sided with the plaintiffs, but the decision has been appealed by Kansai Electric Power Company, and the case is all but certain to drag out until long past the serviceable lifetime of the Oi reactors.  The Hakodate case is ongoing.

It is possible that Governor Izumida is an outlier and that the Fukui and Hakodate challenges will prove to be ineffective and isolated. However, it is equally possible that there are more Governor Izumidas and lawsuits yet to come. Furthermore, what is undeniable is that these cases have set a precedent and raised public pressure on local officials to seriously consider opposing restart of local reactors even if they do pass JNRA safety inspections. In any case, it is premature to presume that once the JNRA has rendered a safety verdict, reactor restart is imminent.

The MOX Question

Within the concurrent push to open Rokkasho and restart reactors, the availability of MOX-burning reactors seems to be assumed. But, notwithstanding all of the other hurdles facing nuclear reactor restarts in Japan, MOX fuel itself has been a subject of controversy and public discomfort since even before the Fukushima disaster.  As utilities received approvals to burn MOX fuel and subsequently began receiving shipments of MOX from Europe (where it had been processed on behalf of Japan’s utilities), they were met with consistent and passionate public protests.  These protests were typically confined to a cohort of smaller national-level interest groups that argue that using MOX elevates risk in transportation and regular reactor operation.¹⁰  On a national scale, prior to Fukushima the fuel cycle has been a relatively fringe issue—MOX had been a largely unfamiliar acronym to the public.  Post-Fukushima, as utilities push for restarts amidst an atmosphere of heightened public scrutiny, there will be no free pass for MOX.  For nuclear energy opponents, the prospect of MOX usage would provide one more narrative with which to hammer against proposed reactor restarts.

At the macro level, utilities share in the incentive to burn MOX fuel as they depend on Rokkasho, and Rokkasho is hard to rationalize in the absence of a functioning MOX program. However, in a much more tangible and immediate sense, utilities desperately need their reactors up and running again.  Most of Japan’s utilities have posted consistent losses since their reactors were relegated to nonperforming assets on their balance sheets and they were forced to substitute expensive fossil fuels for relatively cheaper nuclear power.  For Japan’s utilities, restarting nuclear reactors could be a life or death proposition.  That being the case, can it be taken for granted that utilities will risk complicating their restart efforts by forging ahead with plans to burn MOX?  Will the government create explicit incentive for utilities to do so?  Given enhanced public scrutiny, it cannot be assumed that the pre-Fukushima local approvals for MOX usage will be honored anyway.

The Japanese government’s 2014 energy policy (despite reaffirming Japan’s commitment to its beleaguered ‘no surplus plutonium’ policy), gives blessing to proceeding with Rokkasho (recognizing that, among other things, if it didn’t, Aomori threatens to send the spent nuclear fuel right back to the plants of origin). But even assuming that the five MOX reactors under regulatory review do receive restart approval and recommence MOX burning, the original goal of 16 to 18 Japanese reactors burning MOX fuel seems far off.¹¹ There has been some suggestion that Rokkasho could restart slowly, at a throughput commensurate with the ability to consume MOX.  However, as Meiji University Professor Tadahiro Katsuta points out, reducing throughput of Rokkasho effectively raises the per-unit cost of MOX, necessitating a reexamination of the cost basis on which the MOX program was justified to Japanese ratepayers.¹²

Rokkasho Controversy

Even outside of the MOX capacity question, Rokkasho is not without controversy.  Officially, Rokkasho is justified as an investment in energy security for Japan. However, from the standpoint of global nonproliferation concerns, Japan sets an uncomfortable precedent with Rokkasho.  While otherwise a leading global champion for peace and nuclear disarmament, Japan is the only non-nuclear weapons country to possess a commercial nuclear fuel recycling program. Whereas global nonproliferation efforts prioritize limiting the spread of reprocessing capabilities, Rokkasho has enabled Iran, for one, to point to Japan in defending the legitimacy of its own fuel cycle activities.  South Korea, seeking American consent for a Korean recycling program, also cites Japan’s example in negotiating a replacement for the U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation agreement that expires in 2016.

Controversial or not, Japan’s leaders feel compelled to push forward with Rokkasho and through an agreement under section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act,¹³ they enjoy the support of the United States government. American consent to Rokkasho is only guaranteed through 2018, but the United States, which granted consent in 1988 largely out of deference to diplomatic concerns, for the same reason is highly unlikely to withdraw consent in 2018. Given the effective concurrence of the 2018 date with U.S.-ROK negotiations and the looming startup of Rokkasho in the face of low (or no) capacity to consume MOX, timing has become extremely awkward.

As Rokkasho proceeds towards restart, public reaction from Washington has been surprisingly muted.  Perhaps this reflects appreciation for the energy conundrum in which Japan finds itself, or tacit consent that bringing Japan’s nuclear industry back onto solid footing after the Fukushima disaster was always going to be awkward—Japan has an inherent chicken or egg dilemma in restarting Rokkasho and its reactors. But the reality is that Japan’s situation puts Washington in a very tough spot.  Washington is effectively complicit in what might appear to be Japanese disregard for its own commitments to global nonproliferation.  This poses a risk to the global nonproliferation regime and American credibility on the subject.

Implications

Global nonproliferation principles undoubtedly remain a high priority for Japan.  But it is likely that in the short term, the eyes of Japan’s leaders are focused more intently on bringing nuclear reactors back on line. Particularly in the context of Prime Minister Abe’s provocative views on history, the perception outside of Japan is certain to be one of alarm if Japan is seen to be separating plutonium without a credible pathway for its disposition.  While the coincidence of the 2016/2018 Korea and Japan 123 agreements and Japan’s reentry into nuclear energy will shine a spotlight on the American role in Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle scheme, it is seen as highly unlikely that the United States will attempt to withdraw from or renegotiate the 123 agreement with Japan irrespective of Japan’s plutonium balance concerns.  This will effectively make the United States appear complicit in Japan’s growing inventory of plutonium.

For the United States, this situation has consequences on three fronts.  Firstly, Japan’s apparent failure to abide by its plutonium commitments undercuts American interests in limiting fuel cycle capabilities through treaty agreements. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the ongoing U.S.-ROK 123 agreement negotiations. Secondly, Japan is a leader, if not the symbolic face of the global nonproliferation regime. For Japan to be separating plutonium for no demonstrable purpose dramatically undercuts its own leadership on nonproliferation and aggravates the already controversial precedent it sets with its fuel cycle program, elevating the risk of proliferation in the region. Thirdly, at just the time when the United States is working to underscore its alliance with Japan as the bedrock of its security presence in East Asia, Japan’s growing plutonium surplus will only exacerbate concerns of Japan’s return to militarism, eroding its legitimacy and efficacy as a partner in regional security.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the United States has appeared somewhat ambivalent in its response to Japan’s efforts to restart its nuclear energy system.  However, the American stake in Japan’s road ahead is profound. While it is not the case in all foreign capitals, in Tokyo, opinions and preferences from Washington are meaningful. Washington, particularly the Department of State and Department of Energy, has an opportunity to protect American interests by formulating and articulating an unambiguous American position on Japan’s path forward on nuclear energy to Japan’s leadership.

The critical interest of the United States would be for Japan to demonstrate clear commitment to the no-surplus plutonium policy and to the global nonproliferation regime.  As elements of a policy that might be necessary to make that happen, the United States should urge Japan’s leadership and utilities to:

• Articulate a plan for plutonium disposition that provides quantifiable and publicly demonstrable benchmarks for reducing Japan’s plutonium inventory.
• Call for official, temporary suspension of operations at Rokkasho until MOX burners or another credible disposition pathway for Japan’s separated fissile materials, is available.
• Advocate operating Rokkasho (if and when started), at an output rate that is no more than commensurate with plutonium disposition goals and available means for plutonium disposition.
• Encourage utilization of temporary dry-cask storage of spent nuclear fuel in order to enhance safety at reactor sites while expanding nuclear fuel cycle policy options. One of the rare positive stories to emerge from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was the robustness of dry cask storage. Utilities and the government should capitalize on this success story and prioritize arrangements with local communities to allow for expeditious transfer of spent nuclear fuel from wet-storage to on-site dry casks.

There is no nuclear weapons program in Japan’s foreseeable future. However, there is a significant risk of an outward appearance that suggests otherwise to South Korea, China, North Korea, Iran, and the rest of the world.  Whether or not appearance differs from reality, the real world consequences would likely be the same. While Japan has serious and immediate energy concerns, it also has a very deep and fundamental commitment to global nonproliferation. With support from friends in Washington, Japan must face its looming nuclear energy challenges head on with eyes fully open. The stakes are too high to allow current circumstances to dictate their own outcomes.

Next year is the 70^th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The event would provide a fitting platform for Prime Minister Abe to recognize opportunities in Japan’s current crisis and make bold decisions on Japan’s nuclear energy program.  The right decisions can help regain global confidence in Japan’s intentions, while reminding the world of Japan’s unwavering commitment to nuclear safety and nonproliferation. The anniversary would make an equally unfortunate occasion to demonstrate otherwise.

Ryan Shaffer is an Associate Director of Programs at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he manages Japan and Northeast Asia policy programs including the Mansfield-FAS U.S.-Japan Nuclear Working Group. Prior to joining the Mansfield Foundation, Mr. Shaffer served as a research analyst for the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan.

Recent high-level meetings in Washington, D.C., the United Nations, California and Utah about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) might lead one to believe that finally action might be taken towards ratification of the treaty. At the meeting in New York, foreign ministers and senior officials from 90 countries met on September 29 to acclaim the treaty and its value—both scientific and political. “This treaty isn’t just a feel-good exercise. It’s in all of our national security interests, and it’s verifiable,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. “In fact, its verification regime is one of the great accomplishments of the modern world.” ¹

In Washington, key U.S. officials—Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, NNSA Director Frank Klotz, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Programs Andrew Weber–as well as Executive Secretary of the CTBT Organization Preparatory Commission Lassina Zerbo, held a public meeting on nuclear testing on September 15. “Today we can say with even greater certainty that we can meet the challenges of maintaining our stockpile with continued scientific leadership, not nuclear testing,” said Secretary Moniz. “So again, I repeat that the United States remains committed to ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, along with the monitoring and verification regime. And this administration will continue making the case for U.S. CTBT ratification to build bipartisan support.”²

Referring to the United States supercomputing and other capabilities, Mr. Klotz noted, “Thanks to this effort, today we have a greater understanding of how nuclear weapons actually work than we did when we were carrying out nuclear explosive testing.  This is a remarkable achievement in innovation for our national security, and it is foundational to an effective no-test regime.”³

In addition, the largest scale, on-site inspection (OSI) simulation to date will be launched for a month in November in Jordan, and includes a day of visiting dignitaries, possibly to include the king. An OSI is the final step in the verification regime; it is a complex endeavor that involves enormous amounts of equipment and scientific as well as operational expertise. The simulation will be a significant test of the system.

Politics meets Science

Although the treaty deals with the highly technical and sensitive subject of nuclear test explosions, it has been considered in a political context since the negotiations. Countries possessing nuclear weapons do not want others to know about their facilities or capabilities, so verification provisions of the treaty were exceptionally difficult to negotiate. World-renown scientists worked in their labs and academic institutions, as well as in Geneva, on the intricacies of devising an international monitoring regime. They advised some of the top diplomats negotiating the treaty in Geneva. Even now, those working on the treaty still grapple with scientific questions in a political setting, the CTBTO Preparatory Commission in Vienna, as well as in their labs or government offices. The scientists possess the expertise and deep knowledge of the various verification techniques, and they provided information and counsel to their ambassadors, but the diplomats make the decisions.

Originally the key issues in the treaty revolved around questions such as: who should be included in the negotiations? What was to be the scope of the ban—a few pounds equivalent TNT of explosive yield, hundreds, or zero? (Negotiators decided on zero.) Would the non-nuclear weapon states agree with the nuclear weapon states that this would be a treaty to “ban the bang, not the bomb?” What kinds of monitoring technologies should be included in the treaty verification regime? Where would monitoring stations be placed? How many stations would be installed in the nuclear weapon states? Who would decide to conduct an OSI, and how would it be conducted? How could access to sensitive facilities be managed? And a crucial question: which countries were essential for entry into force? All of these questions, and more, involve complex scientific issues, but are highly political and contentious.

The CTBT prohibits “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion” anywhere in the world. The verification provisions of the CTBT are more extensive and intrusive than those of other treaties, as they are designed to detect nuclear explosions anywhere on the planet: underground, in the oceans, and in the atmosphere. In order to verify compliance with its provisions, the treaty specifies a global network of 327 monitoring facilities in strategic locations in 89 countries, and allows for on-site inspections of suspicious events. The International Monitoring System (IMS) comprises four complementary or synergistic technologies: seismic, radionuclide, hydroacoustic and infrasound. The 50 primary and 120 auxiliary seismic stations monitor the ground for shockwaves that are caused by nuclear explosions. A radionuclide network encompassing 80 stations uses air samplers to detect radioactive particles released from atmospheric, underground or underwater explosions. Half of these stations will be capable of detecting noble gases upon entry into force of the treaty. In addition, 16 radionuclide laboratories will analyze samples of filters from the stations (evidence of radionuclides is called the “smoking gun” of a nuclear explosion). In addition, there are 11 hydroacoustic stations to detect explosions in the oceans, and 60 infrasound stations designed to detect nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.

The CTBT Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission was established in March 1997 and has been building up the verification regime, which is about 90 percent complete. The IMS has been detecting global activities such as: some 100 earthquakes each day, the nuclear test explosions conducted by North Korea in 2006, 2009, and 2013, in addition to tsunamis, the dispersal of the radioactive plume from Fukushima, and other activities. Data from the IMS stations is transmitted for analysis to the International Data Center of the Preparatory Commission’s Provisional Technical Secretariat.

