In this issue
Arms control
At a meeting of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global
Security and Non-Proliferation at Westminster on July 10 Ambassador
Max Kampelman reiterated an earlier call in January this year by US
Secretaries Shultz, Kissinger, Perry and Senator Nunn to step back
from the brink of nuclear anarchy. The full text of his speech is
available at: www.basicint.org/nuclear/kampelman.htm.
Amb. Kampelman was in London at the invitation of BASIC to talk
with UK officials and MPs about the growing movement of former
senior US officials and politicians with a shared vision of a world
without nuclear weapons.
The 2007 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference,
“Tomorrow’s
Solutions,” June 25-26, in Washington, D.C., addressed
the critical challenges confronting the nonproliferation regime and
offered policy recommendations to stop the spread and use of
nuclear weapons and materials. The conference attracted over 800
experts for the two-day event, representing government officials
from 31 countries, top policy and technical experts, NGO leaders,
funders, academics and the media. Video, transcripts,
presentations, and photo galleries from the conference sessions are
available on CEIP’s new nonproliferation program website. Click
here for full highlights, videos and photos.
Margaret Beckett, the former UK foreign secretary, gave the Luncheon
Keynote: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?, described by Senator
Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman, Nuclear Threat Initiative, as “A game
changing speech.”
Reuters
reported May 22 that the United States plans to let the START
nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia expire in 2009 and
replace it with a less formal agreement that eliminates strict
verification requirements and weapons limits. This would continue
President George W. Bush’s practice of repudiating arms control as
a means of curbing nuclear weapons while relying more on
countermeasures like export controls, interdiction and sanctions.
See also this July 4 Washington Post
article and this by Ian Davis, BASIC’s Co-Executive Director:
Comment is free: Armageddon in the offing?
Hans Blix writes about the prospects for global arms control in
this Boston Review article.
See also:
- Jennifer Lacki,
Reported Accomplishments of Selected Threat Reduction and
Nonproliferation Programs, By Agency, for Fiscal Year 2006,
PSG Policy Update, July 2007 - U.S. OPPOSED
TAIWANESE BOMB DURING 1970’S, Declassified Docs Show Persistent
U.S. Intervention to Discourage Suspicious Nuclear Research,
National Security Archive, June 15 2007. - Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, updated June 13, 2007. - Charles Peña,
Nuclear Nonproliferation in the Post-9/11 World, Independent
Institute Policy Report, June 12, 2007. - An online archive
of all extant issues of “Arms Control and Nonproliferation
Technologies” (ACNT), a now-defunct Department of Energy journal
that ceased publication in 2001, has been assembled and posted
online on the Federation of American Scientists web site. - Rose Gottemoeller, Looking
Back: The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Arms
Control Today, June 2007. - Comparative
Strategy: Volume 26 Issue 2 contains the following articles:- Preparing for the Inevitable: Nuclear Signaling for Regional
Nuclear Crises. - U.S. Nuclear Policy and Strategy and the NPT Regime:
Implications for the NATO Alliance. - Nuclear Arms in Asia: Theory and Policy Issues.
- Preparing for the Inevitable: Nuclear Signaling for Regional
United States
On June 6, the $31.6 billion House Energy and Water
Appropriations Bill was completed by the House Appropriations
Committee. As written, the bill would spend $1.1 billion over the
president’s request. The bill report appropriated zero funds for
both RRW and the nuclear bomb plant. The committee sited a lack of
a comprehensive U.S. nuclear weapons strategy and stockpile plan as
its reasoning for giving no funds to these two programs. On July 17
the full House passes the Energy and Water Bill.
On June 28 the $32.3 billion Senate Energy and Water
Appropriations Bill is completed by the Senate Appropriations
Committee. The bill report appropriated $66 million for RRW, and
limits any money to be spent on design and cost studies only. The
bill gives no money to the nuclear bomb plant. The bill is $1.8
billion over the president’s request. On July 9-18 the full Senate
considered the Defense Authorization Bill on the floor. Debate was
not completed and the bill will be reconsidered in September.
The Washington Post
reported June 18 that Congress is moving to change the
direction of the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons program by
demanding the development of a comprehensive post-Sept. 11, 2001,
nuclear strategy before it approves funding for a new generation of
warheads.
On June 13 the New York Times
reported that a federal advisory panel recommended that
thousands of former workers at the Rocky Flats, Colorado a nuclear
weapons plant be denied immediate government compensation for
illnesses that they say result from years of radiation exposure.
The Washington Post
reported May 12 that thousands of nuclear arms workers have
seen their cancer claims denied or delayed.
