Nuclear Transparency And Registers Of Nuclear Weapons And Fissile Materials

These studies address the technical means and procedures for establishing transparency in nuclear warheads and materials in the nuclear weapons states.

This report examines the problem of rapidly accumulating weapon-usable fissile materials and proposes an agenda to help the United States and other countries manage these materials. Weapon-usable fissile materials come from both dismantled nuclear weapons and the spend fuel from civilian nuclear power plants. This report should be of interest to nuclear nonproliferation planners and analysts in the United States, the former Soviet republics (FSRs), and other countries, and also to nuclear energy planners. The study started in October 1991. By June 1992, we had briefed our interim recommendations to planners and analysts in various DoD offices and also in the National Security Council, Livermore National Laboratory, and the nuclear industry. We also solicited reactions from public interest groups, particularly on the ramifications of our key recommendation: that the United States purchase highly enriched uranium from the FSRs after it is diluted and also their weapon-grade plutonium. The present report incorporates the latest data on nuclear weapon dismantling and elaborates on the proposed agenda, but its basic recommendations differ little from the interium proposals.

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.

The debate about appropriate purposes and policies for U.S. nuclear weapons has been under way since the beginning of the nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War, the debate has entered a new phase, propelled by the post-Cold War transformations of the international political landscape. This volumeâ€"based on an exhaustive reexamination of issues addressed in The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (NRC, 1991)â€"describes the state to which U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and policies have evolved since the Cold War ended. The book evaluates a regime of progressive constraints for future U.S. nuclear weapons policy that includes further reductions in nuclear forces, changes in nuclear operations to preserve deterrence but enhance operational safety, and measures to help prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, it examines the conditions and means by which comprehensive nuclear disarmament could become feasible and desirable.

Analyses the hitherto unexplored issues concerning transparency in key areas of international law.