In November 2014, the Preparatory Commission will embark on its second full-scale on-site inspection (OSI) simulation in Jordan to test the operation and techniques of an OSI in an integrated manner. Although the treaty includes a timeline and specifics of the on-site inspection regime, details of the operational manual and other logistical arrangements were left for the Preparatory Commission to elaborate. The exercise in Jordan will be the most challenging endeavor to date, aimed to test the ability to conduct an on-site inspection under realistic and challenging conditions, and to demonstrate the progress made since the last Integrated Field Exercise in Kazakhstan in 2008 (IFE08). During Integrated Field Exercise 2014 (IFE14), the Preparatory Commission will simulate a CTBT on-site inspection in which 40 inspectors search a designated area of up to 1,000 square kilometers for evidence of a possible nuclear explosion. IFE14 aims to test 15 of the 17 inspection techniques listed in the treaty in an integrated manner, a significant increase in the technologies tested at the previous IFE in Kazakhstan.

There are numerous OSI techniques, from visual observations and over-flights to multi-spectral imaging, airborne gamma spectroscopy, gamma radiation monitoring, environmental sampling, measurement of argon-37 and radioxenon, seismological monitoring of aftershocks, magnetic field mapping, resonance seismometry, and drilling, among others. The IFE14 will not employ drilling (which is extremely expensive), or resonance seismometry. It plans to exercise each phase of an OSI, from the receipt of the request through the launch, pre-inspection and post-inspection activities, reporting preliminary findings, departure, and return of equipment and personnel. The exercise will involve transporting some 150 tons of equipment from Austria to Jordan. According to the PTS website, the IFE14 will also test newly developed operational elements of an OSI such as an enhanced operations support center, an improved in-field communications system and a rapid deployment system for transporting tons of inspection equipment anywhere in the world.⁴It should be noted that an OSI can only take place once the treaty has entered into force, thus the Preparatory Commission has had time to develop the procedures.

The provisions in the treaty for an OSI are quite demanding. Because some of the effects from a nuclear explosion can be short-lived, the Executive Council will need to decide on the on-site inspection request within 96 hours of its receipt from the requesting state party, and an OSI inspection team and its equipment must be deployed and initiate inspection activities within a six-day period. During the course of the inspection, the inspection team may submit a proposal to extend the inspection to begin drilling, which must be approved by 26 Council members. The inspection may continue for 60 days, but if the inspection team determines that more time is needed to fulfill its mandate, it may be extended by an additional maximum of 70 days, subject to Council approval.

Developments since 1996

Under the terms of the treaty, countries can use data outside of the IMS that is available from thousands of other seismological or radionuclide stations, satellite observations and other national technical means, as well as advanced data analysis in their efforts to monitor the treaty. Countries may submit this additional information as a basis for a request for an OSI. The IMS is performing far better than expected by the negotiators who designed it. Yet since the CTBT was negotiated in 1996, dramatic scientific and technical advances in monitoring and data analysis techniques have occurred. If countries use the data from the IMS, in combination with what is available outside of the IMS, they could enhance their monitoring capability significantly beyond that provided by the treaty, by an order of magnitude. Using this combination of information would also allow a country to focus its monitoring efforts on countries of concern, individually or in cooperation with others. Such “precision monitoring” would be useful to countries of a region that could pool their resources to support the effort.⁵ In contrast, the Technical Secretariat is not allowed to use information from stations or advanced technologies that are not included in the treaty. Further, the Secretariat must take a global approach; it is not allowed to focus on specific areas. Such precision monitoring capabilities would be of interest to states where verification might be an issue in the ratification process.

By focusing on specific areas of concern, precision monitoring would also increase the ability to accurately locate events. This is key to identifying areas for on-site inspections. A notable feature of the CTBT is that the decision regarding non-compliance or whether to conduct an on-site inspection rests with the States Parties, not the CTBTO Technical Secretariat. This is contrary to the role of the IAEA and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). It is therefore in the interest of the international community to expand the knowledge base on verification technologies in all countries in order to improve their ability to monitor the Treaty. Countries will need to send to Vienna representatives who are well versed in the provisions of the treaty and who have scientific expertise in the technologies it employs. This will increase the likelihood that a vote in the Executive Council (responsible for compliance with the treaty) on an on-site inspection or a decision about non-compliance will be based on scientific facts rather than concentrating on political concerns.  That is especially important, given that the decision to conduct an OSI must be made by 30 of the 51 members of the Executive Council. Critics of the treaty believe that it will likely be impossible to achieve such a number, although the criteria for membership in the Council are such that the nuclear weapon states will always have a seat on the Council. Although the United States and a few other countries have their own technical means to monitor compliance with the treaty, most countries have not yet established their national facilities to efficiently monitor it.

The treaty was opened for signature in September 1996, and has been signed by 183 nations and ratified by 163. The treaty cannot enter into force until it is ratified by 44 “nuclear capable” nations⁶ specified in the treaty, eight of which have yet to do so (China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United States). India, Pakistan, and North Korea have not signed it. Although many countries in the negotiations wanted to have a numerical provision (e.g., 65 ratifications), the five nuclear-weapon states in particular insisted that each of the five–and other states capable of developing a bomb–be on board for the treaty to enter into force.

After the United States triggered the negotiations on a CTBT in 1993 and committed considerable political will to conclude it in 1996 at the multilateral Conference on Disarmament, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty in 1999. Since then it has been sitting on the back burner of the U.S. Senate and its counterparts in the seven other countries required for entry into force. It is unlikely that the Obama administration will bring it up for a vote in the Senate unless it knows it has the votes.  Only 28 of the senators who voted on the ratification of the treaty in 1999 remain in the Senate (13 of whom voted against), and that figure may decrease in the November elections. A number of the other holdout countries claim to be waiting for the United States to ratify first, which makes entry into force a political exercise waiting to happen. As Dr. Zerbo said in Washington, “We have to be mindful of those who have signed and ratified this treaty long ago, and been waiting for its entry into force.”

China is the only other nuclear-weapon state among the five declared under the NPT that still needs to ratify. “The U.S. pushed for the negotiations and it has tested more than any other nation,” said Sha Zukang, former Ambassador to the negotiations. “I firmly believe that, were the U.S. to ratify the Treaty, China would definitely follow.” He added that the CTBT could be useful in promoting China-U.S. strategic mutual trust and building a “new model of major country relations.” Noting that the United States had conducted 1032 nuclear test explosions and China and the UK just 45 each, he claimed that China and the international community believed that the United States “wanted to ensure the overwhelming superiority of its nuclear arsenal, both in quantity and quality.” He added, “Serious efforts should be made to encourage U.S. law-makers to change the idea of seeking absolute security at the cost of leaving all other countries feeling insecure, and then to support Treaty ratification.”⁷

In an influential 2009 report on the Strategic Posture of the United States⁸, conducted by a bipartisan Congressional Commission and chaired by former Secretary of State James Schlesinger, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry, the CTBT was the only issue on which agreement could not be achieved. Opponents contended that the zero yield prohibition of the treaty cannot be verified and that other countries would cheat, thereby gaining a military advantage, while the United States observed the terms of the treaty. They faulted the fact that the treaty does not define a nuclear test, and this could result in different countries having different understandings of prohibitions and restrictions, to include the possibility of conducting tests with hundreds of tons of nuclear yield. In this context, they believe that Russia and possibly China are conducting low yield testing. They also believe that maintaining a safe, reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons will require testing over time.⁹ A number of senators and decision makers believe these and other aspects of the treaty will not confer benefits and would pose security risks to the United States.¹⁰ Proponents contend that the treaty is a strong nonproliferation tool which is verifiable, and that other states could develop and test new or improved weapons without constraints (posing a greater threat to U.S. security), and that the United States can maintain a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear weapons stockpile without additional testing.

A number of studies have been conducted on the scientific and verification capabilities of the treaty, including one by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The Academy released in March 2012 an update of its 2002 report on Technical Issues associated with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The newer study, conducted by eminent scientists in the field, found that the United States “has the technical capabilities to maintain a safe, secure, and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons into the foreseeable future without nuclear-explosion testing” and “is now better able to maintain a safe and effective nuclear stockpile and to monitor clandestine nuclear-explosion testing than at any time in the past.” The study found that globally, the IMS seismic network provides complete coverage at magnitude 3.8 with about 80 percent of stations operational.¹¹ This is a low magnitude, and the capability has likely improved since the study was conducted, with 90 percent of the stations now operational. As mentioned previously, the IMS detected all three low yield tests conducted by North Korea. “Other States intent on acquiring and deploying modern, two-stage thermonuclear weapons would not be able to have confidence in their performance without multi-kiloton testing,” the report states. “Such tests would likely be detectable (even with evasion measures) by appropriately resourced U.S. national technical means and a completed IMS network.”

Scientific arguments notwithstanding, politics usually get in the way. As former NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks is fond of saying, “The CTBT will not be ratified until there is a Republican president who supports it.” Ambassador Brooks, who was a member of the more recent NAS committee, said that although the report presented positive conclusions about the capabilities of the treaty and was favorably received by both supporters and opponents for its technical accuracy, “I don’t know anyone whose mind it changed.”¹²

Following the negotiations, member states of the Preparatory Commission in Vienna established a Working Group on Verification to implement the verification regime. They began by considering issues such as what stations to build first, when data from the stations should be transmitted to the International Data Center in Vienna, how to configure the global communications infrastructure, how to authenticate the data, the elaboration of the OSI regime (techniques, equipment, training, operational manual), what the budget should be prior to entry into force, etc. The Working Group breaks down into sub-groups that are quite technical, if not wonkish. Scientific experts from many countries gather to consider topics such as sources of noble gas backgrounds, testing regional seismic travel time, data fusion, autonomous buoys, new optical seismometers, infrasound calibration, and the Bayesian inference approach. Again, the scientists who work in the technical sub-groups advise the diplomats who make decisions in the Working Group on these issues. The CTBTO Provisional Technical Secretariat then carries out these decisions. (In this context, it should be noted that three women participated in the scientific meetings in Geneva, two of whom are the only women participating in Vienna.)

Arguments over the treaty’s benefits and drawbacks have preceded the completion of the current treaty and go back to several earlier attempts decades ago at negotiating a ban. In fact, the negotiators of the Limited Test Ban of 1963 (LTBT) couldn’t agree on the verification provisions of a comprehensive ban, which is why it was limited (i.e. it covered all environments except underground). Article 1 of the CTBT is the same as Article 1 of the LTBT, but expanded to include underground. The LTBT has not been contested over the years, regardless of the fact that it has no verification provisions. Politics have trumped science in a number of instances, and the CTBT is no exception. Secretary Kerry said at the UN in September, “I know some members of the United States Senate still have concerns about this treaty. I believe they can be addressed by science, by facts, through computers and the technology we have today coupled with a legitimate stockpile stewardship program.” It remains to be seen if he can trump politics.

Jenifer Mackby is a Senior Fellow for International Security at FAS. Ms. Mackby has worked on international security, nonproliferation, and arms control issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) Organization, the Conference on Disarmament (CD) and the United Nations. As a Fellow and Adjunct Fellow at CSIS, she has led projects on U.S.-U.K. Nuclear Cooperation, Asian Trilateral Nuclear Dialogues, 21^st Century Nuclear Issues, and the CTBT, and has worked on Strengthening the Global Partnership, European Trilateral Nuclear Dialogues, Reduction of U.S. forces in Europe, among others. Previously, she was responsible for the negotiations on the CTBT in the CD, as well as the Group of Scientific Experts that designed the core monitoring system of the treaty. She then served as Secretary of the Working Group on Verification at the CTBTO in Vienna. Ms. Mackby served as Secretary of the Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference, the UN Special Commission on Iraq, the Convention on Environmental Modification Techniques Review Conference, Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference committee, and others. She is a Senior Adviser for the Partnership for a Secure America, and has written extensively about non-proliferation and arms control issues.

Abstract

Nuclear power plants should safely operate during normal operations and maintain core-cooling capabilities during off-normal events, including external hazards (such as flooding and earthquakes). Management of external hazards to expectable levels of risk is critical to maintaining nuclear facility and nuclear power plant safety. Seismic risk is determined by convolving the seismic hazard with seismic fragilities (capacity of systems, structures, and components). Seismic isolation (SI) is one protective measure showing promise to minimize seismic risk.

Current SI designs (used in commercial industry) reduce horizontal earthquake loads and protect critical infrastructure from the potentially destructive effects of large earthquakes. The benefit of SI application in the nuclear industry is being recognized and SI systems have been proposed in American Society of Civil Engineer Standard 4, ASCE-4, to be released in the winter of 2014, for light water reactors facilities using commercially available technology. The intent of ASCE-4 is to provide criteria for seismic analysis of safety related nuclear structures such that the responses to design basis seismic events, computed in accordance with this standard, will have a small likelihood of being exceeded.

The U.S. nuclear industry has not implemented SI to date; a seismic isolation gap analysis meeting was convened on August 19, 2014, to determine progress on implementing SI in the U.S. nuclear industry. The meeting focused on the systems and components that could benefit from SI. This article highlights the gaps identified at this meeting.

Introduction

External hazards pose risks to nuclear power plants (NPPs) and nuclear facilities. Quantifying and managing this risk is important for safe operation of these facilities. Risk evaluations should follow a process similar to that shown in Figure 1; the process would start with risk-informed external hazard scenarios such as seismic, flood, fire, or tsunami, or a combination of these as initiating events. Verified and Validated (V&V) models would be used to simulate the external hazard initiators and model results would be used to determine which systems are at risk; decisions will be made on the protective measures needed to minimize risk. Seismic isolation is one protective measure showing promise to manage seismic risk.

Figure 1.

Future risk-informed process to minimize potential external hazard risk.

