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 | SPLITTING THE ATOM Nuclear Bombs, Non-Proliferation and Test Bans November 18, 1996 |
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The Nuclear Weapons
Forum Homepage
Other Forum Topics
Recent efforts to pass a nuclear test ban
What are the benefits of the nuclear test ban treaty to the U.S.?
How are countries making it difficult to obtain nuclear material?
What is the situation in the former Soviet Union?
What type of control of nuclear weapons is there in other countries?
Can the world's nuclear arsenal really be dismantled?
A question from Wallace Davis of Washington, D.C.
Is it even physically conceivable that the world can dismantle all its bombs? What do we then do with the parts? Doesn't that make non-proliferation even harder to enforce?
Kenneth Luongo responds:
Yes, it is physically possible to dismantle all bombs.
The parts of dismantled weapons are handled differently . within different countries. in the United States, sensitive components, e.g., delivery vehicles, triggers, and electronics can be destroyed. Nuclear components are handled differently depending on whether they are made from plutonium (Pu) or highly enriched uranium (HEU). HEU can be placed into secure storage or be blended with natural or low-enriched uranium to produce low enriched uranium fuel for use in power reactors. Low enriched uranium cannot be used to manufacture a nuclear explosive device. Plutonium disposition is an issue the United States Department of Energy is currently working on. Over the past three years the Department has narrowed the options to include mixing the plutonium into mixed uranium oxide/plutonium dioxide fuel (MOX) for use in power reactors, vitrification with radioactive fission products for long-term secure storage, or placement into deep bore-holes for long-term secure storage.
Leonard Spector of the Carnegie Endowment responds:
Specialists in many countries are actively debating the question of whether the ultimate goal of nuclear arms control and non-proliferation efforts should be the total elimination of nuclear weapons. A recent report by a group of internationally prominent political figures, known as the Canberra Commission, urged that this goal be pursued, but also recognized that there would be many technical and political obstacles to achieving this objective. The group nonetheless argued that steps towards this goal be undertaken, such as the reduction in the number of deployed nuclear weapons, lower alert status for the remaining deployments, and the permanent dismantling of non-deployed U.S. and Russian nuclear arms.
After dismantlement, the non-nuclear parts of weapons can be easily destroyed and some nuclear materials can be rendered unusable for nuclear arms. However, disposing of excess weapons-usable plutonium will be extremely difficult and will take at least several decades to achieve.
In order to achieve nuclear disarmament, major political changes would be needed in the international order. Moreover, even if there were agreement to dismantle all nuclear weapons and to dispose of all the resulting nuclear materials, the risk that new weapons might be manufactured could not be eliminated, since the know-how for manufacturing such weapons would remain. On the other hand, reconstituting a nuclear weapons program would take considerable time and would be likely to be detected. Another difficulty is that it might be impossible to be certain that an adversary had, in fact, destroyed all of its nuclear arms. For these reasons there has been increasing attention to the option of reducing existing nuclear arsenals to very low numbers -- from 10 to 100 weapons, for example -- as an interim goal.
Will dismantling nuclear weapons make non-proliferation harder to achieve? Some observers have expressed concern that in Russia, security over weapons parts and materials is less stringent than for the weapons themselves and that dismantling weapons may actually worsen the risks of theft and diversion. The United States is working actively with Russia to enhance security in both of these settings.
Don Gross of the ACDA responds:
Yes. The U.S. and Russia are currently dismantling nuclear warheads at the rate of several thousand per year, as quickly as our current resources allow. President Clinton at the United Nations this year pointed to the achievement of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, putting us on a path in which the roles and risks of nuclear weapons can be further reduced, and ultimately eliminated.
The vast majority of the parts of nuclear weapons are not proliferation threats. They can be easily destroyed, or in rare cases recycled to other uses, without risk of contributing to proliferation. The dangerous parts are the highly-enriched uranium and plutonium, which must be carefully managed to prevent their falling into the wrong hands. The United States and other nuclear weapon states have developed highly reliable methods for accounting for and protecting sensitive nuclear materials. While there has been concern in recent years that these methods may not be as effective as they once were in the states of the former Soviet Union, there is still no evidence that nuclear weapons or materials removed from them have ever been transferred to unauthorized individuals or states.
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