Ground laid for nuclear weapons debate

As Vice President Joe Biden reemphasized the Obama administration’s goal to work toward a nuclear-weapon-free world in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, DC , the American Physical Society released details of a new report of what technical steps the US and other nuclear weapons states would need to take to downsize their nuclear arsenals.

The report, written by a mixture of physicists and policy analysts who have worked in the nuclear weapons field, was released at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting held this year in San Diego, California.

“The technologies are at hand to substantially reduce the size of nuclear arsenals; no great inventions are required,” said Jay Davis , chair of the report committee and a former director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. “The good news is we can do it, the bad news is it will take a long time.”

Setting the table

The report and Biden’s speech come at an opportune time as the first half of the year will be dominated by politics and negotiations surrounding nuclear weapons.

Two weeks ago the Department of Defense released the quadrennial defense review and ballistic missile defense review report , which placed an increased reliance on conventional, not nuclear, weapons at the heart of US military strategy. A review of the US nuclear strategy is forthcoming.

Russia and the US are currently in tough negotiations for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the two countries. The talks have been going on for sometime, and an agreement is expected in the next few weeks.

In April, the US will also host a nuclear security summit with the aim of securing globally all vulnerable nuclear material within the next four years: Surprisingly, Israel, North Korea, India, and Pakistan are expected to attend, some in an observer capacity.

Moreover, in May, the quintecentennial review of the international nuclear nonproliferation (NPT) treaty occurs in New York City. The NPT is based on the premise that the states with nuclear weapons will work toward getting rid of them, and that the states without will promise not to develop them.

Biden’s speech

Biden promised to strengthen the NPT and work toward increasing international safeguards to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorist and nonnuclear states. “It’s easy to recognize the threat posed by nuclear terrorism,” he said. “But we must not underestimate how proliferation to a state could destabilize regions critical to our security and prompt neighbors to seek nuclear weapons of their own.”

The vice president also pointed out that “tight budgets forced more than 2,000 employees of Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore from their jobs between 2006 and 2008, including highly-skilled scientists and engineers.”

The proposed 2011 budget contains $624 million more than Congress approved last year to go toward maintaining and modernizing the nuclear weapons complex, bringing its total budget up to $7 billion.

“The Administration’s 2011 budget request also bolsters the case for the eventual ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ,” said US Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs. The Senate failed to ratify the treaty in January 2000 under the Clinton administration. “A full investment in our nuclear weapons infrastructure will mean that the United States can continue to maintain its nuclear weapons infrastructure without testing,” he adds. “We haven’t tested a nuclear weapon since 1992 because we now have the technical means to ensure the reliability and safety of our stockpile.”

The APS report

Although Biden’s speech concentrated on the international and domestic politics of a nuclear-weapon-free-world, the APS report looked more technically on how to do it. The process could take decades, say it’s authors.

One of the simplest steps the report recommends is for the US to declassify the number of nuclear weapons it possesses.

The report’s authors believe that by making the number public, the US could help to establish a baseline for international efforts to reduce nuclear weapons through treaties and inspection agreements.

“Getting countries to allow inspections will have to be agreed upon by treaty,” said Davis. “Every camera brought in, every piece of measurement equipment, the ability to touch and to observe will all have to be negotiated in advance.”

The report advocates building new tools—both procedural and technical—for verifying any arms control treaty. Some of which, such as the recommendation to develop better techniques for tracking and detecting hidden nuclear material and its source of origin, the Obama administration is already working on: Last Tuesday the president signed into law the nuclear forensics act to that purpose.

The report’s authors also ask the US government to support the development of an international system to determine the amount of nuclear material a country has produced. They also suggest that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should consider nonproliferation risks as a factor for denying or approving a construction or operating license to currently more than 25 proposals for building new nuclear reactors in the US.

“This report makes a valuable contribution to informing the national debate over whether to reduce further the size of our nuclear arsenal and, if so, to what level,” said Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Rather than advocating a particular outcome, the report clearly and objectively elucidates the technical issues associated with downsizing the nuclear stockpile and offers concrete recommendations on how to deal with those issues,” Carnesale added.

“Taking the number of nuclear weapons down is both possible and can be done safely from the standpoint of US security,” said Davis. “But as the number becomes smaller the risk of unaccounted-for weapons and the potential threats from rogue nations increases.”

On 3 February, National Nuclear Security Administration administrator Thomas P. D’Agostino announced the establishment of an international center for verification research in a speech at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management in Washington. The center will serve as the site for developing technologies and for building confidence between nuclear-armed countries.

“It’s very exciting that this recommendation was acted upon as the report was being released,” Davis said.

Paul Guinnessy*

*Audrey Hoffer of Inside Science News Service contributed to this report.