Seismic Isolation (SI) is gaining importance in the nuclear arena, especially after the Fukushima accident in 2011, which made the nuclear community even more aware that it must design and construct structures capable of withstanding large earthquakes (a previously alarming incident occurred in 2007; the Niigata Chuestu-Oki earthquake led to temporary shutdown of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP). Seismic base isolation has the potential to reduce horizontal earthquake loads for nuclear structures, systems, and components (SSCs). A substantial reduction in horizontal earthquake loading has the potential to increase the safety of nuclear SSCs by managing the risk associated with large seismic events. SI has been used for years in the non-nuclear commercial industry for buildings, bridges, liquid gas tanks, and offshore oil and gas platforms. In addition to SI systems for the current fleet of reactors, such as light water reactors (LWRs), there is a need for seismic isolation of nuclear facilities (both near-surface facilities and deeply embedded), related systems, and components such as diesel generators, reactor pressure vessels, steam generators, spent fuel pools, and critical response facilities. However, the seismic isolation solutions for LWRs (documented in ASCE-4) may not be appropriate for this purpose because the mass of many systems and components is relatively small and their geometry is very different.

The U.S. nuclear industry has not implemented SI to date. Therefore, a seismic isolation gap analysis meeting was convened on August 19, 2014, to determine progress on implementing SI in the U.S. nuclear industry, and what systems and components could benefit from SI. This working meeting included representatives from the Department of Energy (DOE), national laboratories, industry, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to discuss three SI topics: (1) general background on current SI progress in the United States, (2) limitations with implementing procedures outlined in ASCE-4 for SI solutions of entire nuclear power plants, and (3) potential SI solutions for systems and components, and gaps associated with developing standardized technologies, methods, and numerical tools for these solutions.

Seismic Isolation Need

Seismic hazard curves used in evaluating risk at nuclear facilities are continuously evolving as more information has been developed on seismic sources and seismic events. Moreover, additional research is performed to update attenuation relationships and characterize local site effects. Recent earthquake recordings at nuclear power plants sites have exceeded design basis values. These three recent earthquakes in the last 7 years are shown in Table 1. The seismic events were recorded at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa (TEPCO 1, 2007),¹ Fukushima Daiichi and Fukushima Daini (TEPCO 2, March 2011),² and North Anna (August 2011, detailed information provided in Virginia Electric and Power Company Memo).³

Table 1:

Peak recorded acceleration verses the design acceleration value.

The evolving nature of the seismic hazard curves and the requirement to reevaluate those curves every 10 years creates the possibility that a number of these seismic hazard curves will increase.⁴ Therefore, there is an opportunity for engineered solutions to manage this seismic uncertainty, and one solution is seismic isolation. SI has the potential to reduce horizontal earthquake loads for nuclear structures, systems, and components (SSCs). A substantial reduction in horizontal earthquake loading has the potential to increase the safety of nuclear SSCs by managing the risk associated with large seismic events. Installing horizontally flexible and vertically stiff seismic isolators between the superstructure and its foundation typically achieve isolation. Isolators serve two key functions: supporting gravity loads, and protecting the supported structure and its systems and components from the damaging effects of horizontal earthquake ground motion.

ASCE-4 provides standard procedures for providing robust seismic isolation systems for the entire NPP as shown in Figure 2. In addition to SI systems for LWRs (such as those shown in Figure 3), there is a need in the nuclear industry for seismic isolation of nuclear facility-related systems (both near surface facilities and deeply embedded facilities) and/or components (such as diesel generators, reactor pressure vessels, steam generators, spent fuel pools, and critical response facilities [such as FLEX support centers]).

FLEX is a strategy developed by the nuclear energy industry to implement the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)’s Fukushima task force recommendations⁵. FLEX provides backup electrical power and cooling capability if an extreme event impacts capability to maintain power and core cooling. One of the important aspects of FLEX is providing regional support centers that will provide emergency equipment to nuclear power plants during extreme events when necessary. FLEX support center locations are in Memphis, Tennessee and Phoenix, Arizona

Figure 2:

Proposed seismic isolation of LWR per ASCE-4.

The isolation solution shown in Figure 2 would not be cost effective for deeply embedded NPPs, since this would require over-excavation of the soil and installation of a moat system to accommodate the lateral displacement of the facility. Therefore, the likely benefit for deeply embedded structures would be systems and/or components internal to the NPP. For these systems and/or components, there may be a need to provide three-dimensional seismic isolation in addition to lateral SI. Due to the potential difference in the isolation environment (i.e., isolators may be located in the nuclear power plant instead of isolating the nuclear power plant) and the potential need to provide three-dimensional SI, it is necessary to provide required and improved numerical methods and consensus standards for SI of systems and/or components.

Figure 3a:

Seismic isolators: lead-rubber bearing (courtesy of DIS)

Figure 3b:

Seismic isolators: friction pendulum bearing (courtesy of EPS).

Seismic Isolation Gaps

The gaps identified in the working meeting fit into two areas: isolating the entire nuclear facility, and isolating systems and components. A systematic process was developed to determine the importance of each gap.

3.1    Entire Nuclear Facility

Hard Stop Cliff Edge Effects

The hard stop, as shown in Figure 2, is a concrete structure that limits the displacement of the installed seismic isolation system. The ASCE-4 committee has not addressed the potential cliff edge effects (and therefore unanalyzed damaged to the nuclear structures, systems, and/or components [SSCs]) during beyond design basis earthquake (BDBE). A cliff edge effect in a nuclear power plant is an instance of severely abnormal plant behavior caused by an abrupt transition from one plant status to another following a small deviation in a plant parameter, and thus a sudden large variation in plant conditions in response to a small variation in an input. So in the case of seismic isolation, the potential exists that during a large earthquake event the seismically isolated structure is appropriately decoupled from the ground motion; however, during the event a slightly larger displacement causes the structure to strike the hard stop. This impact could cause shock waves in the structure that damage critical components. This is an important parameter to consider in the SI application for a safe design.

Need: Medium

R&D would produce tools, methods, and technologies for addressing cliff edge effects. These would be implemented as guidance in industry consensus codes such as ASCE-4. Understanding of cliff edge effects (if any) and proposed solutions for design changes (if necessary) and demonstrating the reduction of in-structure nuclear facility response has potential to increase nuclear safety.

Hard Stop Requirements

Is the hard stop needed? Currently, ASCE-4 requires implementation of a hard stop to prevent displacement of the nuclear facility beyond what would cause tearing of the isolation system and catastrophic damage.

Need: High

Current state of knowledge is presented in ASCE-4, which requires implementation of the hard stop.

Seismic isolation methods and solutions for mitigating vertical seismic motion

SI of entire nuclear facility is standardized in a forthcoming version of ASCE-4. These are horizontal isolation systems. Vertical seismic response is an issue at some sites; there may be a need for vertical isolation. Currently, there is relatively little knowledge in the United States on designing robust vertical isolation. The need exists to understand the requirements, development methods, and solutions for vertical isolation.

Need: Medium

Vertical seismic response is an issue at some sites; a vertical isolation solution could manage the risk posed by large vertical ground motions.

Understanding margins in Seismic Analysis

Margins that may exist in seismic analysis are not clearly understood. Three recent earthquakes in the last 7 years have exceeded their design basis earthquake values (so damage to SSCs should have occurred), as shown in Table 1. However, seismic walk-downs at some of these plants indicate that very little damage occurred to safety class systems and components due to the seismic motion. Therefore, it is necessary to gather the applicable data to quantify the margins in current seismic analysis techniques (linear analysis) at nuclear power plants.

Need: High

Cost Benefit (Economic Viability) for SI of entire nuclear plant

To our knowledge, no one has performed a cost benefit analysis in the United States on an isolated versus non-isolated nuclear systems and components. A cost benefit analysis could provide valuable insight for venders interested in application of seismic isolation to manage seismic risk at their nuclear facilities.

Need: High

DOE and industry need to understand the cost benefit of implementing SI at NPPs.

Time Domain Methodology Requirements for Nonlinear Behavior

Industry needs a time domain approach that can handle nonlinear behavior, such as seismic isolation.

Need: Medium

Implementation of SI in Nuclear Facility Safety

The forthcoming version of ASCE 4 provides standardized language of implementation of SI for the entire nuclear facility. However, currently in the United States, SI related to nuclear facilities applications do not exist. After the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa earthquake in 2007, TEPCO installed seismically isolated emergency response buildings at all their NPP sites including Fukushima Daiichi (Hijikata 2012).⁶ These facilities provided valuable emergency response equipment to manage the nuclear reactor issues and allowed for continued onsite response.

Need: High

The consensus at the gap working meeting was that SI has the potential to manage seismic risk at NPP sites. One important comment from the meeting is there may be some reluctance in the nuclear community that first application of SI be the nuclear island. FLEX facilities, which support nuclear safety and other storage facilities, could be considered for SI application to demonstrate implementation of the technology in the United States nuclear safety arena.

3.2    Systems and Components

SI Solutions for Nuclear Systems and Components

Seismic isolation solutions for LWRs (documented in ASCE-4) may not be appropriate for isolation of systems and/or components because the mass of many systems and/or components is relatively small and their geometry is very different. Can SI solutions presented in ASCE-4 be scaled for implementation with systems and components, or is it necessary to develop new SI solutions?

Need: High

Deeply embedded NPP venders are likely to seek SI solutions (if needed) for systems and components. Currently, ASCE 4 does not address SI of systems and components; therefore, development of SI solutions for systems and components is necessary. Implementation of these solutions on consensus codes is necessary.

SI for Individual Components, Leading to Differential Displacement Issues

Differential displacement between the isolated and unisolated interface is a known issue that should be addressed in the design. It is also important to quantify the risk associated with this differential displacement.

Need: Medium

Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification

SI numerical models must be verified and validated to provide confidence in predicted structural response. Nonlinear structural dynamics models are needed to accurately predict the behavior of seismic isolation systems. Uncertainty quantification is essential to accessing the range of validity for the model (based on assumptions) and experiments (based on operating conditions).

Need: Medium

Rocking Effect on Seismic Isolation of a Component (essential to understand for Integral SMR designs)

SI of certain NPP systems and components may create rocking loads that current isolation technologies (standardized in ASCE-4), were not designed to handle. SI solutions for deeply embedded structures will likely only be used for systems and components. Therefore, it is necessary to develop SI tools, methods, and solutions similar to what is currently in ASCE 4 for SI of the entire NPP.

Need: Medium

Depending on SI designs for systems and components, this may be important.

Results and Conclusions

Understanding the impact external hazards, such as flooding and earthquakes, can have on nuclear facilities and nuclear power plants is critical to deciding how to manage these hazards to expectable levels of risk. Seismic isolation offers the potential to manage nuclear power plant risk associated with large seismic events. An incremental step in implementing SI in the nuclear arena, prior to actually isolating some portion of a nuclear plant, could be an application for consolidated used fuel facilities, or the two FLEX locations in Memphis, Tennessee and Phoenix, Arizona, which are the two U.S. storage locations for spare diesel generators, pumps, etc., selected by industry in response to Fukushima.

The gaps and research and development needed to close these gaps are identified in Coleman and Sabharwall, 2014 (INL-14-33234).⁷This should be used to guide the future requirements for the research communities and industry. The gaps that are identified as most important are:

• SI solutions for nuclear systems and components
• Quantification of cost benefit (economic viability) for SI
• Understanding margins in seismic analysis
• Implementation of SI in nuclear facility

Implementation of seismic isolation at nuclear power plants and critical facilities has the potential to minimize risk at nuclear facilities associated with large seismic motions, and reduce the cost of construction.  Therefore, it is necessary to perform research and development activities that focus on collaborative efforts between, industry, national laboratories, and universities to close the gaps that are identified.

Justin Coleman is a Civil/Structural Engineer at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). He performs seismic and structural dynamics research at INL and has a master’s degree in engineering structures and mechanics. Mr. Coleman’s background and expertise is seismic analysis of nuclear facilities and impact analysis of spent fuel casks. Much of the impact analysis work is performed using explicit finite element analysis codes. He has performed linear and nonlinear seismic soil-structure interaction (SSI) analysis for safety-related nuclear structures and is currently working to develop advanced nonlinear seismic soil-structure interaction analysis methodologies.  His research interests include nonlinear SSI analysis, advanced seismic PRA, seismic protective systems, spend fuel transportation and storage, and beyond design basis threats to nuclear structures. He serves on the ASCE 4 and 43 where he is the lead author of Chapter 3, “Modeling of Structures,” and led the effort to write Appendix B, “Nonlinear Time Domain Soil-Structure Interaction Analysis,” in the forthcoming edition of ASCE 4.  Mr. Coleman has authored numerous reports on impact analysis of spent fuel casks and nuclear fuel, and seismic analysis. 

Dr. Piyush Sabharwall is a staff research scientist in Nuclear System Design and Analysis Division at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). He has a premier role in the development of very high temperature nuclear reactor technologies that are integral to the Department of Energy (DOE) strategic plans for the sustained advances in nuclear energy. Dr. Sabharwall has expertise in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, thermal design, thermodynamics, and nuclear safety analyses. Over the last few years, he has been researching on high temperature heat exchanger design & optimization, system integrations & power conversion systems and safety and reliability for Advanced Reactor Concepts. He obtained his Masters in Nuclear Engineering with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University and further pursued his Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering from University of Idaho. He has authored over 75 publications including journal articles, conference proceedings, technical abstracts, magazines and technical reports and has acted as a reviewer for journal and conference proceedings. He has been a significant catalyst for international and national research partnerships in the field of thermal hydraulics (heat and mass transfer, fluid mechanics, two phase flow, computational multiphase flow technology) for both nuclear and mechanical industries. In 2011 he received the New Faces of Engineering ASME National Award on the basis of contributions stemming from experiments and research and development effort in the area of thermal hydraulics and in 2013 he was awarded the ANS Young Member Excellence National Award.

Negotiations are currently underway with Iran regarding their nuclear program; as a result, one of the main questions for U.S. government policymakers is what monitoring and verification measures and tools will be required by the United States, its allies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure Iran’s nuclear program remains peaceful.

