Transparency around nuclear arsenals is a hot topic in international politics, whether it’s to help verify arms control agreements, create confidence to negotiate new ones, or support deterrence practices. In this EVN Masterclass, BASIC Policy Fellow Dr Lyndon Burford discussed the new research project he leads – the Nuclear Transparency Inventory (NUTRI). Lyndon outlined the goals, assumptions, and research framework of the project, and suggested potential uses for the NUTRI website (due to launch in early 2026), whether it’s for officials, decision makers, researchers, or journalists.
Dr Lyndon Burford is a Policy Fellow in the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at BASIC and Project Manager for NUTRI. His research focuses on the relationships between nuclear politics and multilateral treaties, nuclear weapons postures and practices, and emerging and/or disruptive technologies like AI. He served as an advisor on the delegation of Aotearoa-New Zealand to the ninth NPT Review Conference in 2015. For 2024-27, he is also a Constructive Advanced Thinking Fellow with the European Network of Institutes for Advanced Studies working on “Theories of Change for Nuclear Disarmament” – a collaborative interdisciplinary partnership that seeks to advance the logically-coherent and empirically-grounded theorisation of nuclear disarmament.
NUTRI is a new research project from BASIC’s Non-Proliferation and Disarmament programme which will catalogue whether, how, and why nuclear-armed states choose to disclose information about their nuclear arsenals and related facilities and policies and release the information in website form. The goal of NUTRI is to increase mutual understanding and international dialogue to address a fundamental security concern, which is that the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used in battle is increasing due to rapid political, technological, and ecological changes. To that end, NUTRI will document, as objectively as possible, how governments in nuclear-armed states think and act
regarding nuclear transparency and how they view its impact on national and international security.
We thank Dr Burford for offering his time to speak to the EVN Network and answer the participants’ questions.
Expert Masterclasses enable BASIC’s fantastic network of senior nuclear policy experts to share their knowledge with the EVN. Masterclasses are both skills and content-based and are delivered online to make access to expertise more equitable for the EVN’s diverse global membership.