Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials   Materials Protection, Control & Accounting   Warhead Security   Mayak Fissile Materials Storage Facility   BN-350 Fuel Security   Removing Materials from Vulnerable Sites   Converting Reseach Reactors   International Nuclear Security Upgrades   Global Standards
	Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
	Reducing Stockpiles

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials

International Nuclear Material Security Upgrades

Status

Donor State Security and Accounting Upgrade Efforts

United States. The MPC&A program itself is now seeking to expand beyond the former Soviet Union, to provide help with needed security and accounting upgrades in other countries. Senior program officials have publicly identified Pakistan, India, and China as countries that they would like to cooperate with in upgrading security and accounting for nuclear material,[1] and have had discussions with the IAEA about cooperating more broadly in the implementation of the IAEA's Action Plan to combat nuclear terrorism (discussed below).[2]

In addition, since the passage of the 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act, the United States has had legislative requirements to confirm that nuclear material in countries that it supplies is adequately protected. Toward that end, it sends out teams to review the physical protection arrangements in recipient countries. These reviews focus primarily on whether the arrangements generally conform to IAEA recommendations; actual vulnerability assessments designed to determine key security weaknesses, and what kinds of threats a physical protection system would likely be able to protect against, are not typically performed.[3] This is a very small effort, in the range of $200-$300,000 per year – typically it is many years between one such visit to a recipient state and the next. (Typically such teams review 1-2 countries in an average year.) In some cases, such reviews identify weaknesses that should be corrected, and if this occurred in a developing

 

There have also been non-U.S. contributions to MPC&A within Russia (such as assistance in MPC&A regulations and legal infrastructure, MPC&A training, and help in establishing a national accounting system, among other projects), at a small scale. All told, these non-U.S. contributions to security and accounting for weapons-usable nuclear materials probably amount to a few million dollars per year, on average. Like the United States, other nuclear supplier states require countries they supply to meet at least minimum standards of security for their nuclear materials (indeed, the Nuclear Suppliers Group has agreed that all of its members will do so),[7] but most other nuclear suppliers do not actually conduct independent reviews of the security arrangements in nuclear recipient states, as the United States does.[8]

A few illustrative examples of non-U.S. contributions to international cooperative MPC&A improvements include:[9]

• Kharkiv, Ukraine. Japan and Sweden, along with the United States, paid for and played key roles in developing an improved physical protection and accounting system for a facility holding some 75 kilograms of HEU powder.[10]
  
  
• Ulugbek, Uzbekistan. Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States all played key roles in upgrading MPC&A for the HEU-fueled research reactor in Uzbekistan.[11]
  
  
• Obninsk, Russia. TACIS has invested several million dollars in building up the capability of the all-Russian MPC&A training center at Obninsk – as has the United States. This broader international cooperation has significantly strengthened the training effort.[12] TACIS has funded a variety of other MPC&A projects in Russia and the former Soviet Union as well, but the training effort at Obninsk is the largest.
  
  
• Aqtau, Kazakhstan. Japan, along with the United States and several other countries, provided key equipment for nuclear material accounting and physical protection for the hundreds of kilograms of HEU fresh fuel and hundreds of tons of plutonium-bearing spent fuel at the BN-350 reactor at Aqtau, Kazakhstan.[13]

The G-8 Global Partnership: A New Departure? At their summit in Canada in June, 2002, the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized democracies agreed on a new "Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction," and committed to provide $20 billion over 10 years -- $10 billion from the United States, and an equivalent amount from the other partners combined – to carry out projects to control and reduce weapons of mass destruction.[14] The founding statement of the partnership included a commitment to provide "appropriate" and "effective" security and accounting for nuclear material, and to "provide assistance to states lacking sufficient resources to account for and secure these items." While the initial focus was on projects in Russia, the statement made clear that "any other recipient countries" who were prepared to adopt the partnership's guidelines were also eligible for assistance. Given the very large quantities of money involved, if this initiative is fully and appropriately implemented, it could represent a dramatic sea-change in the resources available to carry out urgent security and accounting upgrades around the world. The jury is still out, however, on how effective this initiative will be, and how rapidly its goals will be accomplished.