To answer this question, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) convened a non-partisan, independent task force to examine the technical and policy requirements to adequately verify a comprehensive or other sustained nuclear agreement with Iran. Through various methods, the task force interviewed or met with over 70 experts from various technical and policy disciplines and compiled the results in the new report, “Verification Requirements for a Nuclear Agreement with Iran.” Authored by task force leaders Christopher Bidwell, Orde Kittrie, John Lauder and Harvey Rishikof, the report outlines nine recommendations for U.S. policymakers relating to a successful monitoring and verification agreement with Iran.  They are as follows:

Six Elements of an Effective Agreement

1. The agreement should require Iran to provide, prior to the next phase of sanctions relief, a comprehensive declaration that is correct and complete concerning all aspects of its nuclear program both current and past.

2. The agreement should provide the IAEA, for the duration of the agreement, access without delay to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the IAEA, as currently required by UN Security Council Resolution 1929.

3. The agreement should provide that any material acts of non-cooperation with inspectors are a violation of the agreement.

4. The agreement should provide for the establishment of a consultative commission, which should be designed and operate in ways to maximize its effectiveness in addressing disputes and, if possible, building a culture of compliance within Iran.

5. The agreement should provide that all Iranian acquisition of sensitive items for its post-agreement licit nuclear program, and all acquisition of sensitive items that could be used in a post-agreement illicit nuclear program, must take place through a designated transparent channel.

6. The agreement should include provisions designed to preclude Iran from outsourcing key parts of its nuclear weapons program to a foreign country such as North Korea.

Three Proposed U.S. Government Actions to Facilitate Effective Implementation of an Agreement

1. The U.S. Government should enhance its relevant monitoring capabilities, invest resources in monitoring the Iran agreement, and structure its assessment and reporting of any Iranian noncompliance so as to maximize the chances that significant anomalies will come to the fore and not be overlooked or considered de minimis.

2. The U.S. Government and its allies should maintain the current sanctions regime architecture so that it can be ratcheted up incrementally in order to deter and respond commensurately to any Iranian non-compliance with the agreement.

3. The U.S. Government should establish a joint congressional/executive branch commission to monitor compliance with the agreement, similar to Congress having created the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords.

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“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true,” wrote Barbara Tuchman in The Guns of August.¹ Today, the United States and other nuclear-armed states are not addressing the harder alternative of whether nuclear weapons provide for real security. The harder alternative, I argue,  is to work toward elimination of these weapons at the same time as the security concerns of all states are being met. If leaders of states feel insecure, those with nuclear arms will insist on maintaining or even modernizing these weapons, and many of those without nuclear arms will insist on having nuclear deterrence commitments from nuclear-armed states. Therefore, security concerns must be addressed as a leading priority if there is to be any hope of nuclear abolition.

Among the many merits of Tuchman’s book is her trenchant analysis of the entangled military and political alliances that avalanched toward the armed clashes at the start of the First World War in August 1914. The German army under the Schlieffen Plan had to mobilize within a couple of weeks and launch its attack through neutral Belgium into France and win swift victory; otherwise, Germany would get bogged down in a two-front war in France and Russia. But this plan did not go like clockwork. As we know from history, years of trench warfare resulted in millions of soldiers killed. The war’s death toll of military and civilians from multiple causes (including pandemic influenza) was more than 16 million.

The danger today is that alliance commitments could drag the United States into an even more costly nuclear war. While the United States must support its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and in East Asia (including Japan and South Korea), it must be wary of overreliance on nuclear weapons for providing security. This is an extremely difficult balancing act. On the one hand, the United States needs to reassure these allies that they have serious, reliable extended deterrence commitments. “Extended” means that the United States extends deterrence beyond its territory and will commit to retaliating in response to an armed attack on an ally’s territory. Such deterrence involves conventional and nuclear forces as well as diplomatic efforts.

NATO allies have been concerned about the security implications of Russia’s incursion into Crimea and its influence over the continuing political and military crisis in Ukraine. Do nuclear weapons have a role in reassuring these allies? A resolute yes has come from an August 17^th op-ed in the Washington Post by Brent Scowcroft, Stephen J. Hadley, and Franklin Miller.² (The first two gentlemen served as national security advisers in the Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations while the third author was a senior official in charge of developing nuclear policy for Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.) Not only do these experienced former national security officials give an emphatic affirmation to the United States recommitting to nuclear deterrence in NATO (as if that were seriously in doubt), but they underscore the perceived need for keeping “the modest number of U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe.” The United States is the only nuclear-armed state to deploy nuclear weapons in other states’ territories.

The authors pose three arguments from opponents and then attempt to knock them down. First, the critics allegedly posit that NATO-based nuclear weapons “have no military value.” To rebut, Scowcroft et al. state that because NATO’s supreme allied commander says that these weapons have military value, this is evidence enough. While by definition of his rank he is an authority, he alone cannot determine whether or not these weapons have military value. This is at least a debatable point. Scowcroft et al. instead want to emphasize that the weapons are “fundamentally, political weapons.” That is, these forward deployed arms are “a visible symbol to friend and potential foe of the U.S. commitment to defend NATO with all of the military power it possesses.” But would the United States go so far as to threaten Russia with nuclear use? The authors do not pursue this line of questioning. Perhaps they realize that this threat could lead to a commitment trap in which the United States would risk losing credibility because it would not want to cross the nuclear threshold, but Russian President Vladimir Putin could call the U.S. bluff.³

The United States can still demonstrate resolve and commitment to allies with its strategic nuclear weapons based on U.S. soil and on submarines under the surfaces of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Moreover, the United States can show further support by working with European allies to make them more resilient against disruptions of energy supplies such as oil and natural gas from Russia. By implementing policies to reduce and eventually eliminate dependencies on Russian energy supplies, these countries will strengthen their energy security and have further options to apply economic and diplomatic pressure, if necessary, on Russia. These measures are not explicitly mentioned in the op-ed.

Rather, Scowcroft et al. argue that Russia has been modernizing its nuclear forces because these weapons “clearly matter to Russian leadership, and as a result, our allies insist that the U.S. nuclear commitment to NATO cannot be called into question.” But of course, these weapons are valuable to Russia due to the relative weakness of its conventional military. While Scowcroft et al. raise an important concern about continued modernization of nuclear weapons, this argument does not lead to the necessity of deployment of U.S. nuclear bombs in European states.

Scowcroft et al. then argue that NATO’s overwhelming conventional military superiority in the aggregate of all its allies’ conventional forces is a fallacy because it “masks the reality that on NATO’s eastern borders, on a regular basis, Russian forces are numerically superior to those of the alliance.” Moreover, “Russia’s armed forces have improved significantly since their poor performance in [the Republic of] Georgia in 2008.” The authors then state that looking at conventional war-fighting capabilities alone miss the point that “NATO’s principal goal is deterring aggression rather than having to defeat it. And it is here that NATO’s nuclear capabilities provide their greatest value.” Although I have no argument against deterring aggression, they have not proved the point that forward-deployed U.S. nuclear weapons have done so. Indeed, Russian forces have occupied parts of Ukraine. While Ukraine is not part of NATO, it is still not proven that U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe are essential to block Russia from potentially encroaching on NATO allies in Eastern Europe. Perhaps at best nuclear forces on either side have stalemated each other and that there are still plenty of moves available for less potent, but nonetheless powerful, conventional forces on the geopolitical chessboard.

Finally, they address the opponents’ argument that deep divisions run through NATO allies about the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. While they acknowledge that in 2007 and 2008 domestic politics in several alliance states fed a debate that resulted in several government officials in some European states expressing interest in removal of U.S. nuclear weapons, they argue that the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept (endorsed by all 28 NATO heads of government), demonstrates unity of policy that “We will maintain an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces [and] ensure the broadest participation of Allies in collective defense planning on nuclear roles, in peacetime basing of nuclear forces, and in command, control, and communications arrangements.” Of course, one can read into this statement that “broadest participation” and “peacetime basing” can suggest forward deployment. On the other hand, the statement can be read as purposively ambiguous to iron over differences and achieve consensus among a large group of states. These governments have yet to seriously question nuclear deterrence, but this does not demand forward basing of U.S. nuclear bombs.

Left unwritten in their op-ed are the steps the United States took at the end of the Cold War to remove its nuclear weapons from forward basing in South Korea and near Japan.  Although some scholars and politicians in Japan and South Korea have at times questioned this action, the United States has frequently reassured these allies by flying nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 strategic bombers from the United States to Northeast Asia and emphasizing the continuous deployment of dozens of nuclear-armed submarine launched ballistic missiles in the Pacific Ocean. Japan and South Korea have not built nuclear weapons, and they have not experienced war in the region since the Korean War ended in 1953 in an armistice. It would be a mistake for the United States to reintroduce forward-deployed nuclear weapons in and near Japan and South Korea. These allies’ security would not be increased and might actually decrease because of the potential for adverse reactions from China and North Korea.

The urgent required action is for the United States to stop being the only country with nuclear weapons deployed in other countries, and instead it should remove its nuclear bombs from European states. The United States should not give other countries such as China, Russia, or Pakistan the green light to forward deploy in others’ territories. For example, there are concerns that Pakistan could deploy nuclear forces in Saudi Arabia if Saudi rulers make such a request because of their fears of a future nuclear-armed Iran.

In conclusion, ideas in books do matter. President John F. Kennedy during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis drew lessons from The Guns of August. The main lesson he learned was that great powers slipped accidentally into the catastrophic First World War. This sobering lesson in part made him wary of tripping into an accidental war, but he still took risks, for example, by ordering a naval quarantine of Cuba. (He called this action “quarantine” because a blockade is an act of war.) During the quarantine, it was fortunate that a Soviet submarine commander refrained from launching nuclear weapons that were onboard his submarine. This is just one example of how close the United States and Soviet Union came to nuclear war.

Let us remember that the crisis was largely about the United States’ refusal to accept the presence of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba that was within 100 miles of the continental United States. At that time, the United States had deployed nuclear-capable Jupiter missiles in Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. Both sides backed down from the nuclear brink, and both countries removed their forward deployed nuclear weapons from Cuba and Turkey. Thus, it is ironic that we seem to be headed back to the future when senior former U.S. officials argue for U.S. nuclear bombs based in Europe.

Charles D. Ferguson, Ph.D.

President, Federation of American Scientists

In the wake of the extraordinary media focus on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and on the search to define his legacy, a significant element was overlooked: the story of a young congressman joining in a legislative initiative to advance no less than the solution to the problem of war. It is an initiative Kennedy pursued again in a major address in his creative last season as president.

On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy delivered the commencement address at American University in Washington, DC. That speech is often remembered for a pair of nuclear announcements – the suspension of American atmospheric tests and the opening of negotiations on a comprehensive test ban treaty. It is usually forgotten that JFK also presented in this speech the idea of a pathway toward “not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

In the speech, President Kennedy asked Americans to reexamine their pessimism about the human prospect. “Too many of us think … that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.” But he insisted that “human destiny” remained in human hands. A durable peace, said JFK, could be constructed “not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions … World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor. It requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.”

Then President Kennedy became more specific:  “We seek to strengthen the United Nations … to develop it into a genuine world security system … This will require a new effort to achieve world law. … Our primary long range interest … is general and complete disarmament … to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.”

Fourteen years earlier, JFK had endorsed a legislative action that described the kind of “new institutions of peace” that would constitute “a genuine world security system.” In June 1949, Representative John F. Kennedy – along with more than 100 other sitting members of the House and the Senate – proposed the transformation of the United Nations into a world federation.

House Concurrent Resolution 64 read as follows: “. . . [I]t is the sense of the Congress that it should be a fundamental objective of the foreign policy of the United States to support and strengthen the United Nations and to seek its development into a world federation, open to all nations, with defined and limited powers adequate to preserve peace and prevent aggression through the enactment, interpretation, and enforcement of world law.”

The measure was co-sponsored in the House by 91 members. The list notably included Representatives Jacob Javits, Mike Mansfield, Abe Ribicoff, Peter Rodino, Henry Jackson, Walter Judd, Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Charles Eaton, future Eisenhower Secretary of State Christian Herter, first-term Congressman Gerald Ford, and second-term Congressman John F. Kennedy, all of whom served in senior U.S. government leadership positions in later years.

On the Senate side, the 21 co-sponsors included Senators Paul Douglas, Russell Long, Wayne Morse, future vice-presidential candidate John Sparkman, and future Vice President Hubert Humphrey; here again, all became major leaders in the U.S. government.

This resolution did not spontaneously appear in the halls of Congress. The idea of abolishing war through the establishment of a world government was already then very old. It had been expressed in centuries past by figures like Dante Alighieri, William Penn, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Victor Hugo – even Ulysses S. Grant. (Last year marked the tercentenary of the 1713 Project for Perpetual Peace by the Abbey of Saint Pierre — which influenced both Kant and Rousseau.) The long historic background of the idea is charted in Strobe Talbott’s 2008 book, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation. Talbott pegs his account on Plutarch’s report that one of the indictments of Socrates, for which he chose to drink the hemlock, was his declaration that he was not an Athenian or a Greek but “a citizen of the world.”

Few generations in human history had experienced as much upheaval as those living through two cataclysmic world wars (with a great depression in between) in the space of three decades. The new United Nations that emerged from the San Francisco conference in June 1945 fell far short of an institution able to keep the peace, with a Security Council that could only act to prevent aggression if unanimity prevailed among its five permanent members. Then came the atom bomb in August 1945, an apocalyptic addition to the human predicament.

Out of these experiences, a genuine grassroots movement started to emerge during the Second World War, advocating the establishment of a federal and democratic world government in order to bring about the elimination of national armies and the abolition of war.  Its central contention was that humanity could no longer permit anarchy on the world level, and that the civil society, constitutions, and rule of law that prevailed within nations now had to be instituted among nations as well.

