Iran and the Global Economy
The escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran over the latter’s nuclear program has triggered much debate about what actions should be taken to ensure that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon. How might certain actions against Iran affect the global economy? FAS released the results of a study, “Sanctions, Military Strokes, and Other Potential Actions Against Iran” which assesses the global economic impact on a variety of conflict scenarios, sanctions and other alternative actions against Iran. FAS conducted an expert elicitation with nine subject matter experts involving six hypothetical scenarios in regards to U.S. led actions against Iran, and anticipated three month cost to the global economy. These scenarios ranged from increasing sanctions (estimated cost of U.S. $64 billion) to full-scale invasion of Iran (estimated cost of U.S. $1.7 trillion).
Recommendations to Prevent Catastrophic Threat
Only three days after the 2012 national election, FAS hosted a day-long symposium that featured distinguished speakers and provided recommendations to the Obama administration on how best to respond to catastrophic threats to national security at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
These experts addressed the policy and technological aspects of conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; nuclear safety; electricity generation, distribution, and storage, and cyber security. These policy memoranda call for a coordinated national effort to prepare for, prevent and respond to catastrophic threats to the United States.
Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons
On May 20-21, 28 NATO member countries will convene in Chicago to approve the conclusions of a year-long Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR). Among other issues, the review will determine the number and role of the U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and how NATO might work to reduce its nuclear posture as well as Russia’s inventory of such weapons in the future.
Lack of transparency fuels mistrust and worst-case assumptions and the concerns some eastern NATO countries have about Russia have been used to prevent a withdrawal of the remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. The DDPR is expected to endorse the current deployment in Europe.
A new FAS report (PDF) concludes that non-strategic nuclear weapons are neither the reason nor the solution for Europe’s security issues today but that lack of political leadership has allowed bureaucrats to give these weapons a legitimacy they don’t possess and shouldn’t have.
Ensuring the Security of Radioactive Sources: National and Global Responsibilities
For most of human existence, people were unaware of the powerful nuclear forces deep inside atoms, although they were exposed to natural background radiation derived from these forces. Not until the end of the 19th century did the first “nuclear scientists,” notably Henri Becquerel and Marie and Pierre Curie, discover energetic rays emanating from certain types of atoms due to these forces. Because of its relative natural abundance and its powerful radiation, radium became a workhorse radioactive substance for the first half of the 20th century.
In this report, FAS President Charles Ferguson examines the national and international efforts to control and secure radioactive materials. He provides background on the basic principles of the science of ionizing radiation and radioactive materials; a risk assessment of the safety and security of these materials; a discussion of various pathways for malicious use of commercial radioactive sources; and an analysis of the many efforts underway to reduce the risk of radiological terrorism with recommendations for the inclusion of this issue at the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit (“Seoul Summit”) and beyond.
A full PDF version of the report can be found here.
The Future of Nuclear Power in the United States
In the wake of the devastating meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, many Americans are now reevaluating the costs and benefits of nuclear energy. If anything, the accident underscores that constant vigilance is needed to ensure nuclear safety.
Policymakers and the public need more guidance about where nuclear power in the United States appears to be headed in light of the economic hurdles confronting construction of nuclear power plants, aging reactors, and a graying workforce, according to a report (PDF) by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and Washington and Lee University.
Towards Enhanced Safeguards for Iran’s Nuclear Program
Iran’s controversial nuclear program has been front and center on the international stage for more than eight years. Despite negotiations, sanctions, and political tug-of-war, the United States and its allies have yet to tame Iran’s atomic phoenix. At the center of this nuclear standoff is Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment program and efforts to obtain full nuclear fuel-cycle capabilities. To alleviate concerns about the intended nature of these activities, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has demanded -through six resolutions – that Iran suspend enrichment activities as well as construction of a heavy-water research reactor. Yet, Iran has opted to pay no heed to these resolutions and despite numerous proposals from different sides, the stalemate persists.