On May 9 three U.S. congressmen introduced the Ending
Nuclear Trafficking Act. The bill would designate the transfer
of nuclear weapons, material or technology for terrorism purposes
as a crime against humanity punishable under U.S. law; give U.S.
courts jurisdiction over any instance of nuclear smuggling around
the world if the intended recipient is a terrorist planning to
attack the United States, or in cases where there is a link to U.S.
citizens, companies, financing or material support; and mandate
that the U.S. representative to the United Nations request that
other nations also establish nuclear smuggling as a crime against
humanity punishable in their courts and by international
tribunals.
See also:
- Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “Superiority
Complex: Why Americas growing nuclear supremacy may make war with
China more likely,” The Atlantic Monthly, July/August
2007. - The
Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, updated June 12,
2007. - William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan,
COMPLEX 2030: The Costs and Consequences of the Plan to Build a New
Generation of Nuclear Weapons, April 2007. - New
Hydrogen Bomb Endangers Human Life and Health, April 18
2007.
New Nuclear Weapons: Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), May
2007.- Baker Spring, Congress’s
Critical Role in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW)
Program, Heritage Foundation. - U.S.
Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues,
April 3, 2007.
India
On July 17 the United States and India
began a high-level effort to conclude a controversial nuclear
cooperation agreement that the State Department said was still
within reach. This June 7 Asia Times article
reports on complications over the U.S.-India nuclear deal. For
details see
here, here,
and
here.
Iran
A team of technical, legal and political directors from the UN
nuclear watchdog arrived
in Tehran on July 11 to draw up a framework to resolve the
outstanding issues about Iran’s nuclear program. Asia Times
reports
that Iran and the IAEA will draw up a plan of action within the
next 60 days to resolve all the “outstanding issues”, which include
“information relevant to the assembly of centrifuges, the
manufacture of centrifuge components … and research and
development of centrifuges or enrichment techniques”. In addition,
Iran has agreed to the IAEA’s inspection of the heavy-water reactor
under construction in Arak, as well as to short-notice inspection
of the uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz.
On July 9 the IAEA
announced that Iran has slowed the expansion of its disputed
uranium enrichment program. Also on July 9 the Washington
Post
reported on tunneling near Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz.
See also this ArmsControlWonk article
and this Institute for Science and International Security report,
New Tunnel Construction at Mountain Adjacent to the Natanz
Enrichment Complex.
On May 25 the Institute for Science and International Security
released its review of the IAEA report,
Iran Making Progress but Not Yet Reliably Operating an Enrichment
Plant. The IAEA’s latest
report on Iran was released May 23. The New York Times
reported that Iran appears to have solved most of its
technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a
far larger scale than before. For detail see this ArmsControlWonk
post.
See also:
- Houman A. Sadri,
Surrounded: Seeing the World from Irans Point of View,
Military Review, July-August 2007.
North Korea
On July 19 the IAEA
approved inspectors returned to North Korea to verify steps by
Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. The day before,
the IAEA had
reported that North Korea had shut down its nuclear reactor and
four related facilities. This followed an announcement on July 15
by North Korea that id had begun closing its main nuclear reactor,
a plutonium facility at Yongbyon, shortly after receiving a first
boatload of fuel oil aid. .
The IAEA announced
July 3 that the Director General had circulated his report on
Monitoring and Verification in the Democratic People´s
Republic of Korea, following a visit by an Agency team to North
Korea, 26-29 June 2007. The IAEA´s 35-member Board considered
the report at its meeting on July 9 in Vienna.
On June 28, the North Koreans let an IAEA assessment team visit
Yongbyon. This was the first time since 2002 that IAEA
inspectors had been allowed inside North Korea. Before the team
left the country, the government struck a technical agreement that
would allow the IAEA to oversee the shutdown of the facility.
United Kingdom
The Sydney Morning Herald
reported May 15 that, according to new research, New Zealand
sailors used as “human guinea pigs” in UK nuclear tests in the
1950s suffered serious genetic damage may. This may pave the way
for a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the British
Government.
Pakistan
- David Albright and Paul Brannan,
Pakistan Appears to be Building a Third Plutonium Production
Reactor at Khushab Nuclear Site, June 21, 2007. - Presentations from the April 30 Building Confidence in
Pakistan’s Nuclear Security conference are available
here.
China
- Dr. Larry M. Wortzel,
China’s Nuclear Forces: Operations, Training, Doctrine, Command,
Control and Campaign Planning. May 2007.
Nuclear energy
Too Hot to Handle? The Future of Civil Nuclear Power, Oxford
Research Group, July 2007.- Report
on Possible New Framework for Using Nuclear Energ:Report to IAEA
Board Addresses Options for Assurance of Supply of Nuclear
Fuel, Staff Report, June 15, 2007. - Sharon Squassoni, Risks and
Realities: The “New Nuclear Energy Revival”, Arms Control
Today, May 2007.