An organization known as the Student Federalists, founded in 1942 by author Wofford, over the next several years formed 367 chapters on high school and college campuses around the country. (A 2001 book by Gilbert Jonas, One Shining Moment, chronicles that story.) The chancellor of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, convened a group of distinguished scholars from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and St. John’s College as well as Chicago, and grandly designated them the “Committee to Frame a World Constitution.”¹ (As an undergraduate at Chicago, author Wofford assisted the Committee in the launching of their draft world constitution.) ² By 1949, the United World Federalists, which aimed “to strengthen the UN into a world government,” had established 720 chapters and enlisted nearly 50,000 members and was led by future U.S. Senator Alan Cranston – who at various times served as a mentor to both of the authors of this essay. Between 1941 and 1951, more than half the state legislatures in the United States passed resolutions advocating some form of world federation with power adequate to prevent war.³

Albert Einstein declared: “The world’s present system of sovereign nations can lead only to barbarism, war and inhumanity. There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government.”⁴ That sentiment was endorsed by many more luminaries of the day, including Oscar Hammerstein II, Clare Booth Luce, Carl Sandburg, Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, Dorothy Thompson, Albert Camus, Arnold Toynbee, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices William O. Douglas and Robert H. Jackson (chief prosecutor at Nuremberg). Even Winston Churchill proclaimed in 1947 that if “it is found possible to build a world organization of irresistible force and authority for the purpose of securing peace, there are no limits to the blessings which all men may enjoy and share.” And in 1950 he revealed his appraisal of the stark alternative: “Unless some effective world super-government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects for peace and human progress are dark and doubtful.”

Many of the young members of the Student Federalists were filled with not just activist energy, but also an intellectual engagement with the great issues of the day. A number were profoundly influenced by literary works including The Anatomy of Peace by Emery Reves, How to Think About War and Peace by Mortimer Adler, and The Wild Flag: Editorials from The New Yorker on Federal World Government by E.B. White.

As instrumental as any of these was a 1946 collection of essays from Manhattan Project scientists and others, assembled by the Federation of American Scientists, called One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb.

Not all the articles in this compilation directly grappled with proposals for world government. A few forecast the danger of nuclear terror – called by Los Alamos Associate Director E.U. Condon “the new technique of private war.” Others examined the promise (but not much of the peril) of the yet-to-be-realized development of nuclear energy. Others still focused on the likely inescapable advantages of offense in the new atomic age, and the contention that, in the title of radar pioneer Louis N. Ridenour’s essay, There is No Defense.

However, many asserted that the primeval scourge of war must now be brought to an end — through the creation of supranational institutions with the power to enact and the means to enforce supranational law. “Conflicts in interest between great powers can be expected to arise in the future … and there is no world authority in existence that can adjudicate the case and enforce the decision,” said Leo Szilard, who first conceived the nuclear chain reaction. But humanity had at its disposal, he insisted, “the solution of the problem of permanent peace … the issue that we have to face is not whether we can create a world government … (but) whether we can have such a world government without going through a third world war.”

“The greatest need facing the world today is for international control of the human forces that make for war,” said General of the Army Hap Arnold, the only Air Force officer ever to hold the rank of five stars, in his final official statement as head of the U.S Army Air Forces. The atom bomb, he declared, presents “a tremendous argument for a world organization that will eliminate conflict … we must make an end to all wars for good.” (After his retirement from the military, General Arnold served as founder of the RAND Corporation.)

Finally, “there are few in any country who now believe that war itself … can be regulated or outlawed by the ordinary treaties among sovereign states,” said Walter Lippmann, a founder of both The New Republic magazine and the Council on Foreign Relations. “No one can prove … what will be the legislative, executive, and judicial organs of the world state. … (But) there are ideas that shake the world and change it. The project of the world state is now such an idea … the ideal of the union of mankind under universal law.”

In 2007 the Federation of American Scientists and the New Press republished One World or None, with a new introduction by Richard Rhodes, which is available in bookstores.

With the coming of the Cold War and the arms race, the steam went out of the movement.  One powerful spokesman for the United World Federalists, Cord Meyer, who often ended his talks saying, “If this hope is naïve, then it is naïve to hope,” left to become an important strategist for the CIA.  Senator Cranston ran for president in 1984 on a platform for nuclear arms control and the strengthening and transformation of the United Nations – in a losing campaign. By the early 1950s, the idea of a world federation was no longer debated in dormitories, at dinner parties, and in public forums.

As we reflect upon the tragic end of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, we should recognize the central proposition he offered at the beginning of his inaugural address: “The world is very different now.  For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.”  He went on to say that our goal for the United Nations should be: “To enlarge the area in which its writ may run . . . and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.”

“So let us begin anew,” Kennedy said.  He called for “a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.”

We cannot know what Kennedy would have done if he had lived, and been elected to a second term.  Would he have stopped the mounting war in Vietnam?  Would the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty have become the first stage of the new endeavor for peace he promised? One of Kennedy’s big commitments was fulfilled, on his timetable of one decade: “to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth.”  Would Kennedy have gone on to build enduring world peace through the world rule of law, and to cultivate an allegiance to humanity, with the same can-do spirit that took us to the moon?

We cannot say. But we do know that in July 1979, on the tenth anniversary of that landing, Neil Armstrong was asked what had been going through his mind as he stood on the moon and saluted the American flag. “I suppose you’re thinking about pride and patriotism,” he replied. “But we didn’t have a strong nationalistic feeling at that time. We felt more that it was a venture of all mankind.”

Former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford (D-PA) served as President Kennedy’s Special Assistant for Civil Rights, and as Special Representative of the Peace Corps to Africa; while in the Army Air Corps in World War Two, he wrote It’s Up To Us: Federal World Government in Our Time (Harcourt Brace 1946).

Tad Daley, who directs the Project on Abolishing War at the Center for War/Peace Studies (www.abolishingwar.org), is the author of Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers University Press 2012). He previously served as a policy analyst and speechwriter for both former Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and the late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA), and received his Ph.D. before that from the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School.

Introduction

Edward Friedman and Roger Lewis’s essay “A Scenario for Jihadist Nuclear Revenge,” published in the Spring 2014 edition of the Public Interest Report, is a sobering reminder of both the possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack based on stolen highly-enriched uranium and the depressing level of public ignorance of such threats. Articles exploring the issue of terrorists or rogue sub-national actors acquiring and using a nuclear weapon or perpetrating some other type of nuclear-themed attack have a long history and have addressed a number of scenarios, including a full-scale program to produce a weapon from scratch, use of stolen reactor-grade plutonium, an attack with a radiological dispersal device, and the vulnerability of research reactors.[5]Equally vigorous are discussions of countermeasures such as detecting warheads and searching for neutron activity due to fissile materials hidden inside cargo containers. An excellent summary analysis of the prospects for a terrorist-built nuclear weapon was prepared almost three decades ago by Carson Mark, Theodore Taylor, Eugene Eyster, William Maraman and Jacob Wechsler, who laid out a daunting list of materials, equipment, expertise and material-processing operations that would be required to fabricate what the authors describe as a “crude” nuclear weapon – a gun or implosion-type device similar to Little Boy or Fat Man. The authors estimated that such a weapon might weigh on the order of a ton or more and have a yield of some 10 kilotons. Perpetrators would face a serious menu of radiological and toxicological hazards involved in processing fissile materials. For example, both uranium (U) and plutonium (Pu) are chemically toxic; also, U can ignite spontaneously in air and Pu tends to accumulate in bones and kidneys. Of course, longer-term health effects might be of little concern to a group of suicidal terrorists.

While the difficulties of such a project might provide reassurance that such an effort has a low probability of being brought to fruition, we might ask if nuclear-armed terrorists along the lines envisioned by Friedman and Lewis would be willing to settle for a relatively low-yield device to achieve their ends. A bomb with a yield of 10 percent of that of Little Boy would still create a devastating blast, leave behind a radiological mess, and generate no small amount of social and economic upheaval. Such a yield would be small change to professional weapons engineers, but the distinction between one kiloton and 15 kilotons might largely be lost on political figures and the public in the aftermath of such an event. Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City truck bomb used about 2.5 tons of explosive; a one-kiloton detonation would represent some 400 such explosions and make a very powerful statement.

Motivated by Friedman and Lewis’s scenario, I consider the feasibility of an extremely crude gun-type U-235 device configured to be transported in a pickup truck or similar light vehicle. My concern is not with the difficulties perpetrators might face in acquiring fissile material and clandestinely preparing their device, but rather with the results they might achieve if they can do so. The results reported here are based on the basic physics of fission weapons as laid out in a series of pedagogical papers that I have published elsewhere. The essential configuration and expected yield of the device proposed is described in the following section; technical details of the physics computations are gathered in the Appendix.

A Crude Gun-Type Fission Bomb

The bare critical mass of pure U-235 is about 46 kg; this can be significantly lowered by provision of a surrounding tamper. I frame the design of a putative terrorist bomb by assuming that perpetrators have available 40 kg of pure U-235 to be packaged into a device with a length on the order of 2-3 meters and a total estimated weight of 450 kg (1000 pounds), of which 200 kg is budgeted for tamper material. The 40-kg core is subcritical, and the uranium need not be divided up into target and projectile pieces as in the Friedman-Lewis scenario, although the design suggested here could easily be modified to accommodate such an arrangement.

As sketched below, I assume that the uranium is formed into a cylindrical slug of diameter and length L_core. The core and a plug of tamper material are to be propelled down an artillery tube into a cylindrical tamper case such that the core will be located in the middle of the case once assembly is complete; the assembled core-plus-tamper is assumed to be of diameter and length L_tamp. The choice of tamper material is a crucial consideration; it can seriously affect the predicted yield. In the case of Little Boy, readily-available tungsten-carbide (WC) was employed. Beryllium oxide (BeO) has more desirable neutron-reflective properties, but is expensive and its dust is carcinogenic; more importantly, an effort to acquire hundreds of kilograms of it is likely to bring unwanted attention. I report results for both WC and BeO tampers.

Figure 1: Sketch of a cylindrical tamper case and core/tamper-plug projectile assembly. A 40-kg U-235 core of normal density will have Lcore = 14 cm.

Adopted parameters and calculated results are gathered in Table 1. Technical details are described in the Appendix; the last line of the table gives estimated yields in kilotons. To estimate these yields I used a FORTRAN version of an algorithm which I developed to simulate the detonation of a spherical core-plus-tamper assembly (see the numerical simulation paper cited in footnote 10). A spherical assembly will no doubt give somewhat different results in detail from the cylindrical geometry envisioned here, but as the program returns an estimated yield for a simulation of Little Boy in good accord with the estimated actual yield of that device, we can have some confidence that the results given here should be sensible.

For both configurations in Table 1, the sum of the core, tamper, and artillery-tube masses is about 315 kg (700 lb). With allowance for a breech to close off the rear end of the tube, neutron initiators, detonator electronics, propelling chemical explosives and an enclosing case (which need not be robust if the weapon is not to be lifted), it appears entirely feasible to assemble the entire device with a total weight on the order of 1,000 pounds. Beryllium oxide is clearly preferable as the tamper material, but even with a tungsten-carbide tamper the yield is about 10 percent of that of Little Boy. In open terrain a 2-kiloton ground-burst creates a 5-psi overpressure out to a radius of about one-third of a mile; such an overpressure is quite sufficient to destroy wood-frame houses.

In summary, the sort of vehicle-deliverable makeshift gun-type fission weapon envisioned by Friedman and Lewis appears to be a very plausible prospect; yields on the order of a few kilotons are not out of reach. In view of the fact that all of the calculations in this paper are based on open information, there are sure to be nuances in the physics and particularly the engineering involved that would make realization of such a device more complex than is implied here. But this exercise nevertheless serves as a cautionary tale to emphasize the need for all nuclear powers to rigorously secure and guard their stockpiles of fissile material.

Technical Appendix

Refer to Table 1 and the figure above. A 40-kg U-235 core of normal density (18.71 gr cm^-3) will have L_core = 13.96 cm. The first three lines of Table 1 give adopted atomic weights, densities, and elastic-scattering cross sections for each tamper material. The next two lines give the tamper size and plug mass, and the sixth line the total length of the core-plus-plug bullet.

To estimate the yield of the proposed device I assumed for sake of simplicity that the core is spherical (radius ~ 8 cm) and surrounded by a snugly-fitting 200-kg tamper. Each fission was assumed to liberate 180 MeV of energy and secondary neutrons of average kinetic energy 2 MeV. The number of initiator neutrons was assumed to be 100, radiation pressure was assumed to dominate over gas pressure in the exploding core, and the average number of neutrons per fission was taken to be n =  2.637.

Lines 7 and 8 in Table 1 refer to two important considerations in bomb design: the speed with which the core seats into the tamper and the propellant pressure required to achieve this speed. The core material will inevitably contain some U-238, which, because of its high spontaneous fission rate (~ 7 per kg per second), means that there will be some probability for premature initiation of the chain reaction while the core and tamper are being assembled. (There is no danger of pre-detonation before seating as 40 kg is less than the “bare” critical mass of U-235. The danger during seating arises from the fact that the tamper lowers the critical mass.) The key to minimizing this probability lies in maximizing the assembly speed. If our 40-kg core contains 10 percent by mass U-238, the pre-detonation probability can be kept to under 10 percent if the time during which the core is in a supercritical state during assembly is held to no more than four milliseconds (see the pre-detonation paper cited in footnote 10). The seventh line of Table 1 shows corresponding assembly speeds based on this time constraint and the core-plug lengths in the preceding line. These speed demands are very gentle in comparison to the assembly speed employed in Little Boy, which was about 300 m s^-1.