Dr. Charles D. Ferguson and Dr. Ali Vaez, authored a FAS report (PDF) analyzing the outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program, and provide recommendations to the major stakeholders in this debate including Iran, the United States, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Additionally, the report proposes a multipronged approach to resolving this deadlock, including enhanced safeguards and positive-sum diplomacy with incentives for Iran and other aspiring nuclear states.
Anatomizing Non-State Threats to Pakistan’s Nuclear Infrastructure
The discovery and subsequent killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan raises troubling questions. The success of the U.S.’s airborne raid on bin Laden’s compound-undetected by Pakistan’s radar- lends credence to the belief that terrorists might be capable of successfully seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Mr. Charles P. Blair has authored a new FAS report (PDF) that addresses the security gap and identifies specific terrorists within Pakistan who are motivated and potentially capable of taking Pakistani nuclear assets. Blair explains in the report details why, amid Pakistan’s burgeoning civil war, the Pakistani Neo-Taliban is the most worrisome terrorist group motivated and possibly capable of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Upsetting the Reset – The Technical Basis of Russian Concern Over NATO Missile Defense
The Obama administration is working with NATO to develop a missile defense shield to protect U.S. and European interests from ballistic missile attacks by Iran. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed strong concerns over this shield and has warned of a return to Cold War tensions, as well as possible withdrawal from international disarmament agreements like the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
On June 9, the NATO-Russia Council plans to meet with defense ministers to establish cooperation guidelines for the new European antiballistic missile system. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is releasing a new report that addresses concerns made by officials of the Russia Federation and provides recommendations for moving forward with a missile defense system..
Dr. Yousaf Butt, Scientific Consultant to FAS, and Dr. Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have published a technical assessment (PDF) of the Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) missile defense system proposed by NATO and the United States and analyzed whether the Russian Federation has a legitimate concern over the proposed NATO-U.S. missile defense shield.
In practice the PAA will provide little, if any, protection leaving nuclear deterrence fundamentally intact. While the PAA would not significantly affect deterrence, it may be seen by cautious Russian planners to impose some attrition on Russian warheads. While midcourse missile defense would not alter the fundamental deterrence equation with respect to Iran or Russia, it may, in the Russian view, constitute an infringement upon the parity set down in New START.
From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons
Though the nuclear arsenal of the United States is smaller than it was during the Cold War, the day-to-day deployment of forces has changed very little. The United States still has weapons ready to launch at a moment’s notice at all times.
The reason is simple: the mission for nuclear weapons has not changed from the time of the Cold War.
Most Americans would be surprised to discover that the instructions to our nuclear targeteers still include a requirement for a surprise first strike against Russian nuclear forces to destroy them on the ground. It is time to shift the focus from reducing numbers of nuclear weapons to reducing the missions of nuclear weapons.
The Stockpile Stewardship Program: Fifteen Years On
Nuclear weapons, while simple in principle, are technically complex devices with a multitude of components. As with any complicated piece of equipment, there may be concern that, over time, a weapon’s reliability could decline. To coordinate efforts to maintain the nation’s existing nuclear weapons, the Department of Energy developed a Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP). A recently released Federation of American Scientists Occasional Paper, The Stockpile Stewardship Program: Fifteen Years On (PDF), by FAS analysts Anne Fitzpatrick and Ivan Oelrich, reviews the status of the experimental devices that support the SSP, describes how each experiment is supposed to work, and identifies the problems that have been encountered.
All of the expensive SSP experiments were initiated because of the cessation of nuclear testing, with the expectation that they would be essential to maintaining the nuclear stockpile. The major components of SSP are all seriously over budget and seriously behind schedule but, even so, our scientists now have a much better understanding of nuclear weapons and how they age. Now the DOE is proposing moving away from indefinite stockpile stewardship to a “Reliable, Replacement Warhead,” which, if designed for simplicity and with broad performance margins, could avoid the need for the SSP experiments. It is fair then to ask just how essential these megaprojects continue to be.
