Nuclear Nonproliferation, Safeguards and Security in the 21st Century
Course Description
Since the end of the Cold War, United States nuclear security policy and
planning have had to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. The
“traditional” risk of nuclear proliferation – additional nation-states
acquiring nuclear weapons or unsafeguarded nuclear material – remains. But
it has been compounded by the threat that “loose nukes” or improvised
nuclear devices could find their way to American cities, brought in by
sub-national terrorist groups. Such groups also could use radioactive
materials, widely used for important health and industrial purposes, to
detonate a radiological dispersal device (RDD).
In the past, nonproliferation has often been viewed from the perspective
of haves and have-nots, nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states,
states with advanced nuclear fuel cycles and those without, developed and
developing countries. Today the boundaries are blurred. A. Q. Khan
demonstrated that suppliers in low or middle-income countries can become
suppliers of sophisticated nuclear products. No longer is such capacity
confined to states with advanced nuclear fuel cycles. Indeed, no fuel cycle
at all is necessary for a state to become part of the nuclear proliferation
problem. In fact, recent years have seen the emergence of serious
proliferation problems in Iran, North Korea, and Syria. And states are no longer the only threat,
as terrorists have convincingly demonstrated.
The emergence of new proliferating states and a more pronounced terrorist
threat have led to important adaptations in the last dozen years to the
tools used to combat nuclear proliferation – treaties, institutions,
multilateral arrangements, and technology controls. The International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted a new model safeguards agreement (the Model
Additional Protocol) to improve its ability to detect undeclared activities.
The IAEA has shifted its focus from facilities to states and its new
state-level approach incorporates information from many sources, including
export data and satellite imagery. IAEA safeguards remain a key element of
the nuclear nonproliferation regime, helping to monitor compliance with
states’ Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, providing confidence in the peaceful use of civil
program, and providing early warning of misuse by detecting efforts to
divert nuclear material or operate clandestine programs. In order to
continue to strengthen the IAEA safeguards system, the U.S. Department of
Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has launched a Next
Generation Safeguards Initiative intended to provide enhanced support for
the IAEA safeguards system and give the IAEA the resources it needs to do
its safeguards job effectively.
Other tools and mechanisms have also been put in place to help reduce the
risk of nuclear proliferation. For example, the United Nations Security
Council adopted Resolution 1540 to prompt states to put in place controls on
items related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in order to reduce the
risk of terrorists acquiring these powerful weapons. For example, this
includes controls on nuclear material, which will help to strengthen the
safeguards system. Recent U.S. administrations have also initiated a number
of new bilateral and multilateral programs such as Cooperative Threat
Reduction (Nunn-Lugar), the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, and the
Container Security Initiative.
Nonetheless, many believe that the nuclear nonproliferation regime needs
to be strengthened further – through revitalization if not redesign – and that it
needs to be integrated with strengthened efforts to reduce the terrorist
threat. At the same time, the United States is facing the erosion of its own
intellectual infrastructure of specialists equipped to address the challenge
of nuclear proliferation.
This course is designed to give graduate students a sound understanding of
the foundations of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and U.S. programs and
policies developed to meet the emerging nuclear proliferation threats to our
security. The course will present students with critical assessments of the
current nonproliferation arrangements. With exercises and demonstrations the
course will introduce students to the technologies of international nuclear
safeguards and detection of nuclear and other radioactive materials. Above
all, the course aims to give participants the knowledge, analytic tools and
motivation to contribute to improvement of the nonproliferation regime.
Last Modified: December 2, 2010
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Cathy Osiecki
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