Nuclear Proliferation And Arms Control Monitoring Detection And Verification

At the request of Congress, this report presents findings and recommendations related to governance of the U.S. government's monitoring, detection, and verification (MDV) enterprise and offers findings and recommendations related to technical MDV capabilities and research, development, test, and evaluation efforts, focused in particular on the nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear test explosions, and arms control.

This book strives to take stock of current achievements and existing challenges in nuclear verification, identify the available information and gaps that can act as drivers for exploring new approaches to verification strategies and technologies. With the practical application of the systems concept to nuclear disarmament scenarios and other, non-nuclear verification fields, it investigates, where greater transparency and confidence could be achieved in pursuit of new national or international nonproliferation and arms reduction efforts. A final discussion looks at how, in the absence of formal government-to-government negotiations, experts can take practical steps to advance the technical development of these concepts.

This fifth volume of annual reviews of developments in the implementation of arms control and environmental agreements and in peacekeeping activities covers recent developments. It discusses nuclear proliferation, nuclear testing, a fissile materials cut-off and the counter-proliferation concept.

Originally published in 1985, the level of anxiety and suspicion between the USA and the USSR had rarely been higher. Many advocates of arms control believed that effective verification would reduce tensions and lessen the risk of war. This book analyses the two main issues of verification. One is technological: what are the present capabilities of various verification techniques and what is their potential? The devices and methods currently employed by the two major nuclear powers and by international organizations to monitor the compliance of states with arms control or disarmament treaties are examined. The second issue is political: how do US and Soviet approaches compare, what are the roles of domestic and bureaucratic politics, and on what criteria can a workable standard of adequacy be based? In short, how much is enough? Although the study concludes that a number of significant arms control measures can already be adequately verified, modern weapons are becoming more mobile and it is becoming easier to conceal them. There is a danger that the ability to hide weapons will outstrip the ability to find them. Verification cannot promise to detect all violations; a workable standard of adequacy in verification must derive from the ability to detect militarily significant violations.

Ten expert contributors present a blueprint for actions future government leaders will need to guide policy making to reduce nuclear dangers. The authors identify the key technical, political, and diplomatic challenges associated with verifying, monitoring, and enforcing a world free of nuclear weapons and provide potential solutions to those challenges.

In this study, CISAC tackles the technical dimensions of a longstanding controversy: To what extent could existing and plausibly attainable measures for transparency and monitoring make possible the verification of all nuclear weaponsâ€"strategic and nonstrategic, deployed and nondeployedâ€"plus the nuclear-explosive components and materials that are their essential ingredients? The committee's assessment of the technical and organizational possibilities suggests a more optimistic conclusion than most of those concerned with these issues might have expected.