The SSP supported three major experiments: the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to use laser beams to compress a hydrogen target to densities and pressures where fusion would occur; the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) Facility uses x-rays to follow the shape of sections of plutonium when they are compressed as they would be in a nuclear bomb; and the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI)—renamed Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) — to build supercomputers and associated software to use the information from other experiments to model nuclear warheads and predict their behavior. Two other experiments later fell under the SSP: The Joint Actinide Shock Physics Experimental Research (JASPER) facility is a high speed gun used to study shock waves in plutonium and the Z-Machine, or Z-Accelerator, creates the x-ray intensity used to study nuclear explosive conditions.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) was originally budgeted to cost just a shade over one billion dollars and to be finished four years ago. It is now expected to carry out its first experiments in 2010 and to cost more than another billion dollars to complete, greater than the original estimates of total cost. Based on unclassified sources, it appears that the connection between NIF and the current SSP is at best indirect. We believe that NIF could be ended without reducing the confidence in the existing nuclear stockpile.
The Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) Facility is designed to have two, hence “dual-axis,” x-ray machines that look at a subcritical plutonium pit as it is compressed by conventional explosives. Only one axis is currently operating and is providing valuable information.
The computer effort, ASC, has also been plagued with problems but is different from the two big physics experiments because it never had a focus on one particular machine. Indeed, it is not at all clear when the ASC program will be “done.” Being able to model a nuclear weapon on a computer is one of the critical substitutes for nuclear testing. The Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program has already made important contributions to understanding the behavior of nuclear weapons and reportedly has resolved some worrying questions.
The ASC initiative has supported the construction of several large supercomputers. To achieve the necessary speeds, thousands of central processing units, CPUs, have been linked together to operate in parallel. These ambitious development programs have all had problems. Construction on some computers was started but never completed while some computers suffered from low reliability because of their complexity. In many cases, Herculean hardware developments were not matched by development of software that could fully exploit the new machines’ capability. Even successes were short lived: the world’s fastest computer today will be overtaken by some rival within months or a year.
To the greatest extent possible, DOE should use new computer capability coming out of industry and the universities and focus its efforts on DOE-specific problems, and get a better balance between hardware and software. DOE must justify why it needs leading edge computers when that edge is inevitably overtaken within a year or two. A decade into the SSP, DOE knows that nuclear weapons are far more stable than initially feared, and our understanding of the aging and stability of nuclear weapons continues to increase. There can and should be less urgency to DOE computer development.
All of the SSP experiments, but NIF in particular, are promoted as a means to attract top new scientific talent to DOE and the SSP. FAS remains deeply skeptical. The universities and industry are now at the cutting edge of scientific and technical advance. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that newly minted scientists do not look to the DOE labs as their first choice for doing pioneering research. Yet even if NIF did contribute to this goal to some degree, it is far from being the most efficient means of applying those billions of dollars. The great majority of the resources going to NIF support engineering problems—related to lasers, clean rooms, and power supplies—that have nothing whatsoever to do with either nuclear weapons or basic physics. That money could have gone directly to support university research of interest to DOE or to create smaller but scientifically more interesting experiments within the labs.
The current approach to stockpile stewardship, careful surveillance and monitoring along with judicious replacement of parts, has maintained a nuclear stockpile that is safe and reliable. Of the three major experiments supported by SSP, ASC and DARHT are already making contributions. NIF is more uncertain, both its ultimate success and its contribution to our confidence in the stockpile. But even without NIF, the United States can maintain its existing nuclear weapons without a return to testing.
Chinese Nuclear Forces and U.S. Nuclear War Planning
Hans M. Kristensen and two analysts from the Natural Resources Defense Council examine the debate over China’s modernization of its nuclear forces, review the composition and possible future development of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, describe past and current U.S. nuclear targeting of China, and use government software to simulate the effects of Chinese and U.S. of nuclear attacks. The report (PDF) concludes that both countries use the other as an excuse to modernize their nuclear forces, and recommends that urgent steps are needed by both sides to halt and reverse a nuclear arms race.
Preventing Catastrophic Nuclear Terrorism
Charles D. Ferguson, Preventing Catastrophic Nuclear Terrorism, Council Special Report No. 11, Council on Foreign Relations, March 2006.
This report examines options for the United States and other countries to secure and eliminate nuclear weapons and dangerous fissile materials. Despite many national and international programs to secure these materials, there are large security gaps that remain.