To achieve the assembly speed I assume that (as in Little Boy), the core-plus-plug is propelled along a tube by detonation of a conventional explosive adjacent to the rear end of the tamper plug in the tail of the weapon. To estimate the maximum pressure required, I assumed that the propulsion is provided by the adiabatic expansion (in which no heat is gained or lost) of the detonated explosive. Adiabatic expansion of gas to propel a projectile confined to a tube has been extensively studied; an expression appearing in Rohrbach et. al. can be used to estimate the initial pressure required given the cross-sectional area of the tube, the mass of the projectile, the length of the tube, a value for the adiabatic exponent   _gand the assembly speed to be achieved. This pressure also depends on the initial volume of the detonated explosive; for this I adopted a value of 0.004 m³, about the volume of the core-plug assemblies. The eighth line of Table 1 shows the estimated necessary initial pressures (neglecting any friction between the projectile and the tube) for a travel length of 1.5 meters for g = 1.4; this value of g  is characteristic of a diatomic gas. These pressures are very modest, and would set no undue demands on the tube material. Stainless steel, for example, has an ultimate strength of ~ 500 MPa (~75,000 psi); such a tube of inner diameter 7 cm, thickness 1 cm, and length 2 meters would have a mass of about 75 kg. This would bring the sum of the core, tamper, and tube masses to ~ 315 kg (700 lb).

A final technical consideration is the so-called fizzle yield that this makeshift weapon might achieve, that is, its yield if the chain reaction should begin at the moment when the core achieves first criticality. As described by von Hippel and Lyman in Mark (footnote 3), the fizzle yield as a fraction of the nominal design yield can be estimated from the expression Y_fizzle/Y_nominal ~ (2t F/a t_O)^3/2, where t  is the average time that a neutron will travel before causing a fission, F is the natural logarithm of the number of fissions that have occurred when the nuclear chain reaction proper can be considered to have begun, a is a parameter in the exponential growth rate of the reaction set by the masses and sizes of the core and tamper, and t_O is the time required to complete the core assembly. As described by Mark, t ~ 10^-8 sec and F ~ 45. For the design posited here, a~ 0.32 for the WC tamper and ~ 0.47 for the BeO tamper; see Reed (2009) in footnote 10 or Sect. 2.3 of the last reference in footnote 10 regarding the computation of a. Taking t_O = 0.004 sec gives Y_fizzle/Y_nominal ~ 1.9 x 10^-5 for the WC tamper and 1.0 x 10^-5 for the BeO tamper. With nominal yields of 1.4 and 4.9 kt, the estimated fizzle yields are only ~ 27 and 50 kilograms equivalent. While the perpetrators of such a device might be willing risk such a low yield in view of the low pre-detonation probability involved, they would be well-advised to increase the assembly speed as much as possible.

Table 1: Adopted and calculated parameters for a simple gun-type fission weapon, assuming a 40-kg core of U-235.

*Fission-spectrum averaged elastic-scattering cross-sections adopted from Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute Table of Nuclides, http://atom.kaeri.re.kr

Edward A. Friedman & Roger K. Lewis, “A Scenario for Jihadist Nuclear Revenge,” Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report 67 (2) (Spring 2014).

Robert Harney, Gerald Brown, Matthew Carlyle, Eric Skroch & Kevin Wood, “Anatomy of a Project to Produce a First Nuclear Weapon,” Science and Global Security 14 (2006): 2-3, 163-182.

J. Carson Mark, “Explosive Properties of Reactor-Grade Plutonium,” Science and Global Security 4 (1993): 1, 111-128.

J. Magill, D. Hamilton, K. Lützenkirchen, M. Tufan, G. Tamborini, W. Wagner, V. Berthou & A. von Zweidorf, “Consequences of a Radiological Dispersal Event with Nuclear and Radioactive Sources,” Science and Global Security 15 (2007): 2, 107-132.

Steve Fetter, Valery A. Frolov, Marvin Miller, Robert Mozley, Oleg F. Prilutsky, Stanislav N. Rodinov & Roald Z. Sagdeev, “Detecting nuclear warheads,” Science and Global Security 1 (1990): 3-4, 225-253.

J. I. Katz, “Detection of Neutron Sources in Cargo Containers,” Science and Global Security 14 (2006): 2-3, 145-149.

J. Carson Mark, Theodore Taylor, Eugene Eyster, William Maraman & Jacob Wechsler, “Can Terrorists Build Nuclear Weapons?” Paper Prepared for the International Task Force on the Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism. Nuclear Control Institute, Washington, DC (1986). Available at http://www.nci.org/k-m/makeab.htm

Cristoph Wirz & Emmanuel Egger, “Use of nuclear and radiological weapons by terrorists?” International Review of the Red Cross 87 (2005): 859, 497-510.

B. Cameron Reed, “Arthur Compton’s 1941 Report on explosive fission of U-235: A look at the physics.” American Journal of Physics 75 (2007): 12, 1065-1072; “A brief primer on tamped fission-bomb cores.” American Journal of Physics 77 (2009): 8, 730-733; “Predetonation probability of a fission-bomb core.” American Journal of Physics 78 (2010): 8, 804-808; “Student-level numerical simulation of conditions inside an exploding fission-bomb core.” Natural Science 2 (2010): 3, 139-144; “Fission fizzles: Estimating the yield of a predetonated nuclear weapon.” American Journal of Physics, 79 (2011): 7, 769-773; The Physics of the Manhattan Project (Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag, 2010).

Z. J. Rohrbach, T. R. Buresh & M. J. Madsen, “Modeling the exit velocity of a compressed air cannon,” American Journal of Physics 80 (2012): 1, 24-26.

Cameron Reed is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics at Alma College, where he teaches courses ranging from first-year algebra-based mechanics to senior-level quantum mechanics. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Waterloo (Canada). His research has included both optical photometry of intrinsically bright stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and the history of the Manhattan Project. His book The History and Science of the Manhattan Project was recently published by Springer.

Today, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or “drones”), are an ever-present entity in both political discourse and the skies above countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unmanned aerial vehicles can be used for a wide variety of missions. While intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and target acquisition are missions that frequently fall under the purview of basic UAVs, more advanced drones can be used for specialized tasks such as laser targeting, cargo transportation, and precision strike missions. Over 50 countries possess the ability to produce their own UAVs, and those that cannot do so are able to receive UAVs from exporters around the world. The most valued UAVs in the export market are those capable of long range flight or armed operations, as these platforms are significantly more difficult for many countries to independently produce. The United States holds the technological edge in UAV production, but Israel is the world’s leading exporter of UAV systems. Systems such as Israel Aerospace Industries’ Heron UAV have been sent to countries such as Indonesia, Germany, and India. The only indigenously produced British drone, the Watchkeeper WK450, is a variant of the Israeli Hermes 450, a medium-size UAV manufactured by Haifa’s Elbit Systems Ltd. Between 2006 and 2013 UAV exports from Israel totaled $4.6 billion.

It may seem strange that the United States is not the world’s largest exporter of UAVs. After all, the U.S. holds the unequivocal edge in UAV technological development. No other UAV can hold an offensive payload within 1,500 pounds of the nearly two tons carried by the American MQ-9 Reaper, an aircraft whose upgrade the General Atomics Avenger, has already been tested in Afghanistan. UAVs such as the Avenger or the Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel (an advanced reconnaissance drone), are designed with stealth in mind, and no other country has been confirmed to have developed and put into service an independently-designed UAV with stealth capabilities.

It is understandable that the United States does not wish to export the Avenger or the Sentinel, two of its most cutting-edge systems, to foreign countries. The secrets of such technological advancements may have no dollar equivalent. Yet the United States has developed many UAVs such as the MQ-1 Predator or the RQ-7B Shadow that while advanced, do not represent the absolute cutting edge in UAV technology. Historically, the United States has had few quandaries with exporting other advanced weapons systems to countries around the world: the M1 Abrams tank has been exported by the hundreds to countries around the world, as has the F-16 Fighting Falcon jet or the Apache AH-64 attack helicopter. All of the vehicles were exported in what was at the time the most advanced version of the product. What is it about UAVs that leads to the United States’ hesitancy to fully invest in the export field?

The answer is hard to define, and impossible to pin on only one factor. A major factor slowing down UAV exports is the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), a set of federal regulations that require Department of State authorization in order to allow domestic firms to export information or material with military applications, specifically those on the United States Munitions List. Yet this is an obstacle faced by many U.S. manufacturers, whether they wish to export tanks, jet fighters, helicopters, or nuclear weapons. Although the nuclear weapon exportation field is admittedly a small one, the ITAR has still allowed for robust exportation of the aforementioned Abrams, Fighting Falcons, and Apaches. Instead, the United States is imposing constraints on itself and other suppliers through a multilateral mechanism.

The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is a partnership between the United States and 33 other countries that aims to prevent the reckless proliferation of WMD delivery systems by attempting to limit the transfer of “missile equipment, material, and related technologies” used to deliver weapons of mass destruction. This is achieved by member states establishing license authorization requirements for trade of MTCR-designated goods. The MTCR attempts to limit the export of a broad range of goods beyond completed missile systems: these include propellant systems and turboprop engines usable in ICBMs to both short and long-range UAV systems.

While manned aircraft are specifically mentioned as not covered under the MTCR, the text of the agreement does specifically mention UAVs as an entity to be regulated by the Regime. As far back as 1987, (the year the MTCR was established), UAVs were seen by the international community as a potent delivery method for weapons of mass destruction, despite the fact that intercontinental ballistic missiles dominated the news of the day. The end of the Cold War brought with it a reduced threat of global nuclear war. Yet the rise of global terrorism means the MTCR will still be relevant in the years to come as a safeguard against weapons proliferation among non-state actors. Representatives from member countries convene at an annual plenary meeting in an attempt to ensure MTCR regulations remain effective and feasible.

The MTCR separates WMD delivery systems into “Category I” and “Category II” items. Category I items are systems capable of carrying a payload of at least 500 kg to a distance of at least 300 km (roughly 1,100 lbs. to a distance of 186 miles). Category II items include systems with a range of 300 km (but a sub-500 kg payload) and other dual-use, “missile-related,” components. These items are subject to less scrutiny under MTCR guidelines, although goods judged by an exporting country to be intended for WMD delivery are subject to a “strong presumption of (license) denial.”

American UAVs that would be classified as category I delivery systems include the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper. In the case of the Predator and the Reaper, the United States would be encouraged under MTCR guidelines to require General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (the producer of the above two systems), to attain a special export license (which is no easy task) in order to export its UAVs.

It is easy for analysts to point to the MTCR as the reason the United States has not entered the UAV export market with the force it is capable of. However, the MTCR is not a treaty, and is not binding or enforceable. MTCR guidelines even allow for the exportation of category I items at the member states’ discretion, although it frowns upon the practice. The only thing “prohibited absolutely” under MTCR rules is the exportation of “production facilities” for category I goods, defined as the equipment and software designed to be integrated into installations for product development or production.

Under the MTCR, the United States would be able to export its UAVs without violating its Regime obligations, provided it does not export the aforementioned production facilities for said drones. The U.S. could even increase UAV exports without worrying that such exports make it significantly easier for another country or non-state actor to deploy a WMD. While they could theoretically be used to deliver a WMD, UAVs (even those that fall into the MTCR’s category I), are not the optimal delivery method for the utilization of such weapons. They are much slower than jets or missiles, and while their payloads can be impressive, they pale in comparison to those of dedicated bombers, which have proven stealth abilities. A UAV’s strength lies in the unique ability to conduct surgical strikes and reconnaissance while guaranteeing the safety of its operator.

Why does the United States hesitate to export UAVs on the scale they export other types of military equipment? It is possible that the answer in large part reflects the existence of a belief in the United States that UAVs represent the latest development in military technology, a feat of military engineering that has the potential to give the United States an ever-increasing ability to discretely gather intelligence and attack high-value targets.  Given its advanced nature, it would be unwise and perhaps even dangerous to share such technology with other nations. Yet, if the United States continues to be hesitant in selling UAVs to foreign countries, what will these other countries choose to do? They will not simply decide to continue operating a military with limited or outdated UAVs; they will get their UAVs from other countries, which would be an economic, political, and military setback for the United States.

During the Cold War, it was routine for a country’s military to be built around Soviet or American weapons and vehicles. Through the selling of arms and equipment, the 20^th century superpowers managed to influence the policy of allied countries looking for foreign and domestic security in an unstable world. Over two decades after the end of the Cold War, the same situation holds true. The UAV may be able to perform a similar role to that of the Kalashnikov, a tool that could be used to empower nations while keeping them drawn to an even more powerful patron.

What if potential customers choose to take their business to countries whose world views are less in line with those of the United States, such as China or Russia? These two countries have UAV and UCAV development programs of their own and both are eager to expand their influence into areas such as Africa and Central Asia. If the United States finds itself unwilling to keep up with the trends of the defense export market, it could find itself with shrinking influence in geopolitical regions key to its interests. Of course, there are other factors besides arms sales that draw countries together. Common cultural bonds, economic aid, and similar geopolitical interests can naturally bring countries together. Yet it would be foolish to ignore military dependency as a valuable tool in the struggle to win international allies. The ability of military sales to build relationships is hard to deny; India is the largest importer of Israeli military goods, and this is undoubtedly a foundation of the international partnership between the two nations.

Of course, many countries could choose to simply develop their own UAVs. A platform that can ably perform the missions of ISR and target acquisition is not extraordinarily hard to develop; the British military was operating the remote-controlled, reusable Queen Bee UAV as early as the 1930’s. Despite its early development date the Queen Bee would prove reliable enough to serve with the Royal Navy until 1947, long after further developments in UAVs had been made. It is significantly more difficult to design a UAV that can accurately deliver a heavy offensive payload while maintaining the ability to travel long distances with reasonable speed. Due to this challenge, many countries will choose to import rather than develop UAVs.

While there would certainly be advantages to the United States increasing its activity in the UAV export market, there could be significant drawbacks as well. Currently, UAVs operate with a quasi-legality and de facto acceptance around the world. The United States executes strike missions in countries like Pakistan that would be politically infeasible with manned aircraft. After an almost six-month hiatus, drone strikes are once again occurring in Pakistan, a country that publicly claims such strikes violate its sovereignty. Should multiple countries gain access to Predator or Reaper drones, a similar situation of frequent strikes may well be seen on a global scale. This could prove a serious threat to global international relations and the security of internationally recognized borders.