IAEA-led Efforts

Nuclear Terrorism Action Plan. In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, the IAEA put together an "Action Plan" for actions the agency could take to prevent nuclear terrorism, including steps to help member states improve security for nuclear materials, prevent sabotage of nuclear facilities, and better control radioactive materials that could be used in a "dirty bomb."[15] The plan included a wide range of activities, from developing more stringent and effective international standards, to reviewing security at individual sites and helping to find donor states who would fund needed security upgrades, to assisting in searches for lost radioactive sources. The plan in effect pulled together, integrated, and expanded on steps the IAEA had already been taking – including the work on physical protection upgrades and nuclear material accounting upgrades described below. The estimated cost of the plan, which was approved at the IAEA's November, 2001 Board of Governors meeting, was $12 million a year for the agency itself, and an additional $20 million per year from donor states to implement the security upgrades identified as being necessary at individual nuclear sites. Unfortunately, the IAEA has been forced to rely on voluntary contributions rather than regular budget financing for this effort, and as of September 2002, less than $8 million had been pledged from all sources[16] – much of it in multi-year pledges, so that this total should not be compared to $12 million but to several times that figure. In short, substantial parts of the Action Plan have become unfunded mandates: the IAEA simply does not have the money to carry out many of the actions needed to prevent nuclear terrorism. As a result of the funding issue and other factors, progress on improving security and accounting for nuclear material under this effort has been slow: in the year following September 11, IAEA-coordinated teams reviewed security in four countries,[17] but for the vast majority of the nuclear material in the world, the only improvements in nuclear security and accounting that have been made since September 11 were those made by individual states, acting on their own.[18]

Physical Protection Reviews, Upgrades, and Training. Since 1995, the IAEA has had a small effort to help states improve their physical protection systems and regulations. This effort includes a wide variety of work related to improved international standards for nuclear security (see Global Nuclear Security Standards), as well as efforts directly related to reviewing and improving nuclear security in individual countries.

The central element of the effort is the International Physical Protection Advisory Service (IPPAS).[19] Under the IPPAS program, when a member state asks for help with physical protection, the IAEA pulls together a group of physical protection experts from IAEA member states. This IPPAS team then visits the requesting country, reviews its legislation and procedures for securing nuclear material and facilities, and reviews the actual implementation of security at particular sites designated by the requesting state. The team then draws conclusions and makes recommendations for improvement, if needed, to the state that requested the visit. The IPPAS team reports are only available to the IAEA physical protection office and the state that requested the visit. If the IPPAS team recommends upgrades to the security systems they reviewed, the IAEA works with donor countries to arrange financing and technical support for the needed upgrades – but the IAEA has no budget of its own to carry out such upgrades, and after the initial IPPAS review, the progress of the upgrades is largely up to the state where the upgrades are taking place and the states contributing the funds and technical assistance needed to carry them out. Thus the IAEA has only incomplete information on the effectiveness of upgrades that result from IPPAS missions.

As of September 2002, there had been 16 IPPAS missions since the program's inception in 1995, covering 12 countries (4 countries had received a second IPPAS mission to review progress some years after the first).[20] Prior to the attacks of September 11, IPPAS had been carrying out 2-3 missions each year; four missions were conducted in the year after September 11 (to Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Romania), and the IAEA may now be in a position to roughly 6 missions per year. (The staff of the IAEA's physical protection effort has increased from 1.5 to 7 people as part of the nuclear terrorism action plan.)[21] Roughly 50% of the IPPAS missions have resulted in donor states providing either training or equipment (or both) to upgrade physical protection.[22] In the four cases where a second team reviewed the situation several years after the first team had visited, substantial improvements in security were observed, apparently resulting from the recommendations of the earlier IPPAS teams.[23]

It is important to understand what IPPAS is, and what it is not. IPPAS is the international community's principal approach to international reviews of security at nuclear sites, and identifying areas where improvement is needed – but it is no panacea. First, IPPAS typically does not involve a full vulnerability assessment of the facilities reviewed, identifying all their most important vulnerabilities: rather, the missions are focused on comparing the state's approaches to those in the IAEA recommendations for nuclear material and facility security,[24] which are rather general and rule-based in nature. (See Global Nuclear Security Standards) Second, as already noted, an IPPAS mission is just a review – if it determines that upgrades are needed, a separate effort is required to round up donor states willing to support such upgrades. Third, an IPPAS mission is only one visit – a snapshot in time. No follow-up is carried out unless the state requests it, and there are no efforts specifically focused on ensuring the sustainability of improvements that the state may carry out itself, or that may be implemented with assistance from donor states. Thus, whether the improvements in security resulting from IPPAS recommendations will be sustained over the long haul is an open question. In short, just because a facility has undergone an IPPAS review does not necessarily mean it has been effectively secured.