The United States faces a decision of great importance. Should it export its advanced UAVs in greater numbers, earning tremendous amounts of funds while expanding its sphere of influence? Or, should it operate on the side of caution, weighing the benefits of influence versus the hazards of proliferating a weapon whose rules of use have not been properly defined?

The unfortunate truth is that, in the end, the technology behind advanced UAVs and UCAVs will be spread around the world. With the exception of the MTCR, there are no internationally-recognized bodies who name the limiting of military UAV exportation as a primary objective. If it is not spread by the United States, it will be spread by another country. The United States should take a lead in this market, securing its influence and building alliances around the world. Through this method, the United States could reap the valuable long-term rewards that come with UAV exportation.

Drone Wars UK. “Mapping Drone Proliferation: UAVs in 76 Countries.” Global Research. Centre for Research on Globalization, 18 Sept. 2012. Web. 27 June 2014.

Sherwood, Harriet. “Israel Is World’s Largest Drone Exporter.”Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 20 May 2013. Web. 27 June 2014.

Defense Industry Daily Staff. “The UKs Watchkeeper ISTAR UAV.” Defense Industry Daily RSS News. Defense Industry Daily, 05 May 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.

Sherwood, Harriet. “Israel Is World’s Largest Drone Exporter.”Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 20 May 2013. Web. 27 June 2014.

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“New Predator C “Avenger” Drone Operationally Ready after Testing.” Global Aviation Report. Global Aviation Report, 24 Feb. 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.

Defense Industry Daily Staff. “2006 Saudi Shopping Spree: $2.9B to Upgrade Their M1 Tank Fleet.” Defense Industry Daily RSS News. Defense Industry Daily, 19 Sept. 2013. Web. 15 July 2014.

Defense Industry Daily Staff. “Top Falcons: The UAEs F-16 Block 60/61 Fighters.” Defense Industry Daily RSS News. Defense Industry Daily, 26 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 July 2014.

Cole, J. M. “Taiwan Showcases AH-64E Apache Guardian Helicopters.” The Diplomat. The Diplomat, 14 Dec. 2013. Web. 22 July 2014.

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Riedel, Bruce. “Israel & India: New Allies.” The Brookings Institution. The Brookings Institution, 21 Mar. 2008. Web. 22 July 2014.

MTCR. “Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) Annex Handbook – 2010.” (n.d.): n. pag. MTCR English. Missile Technology Control Regime, 2010. Web.  22 July 2014.

Krock, Lexi. “1930s – DH.82B Queen Bee (UK).” NOVA. PBS, Nov. 2002. Web. 15 July 2014.

Khan, Ismail, and Declan Walsh. “Drones Kill 5 as Pakistan and U.S. Target Tribal Belt.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 18 June 2014. Web. 27 June 2014.

Michael Bodner is a Legislative Fellow with the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center in Washington, D.C. Mr. Bodner is a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in International Studies with a concentration in Global Security and Counterterrorism. He has also attended Freie Universität in Berlin, where he studied the European role in international security.  His past work with FAS includes research and writing about chemical weapons use in the Syrian Civil War, international biosecurity, and the enforcement of sanctions against Iran. Special research interests include the Arab-Israeli conflict and the international proliferation of surface-to-air missiles.

Andrew Marienhoff Sessler

Editor’s Note: This article¹originally appeared in the August 2014 issue of Physics Today; it can also be accessed online. Dr. Sessler was involved with FAS for over four decades and served as Chairman of the Board from 1988 to 1992.

Andrew Marienhoff Sessler, visionary former director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), one of the most influential accelerator physicists in the field, and a human-rights activist, died on 17 April 2014 from cancer.

Born on 11 December 1928, Andy grew up in New York City. He was one of the first Westinghouse Talent Search finalists, for which he visited the White House as a high school senior in 1945. He enrolled at Harvard University just as World War II ended. He received a BA in mathematics, then went to Columbia University and earned a PhD in physics in 1953 under Henry Foley. After an NSF postdoc—in the first group ever awarded—at Cornell University with Hans Bethe and a stint on the faculty at the Ohio State University in 1954–59, Andy joined the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory—as LBNL was then called—in 1959; he spent the remainder of his career there.

Andy left his mark in several areas of physics, including nuclear structure theory, elementary-particle physics, and many-body problems. His 1960 paper with Victor Emery is generally acknowledged, along with a paper from a competing group led by Philip Anderson, as the first to predict the superfluid transition of helium-3.

His interest in accelerator physics began in the summer of 1955 when Andy was invited by Donald Kerst to join the Midwestern Universities Research Association (MURA) study group. MURA researchers were working to host a multi-GeV proton accelerator project in the Midwest based on a novel accelerator scheme called the fixed-field alternating gradient. Although the project did not materialize, their R&D achievements profoundly transformed accelerator design from an intuitive art to a rigorous scientific discipline centered around beam physics.

In collaboration with Keith Symon (another MURA member), Andy studied the RF acceleration process and for the first time in accelerator research employed the full power of Hamiltonian dynamics and computer simulation, using the most powerful computer at that time, ILLIAC. They discovered a method to produce intense circulating beams by “stacking,” repeatedly collecting the injected beam into a phase-space “bucket” and raising its energy. But if the intensity gets too high, beams in general become unstable, rendering them useless. In collaboration with several colleagues, Andy showed that high intensities can still be maintained by carefully controlling the beam environment.Those discoveries made high-luminosity proton colliders feasible; the most famous implementation, the Large Hadron Collider, recently discovered the Higgs particle.

After being at LBNL for several years, Andy became interested in the impact of science and technology on society. He helped usher in a new era of research on energy efficiency and sustainable energy technology and was instrumental in building the research agendas in those areas for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and later the Department of Energy.

In 1973 Andy was selected as LBNL’s third director. His first act was to establish the energy and environment division, with Jack Hollander as director, and the two men started more than 50 research projects in the first year. The division initiated many major research programs in such fields as air-pollution chemistry and physics, solar energy technology, energy economics and policy, and internationally prominent energy efficiency technology under the guidance of Arthur Rosenfeld. Andy supported the development of the nation’s largest geothermal research program, which led to the lab’s establishing one of the nation’s leading Earth-sciences research divisions.

Stepping down from his post as LBNL director in 1980, Andy returned to his first love—research. He began work in earnest on a new area of accelerator physics: the generation of coherent electromagnetic waves through the free-electron laser (FEL) interaction.

Together with Donald Prosnitz, Andy proposed in 1981 a high-gain FEL amplifier for high-power millimeter-wave generation. The group Andy assembled to perform and analyze the successful 1986 millimeter FEL experiment also explored FELs at x-ray wavelengths. The researchers found that the x-ray beam being amplified in a high-gain FEL does not diffract but stays close to the electron beam. That “optical guiding” phenomena presaged the success of x-ray FELs more than two decades later.

Andy noted that the high-power millimeter wave from an FEL can be used for high-gradient acceleration that could reduce the size, and hence the cost, of a multi-TeV electron linear collider. Thus he proposed in 1982 the concept of a two-beam accelerator in which a high-current, low energy accelerator runs parallel to and supplies millimeter power to a low-current, high-energy accelerator. The scheme is still very much alive as the Compact Linear Collider project at CERN.

At the American Physical Society (APS), Andy helped expand the organization’s focus to encompass many issues related to “physics and society,” including national funding, science education, and arms control. With a life-long interest in promoting human rights, Andy was instrumental in initiating the APS Committee on International Freedom of Scientists and raising funds to endow the APS Andrei Sakharov Prize. He and Moishe Pripstein cofounded Scientists for Sakharov, Orlov, and Sharansky; the group’s protests along with those of other groups led to the release of the three Soviet dissidents.

In 1998 Andy served as president of APS. He received many honors, including the AEC’s Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1970², APS’s Dwight Nicholson Medal in 1994³, and the Enrico Fermi Award from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2014.⁴

An avid outdoorsman, Andy enjoyed physical activities—swimming, rowing, skiing, bike riding—especially when shared with family and friends. Even later in life, when maintaining his bodily balance took extra effort, he kept up his lunchtime jogging routine and shared jokes and some good physics with the entourage around him. He was a mentor to many younger colleagues and to many his own age who learned more from him than a lot of them realized at the time. Andy ever kept the physics community at the center of his life and work.

Dr. Robert J. Budnitz has been involved with nuclear-reactor safety and radioactive-waste safety for many years.  He is on the scientific staff at the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he works on nuclear power safety and security and radioactive-waste management.  From 2002 to 2007 he was at UC’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, during which period he worked on a two-year special assignment (late 2002 to late 2004) in Washington to assist the Director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management to develop a new Science & Technology Program.  Prior to joining LLNL in 2002, he ran a one-person consulting practice in Berkeley CA for over two decades.  In 1978-1980, he was a senior officer on the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, serving as Deputy Director and then Director of the NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.  He earned a Ph.D. in experimental physics from Harvard in 1968.

Kwang-Je Kim received B.S in Physics from Seoul National University (1966) and Ph.D. in Elementary Particle Physics from the University of Maryland (1970). Kwang-Je was originally trained as a theorist in elementary particle physics, but switched to accelerator physics in 1978 when he joined LBNL. He moved to Argonne National Laboratory in 1998, where he is currently Argonne Distinguished Fellow. He is also a part time professor at the University of Chicago. He performed groundbreaking research in the emerging area of generating highly bright photon beams via synchrotron radiation and free electron lasers.  He is a Fellow of APS since 1995, received International FEL Award in 1997, USPAS Award for Achievement in Accelerator Physics and Technology in 2013, and Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators in 2014.

Herman Winick is a Professor (research) emeritus at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Applied Physics Department of Stanford University, where he has been since 1973. After receiving his AB (1953) and PhD (1957) in physics from Columbia University, he continued work in experimental high energy physics at the University of Rochester (1957-9) and then as a member of the scientific staff and Assistant Director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator at Harvard University (1959-73). In the early 1960s his interests shifted to accelerator physics and then to synchrotron radiation. In 1973 he moved to Stanford University to take charge of the technical design of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project. Since then he has played a leadership role in the development of synchrotron radiation sources and research at Stanford and around the world.

George S. Stanford

Editor’s Note:  Dr. Stanford served as a member of FAS’s National Council from 1986 to 1990.

The far-ranging and versatile impact of George S. Stanford as a professional colleague includes many contributions to human betterment.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, George — a Canadian-born PhD physicist — became a contributor and spokesperson for universal, conscientious nuclear composure and restraint. His role was initially manifested through opportune and enduring participation with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Chicago chapter, which had been transplanted from the University of Chicago to Argonne National Laboratory.

As a physicist at Argonne, George engaged in hands-on work with reactor and accelerator facilities. He gained a comprehensive understanding and appreciation not only of nuclear reactors, but also of the basic science underlying nuclear weapons and their potential risk to civilization. After retirement, he devoted much of his personal time to promoting the Integral Fast (Breeder) Reactor, having professionally been part of the large Argonne team that worked on power-reactor safety.

Born July 23, 1928, he graduated in 1949 from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia with a BS in Physics/Math; Wesleyan University, in 1951 with an M.A. in Physics; and Yale University in 1956 with a PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics. He passed away on 7 October 2013.

During much of his professional lifetime, the Cold War seemed to be spiraling out of control, with many hardline protagonists promoting armaments and strategies that could lurch the United States uncontrollably toward nuclear war and human devastation. Along with other nuclear scientists at Argonne and elsewhere, George tried to inject some sense of realism and perspective. He was one of those who frequently practiced public outreach, widely communicating the devastating potential of excessive nuclear armaments.

His outreach extended to then-raging complex and emotionalized issues such as excessive nuclear-armed missiles, needed arms-control initiatives, and improved nuclear-reactor safety. In this connection, George helped organize and became co-chair of the Concerned Argonne Scientists (CAS), an ad-hoc organization of laboratory employees which had separated itself from the local FAS chapter because of the war in Vietnam. The CAS persisted as the Argonne-based group that contributed systemic experience and advocacy about a broad range of public issues.

George served a stint on the FAS national council, and he frequently contributed his knowledge and experience to both the Argonne FAS Chapter and the national organization.

Professionally, he made significant contributions to Argonne analytical and experimental programs in nuclear-diagnostics for reactor safety, and later in arms control and treaty verification.

George’s perceptivity is reflected in several books of enduring relevance. He was a co-author of the two-volume, multi-authored Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry, which later was transitioned into the contemporary three-volume Nuclear Insights: The Cold War Legacy. The latter book was billed respectively as “an insider history” of U.S. and Soviet weaponry, an analysis of contemporary “nuclear threats and prospects,” and discussion of “nuclear reductions.”

With Gerry Marsh, he co-wrote The Phantom Defense: America’s Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion. George not only participated in the troublesome, but widely publicized Progressive Case in the late 1970s that drew international attention to thermonuclear weaponry and government secrecy, but he was  a consummate and fastidious editor of the resulting narrative: Born Secret: The H-bomb, the Progressive Case, and National Security. [Editor’s note: The Progressive Case involved independent investigator Howard Morland, who was lured by the Progressive magazine to research using openly available resources how thermonuclear weapons worked.]

A sample of wide-ranging articles he wrote or co-wrote include, “Reprocessing method could allay weapons fear,”  “Smarter use of nuclear waste,”  “Reprocessing is the answer,”  “Integral Fast Reactors: Source of Safe, Abundant, Non-Polluting Power,”  “LWR Recycle: Necessity or Impediment?” and “The antiballistic missile: how would it be used?”

George had been a member of the American Nuclear Society and the American Physical Society. Long after formal retirement from Argonne, he was contributing time and intellect to a comparison of future reactors, favoring fast breeders. One of his contemporary memberships was the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

To his very, very last days, he was applying his intellect and experience in promoting nuclear-reactor development and in assessing improved radiation-diagnostic methods.

George Stanford was married twice, living in the Chicago western suburbs, first to Ann Lowell Warren, having several children together, and later to Janet Clarke — all of whom, along with his many friends and colleagues, dearly miss him.

Peace, humanity, and progress were always on George’s mind.

Dr. Alexander DeVolpi,  George Stanford’s colleague and friend since the 1950s, is a nuclear physicist long active in arms-control policy and treaty-verification technology. Retired from Argonne National Laboratory, he has authored or coauthored from first-hand experience several books about arms control. After earning an undergraduate degree in journalism from Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., Alex served with the U.S. Navy, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander, with numerous assignments to the Naval Research Laboratory and the Radiological Defense Laboratory. Later he received his Ph.D. in physics (and MS in nuclear engineering physics) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va. 

Alex was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for contributions to arms-control verification and public enlightenment on the consequences of modern technology. As a citizen-scientist, he has long been involved in public-interest arms-control issues, including the Chicago/Argonne Chapter of the FAS.  He was cofounder of Concerned Argonne Scientists, and a member of activist organizations and executive committees in the Chicago area. Alex was a participant and technical consultant in the FAS/NRDC joint project with Soviet counterparts on nuclear-warhead dismantlement, as well as an elected member of the national FAS council in 1988-92.

There is broad international consensus about reduction of nuclear risks as one of the most relevant drivers to enhance global security. However, degrees of involvement, priorities and approaches adopted to deal with the issue differ from state to state. They are dependent on interests and self-perceived roles as well as cultures and traditions of nations. As in the past, the recent statements at the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference are again a good sample of such different postures.

While nuclear-armed states and their allies are primarily focused on demanding more nonproliferation and nuclear security¹, the majority of states without nuclear weapons mainly demand the fulfillment of nuclear disarmament commitments. States on each side tend to think that they have done more than enough, but it is clear that there is much more to be done.

In today’s multi-polar world, nuclear threats have undeniably increased, and even more so since nuclear terrorism became a plausible threat. At the same time the fragility of international trust progressively becomes more evident, mainly due to lack of global common goals and frustration over ineffective multilateral action. This fragmented scenario puts traditional strategies for reducing nuclear risks at a crossroads.

Global threats require global solutions

In order to understand the global dimension of nuclear threats, it is worthwhile to analyze potential scenarios from the perspective of their consequences.

The negative consequences of any potential incident would be twofold: those directly affecting the target of the attack in terms of casualties and destruction, and those indirectly stemming from the high degree of global interconnection. Such global impacts would surely include political disruption, environmental damage, disturbance of the global economy, restrictions to international trade (including that of primary resources), and deep psychosocial commotion. Also, they would encompass a deferral in the delivery of humanitarian international aid to developing countries due to a change in funding priorities of the developed countries.In other words, almostevery aspect of human activity around the world would suffer chaos and disruption.

Furthermore, in the case of a large-scale nuclear exchange, there would be severe impacts on the climate and food supplies, which would lead to extreme poverty. It is clear that in terms of nuclear risks, what happens to one happens to all.

The existence of more than 16,000 nuclear weapons deployed in 14 countries and in the oceans of the world (many of them on a high state of alert), implies risks of intentional or unintentional detonation. A recent study by Chatham House revealed 13 known cases involving six nuclear-armed states, from 1962 to 2002, when the arms were on the verge of being detonated by error or accident.²

Besides the risks of potential use, the mere existence of the weapons entails more negative impacts. Nuclear-armed states jointly spend around $11 million dollars per hour to maintain their nuclear weapons complexes, and the rate of spending follows an upward trend. Despite reductions in the number of weapons, such expenditures are sustained by on-going modernization efforts.³

These funds are constantly drained away from investments to close basic social deficits in several of the states, and international aid, which developed nations normally devote to fight extreme poverty. The socio-economic impacts are extremely significant as these expenditures- if used for another purpose, would be enough to reduce world poverty by 60 percent over ten years.

Nuclear weapons are also a factor of global inequality, as they fictitiously divide the world in two different categories of actors: the “haves” and the “have-nots.” In fact, the possession of nuclear arms leads to international power in the hands of very few, and in this way, contaminates multilateral dialogue at the expense of respect and equal treatment of the interests of the non-possessors. In addition, the high relevance of nuclear weapons in national/collective security doctrines acts as a powerful attraction for further proliferation, as they are perceived as icons of international power and prestige.

In terms of potential terrorist and criminal acts, the facilities where these arms are stored are protected in different ways and therefore may be subject to intrusion or theft, among many other threats. There is weapons-usable material distributed in 25 countries which involve similar risks.⁴

The immediate conclusion is that the detonation of nuclear weapons (be it sophisticated or improvised, carried out by states or non-state actors), would impact every member of the global community in many different dimensions and there would be little distinction as to the perpetrator– or to the reason for use: intention, error or accident.

The strategies to avoid potential devastating incidents (by the elimination of current arsenals, and the prevention of proliferation and of terrorist use), are in essence mutually dependent. In other words, an integrated system to reduce nuclear risks would be the most efficient option as it would harmonize the strategies adopted to promote nuclear disarmament, nuclear security and the prevention of further proliferation.

Integrating disarmament, nonproliferation and nuclear security efforts

The goal of opening paths toward efficient integration of strategies for the reduction of nuclear risks poses big challenges, but is well worth the effort in view of the current crisis of the traditional instruments that rule the global nuclear order. It is key to recognize that separation and imbalances among disarmament, nonproliferation and nuclear security efforts are factors that play against the stability of the present system.

Experience shows that even the most valuable and innovative approaches in nuclear risks reduction tend to miss out on opportunities to promote integrated views and synergic actions. For example, the Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons held earlier this year in Nayarit, Mexico (which brought together 146 states and many non-governmental organizations), focused almost exclusively on the humanitarian impact of nuclear exchanges between states. Even though the Conference took place a short time in advance of the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in the Netherlands (which focused on preventing nuclear terrorism), only a few voices pointed out in Nayarit the similarities in terms of risks and humanitarian consequences with nuclear terrorist attacks. On the other hand, at the NSS in The Hague, there was little debate about how to link nuclear security, disarmament and nonproliferation efforts as building-blocks of a common strategy.^{5 6}

To do away with these conceptual silos opens up a broad range of opportunities. To take advantage of them requires a change of beliefs and paradigms-from both internal politics and international relations- that have been firmly in place for years. In order to advance in this direction, it is absolutely necessary that states take into consideration not only their own interests – and those of their strategic allies – but also the interests of other different actors and those of the international community as a whole.

Restoring balance and building confidence

Today, limited progress in disarmament can be attributed to the prevailing role of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in the security doctrines of key states and alliances. For example, NATO’s 2012 Defense and Deterrence Posture Review reaffirms the role of nuclear weapons by recognizing them as “a core component of the Alliance’s overall capabilities for deterrence and defense alongside conventional and missile defense forces.” It also recognizes strategic nuclear forces as the supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies.⁷

However, the performance of nuclear weapons as an effective deterrent is increasingly questioned by the expert community. It is accepted that they are of no use to deter acts of nuclear terrorism, and in practice, history has also made it clear the unlikeliness of use against non-nuclear armed states, even in the worst conflict. The belief in nuclear deterrence as a source of power contrasts with the plausibility of any use, and only finds a place within the framework of the strategic dialogue among nuclear-armed states. It is crucial that possessors re-think deterrence in light of such evidences in order to progressively reorient towards the use of less risky means. They owe this effort to the entire global community.

Nuclear sharing and extended deterrence also poison any intent of a positive evolution toward nuclear disarmament and should be reconsidered. It seems at least questionable to see non-nuclear weaponsstates hosting nuclear weapons in their territories, or others benefitting from nuclear umbrellas and requesting security based on these weapons.It is essential that those states jointly work with their strategic allies to make conscious decisions to favor other kinds of deterrence in order to satisfy their security needs. A virtuous example could be the creation of a strategic dialogue among Japan, South Korea, the United States and China to agree upon a solution involving other means regarding North Korea’s security threats.

The tensions between possessors and non-possessors lead to disagreement about disarmament strategies. The traditional step-by-step approach conflicts with the humanitarian initiative put forward by non-nuclear weapons states, which gained momentum after the 2010 Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. The NPT’s “P5 nuclear weapons states” (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States) made their beliefs clear that the humanitarian initiative contradicts the adopted step-by-step approach and is “a distraction” from the current disarmament efforts.⁸ In this sense, the absence of most of nuclear weapons possessors from both the Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, in Olso and Nayarit showed reluctance not only to act, but also to enter into any kind of innovative disarmament dialogue.⁹

In order to be successful, any progress in this area should be carried out with – and not without – those in possession of the weapons. It implies bigger challenges in terms of integrating not only diverse interests, but also diverse rhetoric and mindsets.

Nuclear-armed states should seriously consider joining the open dialogue about innovative ways to speed up nuclear disarmament, given the damage to their credibility caused by their absence. For example, they should participate in the Third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, to be held on December 8-9 in Vienna. The international community needs to do as much as possible to persuade those states to attend and to debate.¹⁰

At the same time, the implementation of safeguards is evolving to more enhanced schemes. There has been international pressure to make the more restrictive Additional Protocol (AP) the brand-new standard of verification (in replacement of the current Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements (CSAs) prescribed by the NPT for non-nuclear weapons states). In addition the IAEA is transitioning to a state-level approach aimed at controlling more efficiently the compliance of safeguards agreements. But the trust in the nonproliferation system is seriously damaged and many states show resistance to these proposals. The perceived paralysis in disarmament is politically counterproductive to encourage non-possessors to accept enhanced nonproliferation obligations as well as initiatives which could set limits to their rights to fully develop nuclear energy for peaceful uses. However, states should recognize the relevance of extra nonproliferation guarantees to close the NPT loophole in terms of the control of non-declared nuclear facilities. ¹¹

The high-level political process of the Nuclear Security Summits promoted by the United States since 2010 has brought to the international agenda the protection of civilian nuclear materials and related facilities from nuclear terrorism and criminal use. Nevertheless, there are still major tasks pending that should be positively resolved with the end-of-cycle Summit in the United States in 2016. A key point is to define the Summits process’ legacy. It intends to reach the necessary agreements to set up a stable and efficient global system for nuclear security. The agreements should ensure continuity to the nuclear security effort beyond the Summits. Taking into account that the totality of nuclear weapons and the 85 percent of weapons-usable materials (HEU and separated plutonium) that are stored in non-civilian facilities, it is essential to include them as an integral part of any realistic global system to prevent nuclear terrorism and illicit trafficking.

Another challenge is to promote the adoption by states of binding, minimum nuclear security standards, which would give assurances to the international community regarding the responsible protection of each state’s materials and facilities.

As recognized by the 2014 NSS Communiqué, there is still much to do to achieve universal adherence to the key binding instruments on the matter, including the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM), its 2005 Amendment (which will enter into force once ratified by 22 more states to reach the two-thirds of signatory states of the original convention) and the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ICSANT).^{12 13}

It is necessary for the future of the initiative that the United States overcomes the current domestic stalemate in Congress and move ahead by ratifying both the 2005 CPPNM Amendment and the ICSANT. In fact, such ratifications are essential not only to enhance the whole nuclear security effort, but also to recover the eroded international confidence and good will concerning U.S. proposals and initiatives on the matter. In both cases, as with the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the United States should lead by example.¹⁴

The Strengthening Nuclear Security Implementation initiative led by the United States, South Korea and the Netherlands is a document in which the signatories recognize that nuclear security is an international, not just a national responsibility. The 35 subscriber states commit themselves to embed the objectives of the nuclear security fundamentals and IAEA recommendations in national rules and regulations, and to host peer reviews to ensure effective implementation. In addition, the signatories pledge to act to further ensure continuous improvement of the nuclear security regime. ^{15 16}

The NSS process shows that positive initiatives would reach broader acceptance within a framework of enhanced understanding, credibility and confidence among states with different backgrounds. A way to achieve such virtuous framework is by restoring a relative balance of commitments concerning disarmament, nonproliferation and nuclear security, for which every state should have a clear role.

A pragmatic approach

The ideas shared here involve pure pragmatism. The unrealistic belief that nuclear weapons can grant global security at the cost of deep international imbalances should progressively give way to innovative thinking on how to break the “status quo” to achieve deeper understanding of threats and design cooperative ways to prevent any further catastrophic incident. The need to define integrated strategies to efficiently reduce nuclear risks is now both indispensable and urgent.

Concerning state-level actors (even in the multi-polar environment), the preeminent roles of the United States and Russia is without question, as they together possess 95 percent of nuclear weapons and the majority of weapons-usable material. Any realistic approach to nuclear security should be based on the close cooperation of both states. For example, it is important that the Ukraine crisis be carefully managed to preserve their nuclear understanding of further deterioration. Leaders on both sides should deeply reflect with responsibility on the negative global consequences of breaking such substantial common ground.

Today the majority of states are paying a very high price in terms of insecurity to satisfy the false perception of security of a small few. It is crucial to bring back the balance between rights and responsibilities of states of different positions and define common goals for the international community, in terms of nuclear risks reduction. Determined actions and gestures of disarmament by nuclear-armed states could become powerful drivers to restore the necessary global confidence.

From a global perspective of threats and consequences, the common goal would be to ensure in realistic terms that no security vulnerability in any state could directly or indirectly contribute to any catastrophic nuclear incident, regardless of where it would happen.

Pragmatism should guide leaders toward innovative approaches to reduce nuclear risks based on comprehensive views and coordinated efforts. Multiplication of conflicts and a resulting and almost uncontrollable global insecurity are enough evidences that such joint efforts should be now maximized.

Irma Arguello is the Founder and Chair of the NPSGlobal Foundation, Secretary of the Latin American and Caribbean Leadership Network for Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation – LALN, member of the Steering Committee of the Fissile Materials Working Group – FMWG, and Associate Fellow of Chatham House.

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In Memoriam