In addition to IPPAS, the IAEA provides a number of other important physical protection services to member states. The International Training Course on Physical Protection of Nuclear Facilities and Materials has been provided under IAEA auspices at Sandia National Laboratories since 1978.[25] Hundreds of participants from scores of countries all over the world have been trained in how to assess the vulnerability of a facility to insider and outsider attempts at theft or sabotage; how to design physical protection systems to detect, delay, and respond to such insider and outsider threats; and what kinds of equipment are available for physical protection systems. Data from a participant survey suggests that a very large fraction of the participants remain professionally involved with physical protection after taking the course, and that many of them are responsible for operating or regulating physical protection systems in their countries.[26]

More recently, the IAEA and Sandia, working with experts from several other countries as well, have developed a workshop designed to help countries develop and implement their own "design basis threats" – the threats that nuclear security systems in their country are required to be able to defeat, in order for facilities to maintain their nuclear operating licenses.[27] Many security experts consider having such a design basis threat specified in regulations, and appropriately enforced, to be an essential element of an effective program to secure nuclear materials. Since September 11, these "Design Basis Threat Workshops" have been given in six states – Armenia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.[28] In addition, a number of other types of workshops and courses relating to different aspects of physical protection – from security culture to regulation – are being offered or developed.

Nuclear Material Accounting and Control Reviews, Upgrades, and Training. In addition to providing and coordinating assistance with physical protection, the IAEA has also provided and coordinated assistance in improving nuclear material control and accounting. In particular, when the Soviet Union collapsed, most of the newly independent states (NIS) had fledgling governments with no previous experience in national-level accounting and control of nuclear materials. Yet these new states all joined the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear-weapon states, requiring them to put in place state systems of accounting and control (SSACs) that could support the IAEA safeguards system. Hence, the IAEA coordinated a substantial effort, involving more than half a dozen donor states, to assist these countries in putting effective nuclear material control and accounting systems in place.[29] This effort, known as the Coordinated Technical Support Program (CTSP), has been highly successful – all of the NIS states with nuclear activities now have functioning SSACs, and safeguards agreements in force with the IAEA. There is still much to be done, however, to improve nuclear material accounting in these states and to meet the requirements of the Additional Protocol to IAEA safeguards agreements. The IAEA and donor states have worked together to improve nuclear material control and accounting in support of safeguards in a number of other states around the world as well, but no other state or region has received the intensive, coordinated effort that was devoted to the NIS. The CTSP could be a model for similar upgrades elsewhere around the world.[30]

Budget

Comprehensive data on what the United States has spent on MPC&A upgrades in the rest of the world outside the former Soviet Union, or what other donor states have spent, in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, is not publicly available. All that can be done is to estimate totals on the basis of the magnitudes of some of the larger known projects. All told, the United States likely spends some $2-$4 million per year on various efforts to improve either physical protection or control and accounting of nuclear material outside its own territory and that of the former Soviet Union – a dramatically smaller investment than the effort within the former Soviet Union. All other donor states probably contribute roughly a comparable amount, for both sites in the former Soviet Union and sites in other parts of the world. Thus, the total international effort on cooperative MPC&A upgrades beyond the U.S.-funded MPC&A program in the former Soviet Union likely amounted to $40-$80 million over the last decade.

Key Issues and Recommendations

Slow Pace and Limited Coverage. In the aftermath of September 11, the current pace at which security and accounting for nuclear material are being improved around the world is simply not commensurate with the threat. Much more must be done to ensure that all the world's stockpiles of plutonium and HEU are secure and accounted for, as rapidly as practicable. With over 130 operating research reactors fueled with highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in scores of countries, and dozens of facilities with substantial quantities of weapons-usable plutonium, an international pace of reviewing a half-dozen facilities a year, and spending perhaps $4-$8 million a year improving them, will take far longer than the terrorists will take to find and strike at the weakest points. At this rate, we will lose the race to keep the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands.

• Recommendation: The United States and the other G-8 countries should move rapidly, as a very high priority for the national security of each of their countries, to build on the June 2002 announcement of the Global Partnership to forge a fast-paced, cooperative effort to upgrade security and accounting for all the world's nuclear material and nuclear warheads as rapidly as practicable. This should be a major focus of the $20 billion pledged to efforts under this new partnership.

• Recommendation: The United States should establish a focused "global cleanout and secure" program, funded at perhaps $50 million per year, designed to remove nuclear material entirely from as many of the world's most vulnerable nuclear sites as possible, and carry out rapid security upgrades for the remainder. (See Removing Nuclear Material From Vulnerable Sites) This U.S. effort should be closely coordinated with other states carrying out similar upgrades, including as part of the Global Partnership; the IAEA may be able to serve as an appropriate forum for coordination, as in the past.

• Recommendation: There should be a division of labor among the donor states, so that only 1-3 donor states are contributing to security and accounting upgrades for nuclear material in a particular country, and are doing so in close coordination. Because of the intensive effort required to build the level of trust needed for in-depth cooperation on highly sensitive matters such as nuclear security, it simply does not make sense to have eight or ten countries all working on nuclear security in a single recipient state.

• Recommendation: Because this problem is global, and not limited to the former Soviet Union, both the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction program and the Department of Energy's Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) effort should be explicitly authorized to fund programs worldwide – anywhere where this is necessary to reduce threats to the United States. The Senate's version of the defense authorization bill for Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 provided these authorizations, but at this writing (mid-October, 2002), the final outcome of the House-Senate conference on the bill had not been announced. (See Legislative Update)

• Recommendation: The pace of the IAEA's IPPAS effort, which has roughly doubled since before the September 11 attacks, should be radically increased. More resources should be provided, and coordination improved, to ensure that IPPAS recommendations are effectively implemented, and that security and accounting improvements are sustained for the long haul. More states should request IPPAS reviews, which should ultimately become a regular part of doing business in the nuclear industry, just as international safety peer reviews are today. In particular, advanced nuclear states such as the United States, France, Japan, and Germany (among others) should request IPPAS reviews (with appropriate managed access for militarily sensitive facilities), to make the point that such reviews should be for everyone.

• Recommendation: In addition to accelerating IAEA-led physical protection upgrades, IAEA efforts to help states review and improve control and accounting for nuclear materials should be accelerated, broadened, and provided more resources as well. Such accounting and control systems are a fundamental part of an effective security program, and are also essential to supporting a strong international safeguards regime.

No Comprehensive Plan, and Lack of Information Needed. Neither the U.S. government nor any other government or international organization has a comprehensive, prioritized plan for securing the most vulnerable bomb material worldwide as rapidly as possible. Pulling together the best available information would be crucial to the development of such a plan: as of mid-2002, while different parts of the U.S. government had substantial amounts of information about the many nuclear facilities with nuclear material in countries around the world, there was no one anywhere in the U.S. government (or in any other government or international organization) that had a comprehensive database of what was known about where the plutonium and HEU in the world is, how much is at each site, in what forms, and under what standards of security and accounting. As a result, while a number of sites had been identified as high priorities for removal of nuclear material or security upgrades, there was no way to determine comprehensively which sites in the world should be given highest priority.

• Recommendation: The U.S. government, working with other states and international organizations as appropriate, should prepare a prioritized plan to remove nuclear material from the world's most vulnerable sites, and implement effective security and accounting upgrades wherever weapons-usable nuclear material will remain, as rapidly as practicable. This plan would be implemented by the focused program recommended above, in cooperation with other states and the IAEA. The goal should be to remove or secure all of the sites with enough weapons-usable nuclear material for a bomb within a few years.

• Recommendation: The U.S. government should prepare a comprehensive database on locations, quantities, forms, and security of plutonium and HEU worldwide, and use it in the construction of prioritized plans for both removing nuclear material and cooperatively upgrading security for nuclear material.

• Recommendation: The IAEA, working with member states (including the United States) should prepare a similar confidential database, and use it to help focus its priorities for its nuclear security efforts. One useful existing source of information is the IAEA safeguards system: the IAEA should provide a modest amount of physical protection assessment training to its safeguards inspectors, instruct them to notify the IAEA's Office of Physical Protection and Nuclear Material Security if they observe physical protection problems during the normal course of their safeguards inspections, and gain approval for this from the General Conference of IAEA member states, to reduce any controversy that might arise over this role for safeguards inspectors.

Material Should be Removed Entirely From Some Sites. There are a substantial number of sites in the world where it makes more sense to remove the weapons-usable nuclear material entirely – thereby eliminating completely the risk of theft from that site – than to attempt to secure it in place. This is a choice that needs to be made on a case by case basis; obviously, the decision needs to be made by the operators of facilities and their governments, but the United States and other governments can help provide incentives to remove nuclear material where this seems appropriate. (See Removing Nuclear Material From Vulnerable Sites)

• Recommendation: A global program to carry out security and accounting upgrades for potentially vulnerable nuclear material, as recommended above, should be fully integrated with efforts to remove nuclear material from the most vulnerable sites.

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