TSA Names Dr. Huban Gowadia as Deputy Administrator
March 30, 2016
Dr. Gowadia, most recently the director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office at the Department of Homeland Security, is an alumna of IGCC's 2005 PPNT boot camp.
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Nuclear Arms Control for the 21st Century
Amy J. Nelson, The National Interest
March 25, 2016
In her latest article, Amy J. Nelson maintains the argument that nuclear safeguards are playing an important role in protecting the world from security threats and that they should focus on weapons-grade materials and not just weapons. Nelson is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was previously a policy analyst at the U.S. Department of State, and a fellow at the Stimson Center and SIPRI North America. She was a Nuclear Science and Security Consortium IGCC Dissertation Fellows from 2012-2013.
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2016 NUCLEAR SECURITY SUMMIT
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Nuclear Security Summit Website
Nuclear Security Summit, Washington
2016
The Nuclear Security Summit 2016 will continue to provide a forum for leaders to engage with each other and reinforce our commitment at the highest levels to securing nuclear materials.
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Nuclear Terrorism Fears Loom Over Obama's Final Atomic Summit
Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom, Reuters
March 31, 2016
Just as fears of nuclear terrorism are rising, U.S. President Barack Obama's drive to lock down vulnerable atomic materials worldwide seems to have lost momentum and could slow further.
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Nuke Summit No. 4: What Is It Good For?
Paul D. Shinkman and Teresa Welsh, U.S. News and World Report
March 30, 2016
It comes at a time of heightened and unprecedented danger. But some of the most important players won't be there, and key countries previously have proved loath to buy all the way in. In short, it's hard to see anything truly substantial coming out of President Barack Obama's nuclear security summit this week in Washington - a gathering of leaders from around 50 countries that may be more victory lap than valuable exercise in the end.
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ARMS CONTROL AND DETERRENCE
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A Nuclear-Armed ISIS? It's Not That Farfetched, Expert Says
Patrick Tucker, Defense One
A Harvard researcher says the terror group might be closer to wreaking some sort of radioactive havoc than we think. The murder of a security guard at a Belgian nuclear facility just two days after the Brussels attacks, coupled with evidence that Islamic State operatives had been watching researchers there, has re-ignited fears about ISIS and nuclear terrorism. Some experts, including ones cited by the New York Times and others, dismiss the possibility that ISIS could make even a crude nuclear bomb. But Matthew Bunn, the co-principal investigator at the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard's Belfer Center, says that the threat is quite real.
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Is That All There Is? Obama's Disappointing Nuclear Legacy
Joe Cirincione, Defense One
The biggest roadblock to making the world safer from nuclear weapons turned out to be the president's own team. American showman P.T. Barnum said, "Always leave them wanting more." If the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit this week is President Barack Obama's closing nuclear act, he will certainly be following Barnum's dictum.
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Can East Asia Avoid a Nuclear Explosive Materials Arms Race?
Henry Sokolski, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
March 28, 2016
From March 31 to April 1, Washington will host the fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit. Unfortunately, the commercial plutonium plans of Japan, Korea, and China won't be on the agenda. That's a shame because, as everyone knows, plutonium is a nuclear explosive. What's at stake is nothing less than a race to stockpile plutonium in East Asia that could end very, very badly.
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Welcome to the Pentagon's Department of B.S. Accounting
Tom Z. Collina, Foreign Policy
March 25, 2016
Creating a special, separate fund for nuclear weapons is Secretary of Defense Ash Carter's worst idea ever. Even his own deputies find it sketchy.
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How China Needs to Improve Its Legal Framework on Nuclear Security
Hui Zhang, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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Yes, There's a Legal Gap on Nuclear Weapons Use, But It Isn't That Big
Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk
March 23, 2016
Michael Krepon asked Dan Joyner to weigh in on the conversation about the morality of nuclear weapons use. Dan is Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, and the founder of the Arms Control Law blog. He is the author of International Law and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (2009), Interpreting the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (2011), and the forthcoming International Law and Iran's Nuclear Program: From Confrontation to Accord (Oxford University Press, September 2016).
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IPFM Research Report 15: Banning the Production of Highly Enriched Uranium
Frank von Hippel, International Panel on Fissel Materials
March 15, 2016
The report analyses the non-weapon uses of HEU: for naval reactor fuel, tritium and medical isotope production, as well as in breeder and research reactors. It shows that for all of these applications a transition over at most a few decades to LEU or other alternatives is feasible. The existing stockpiles of HEU, stored mainly in the nuclear-weapon states, are more than sufficient for non-weapon needs during the transition period. The report finds that an international agreement to ban the production of HEU for all purposes could be pursued.
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Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?
Matthew Bunn, William H. Tobey, Martin B. Malin, and Nickolas Roth, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
March 2016
The risk of nuclear terrorism remains very real. Measures to secure nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them are the most effective tools for reducing this risk. Terrorist threats are constantly changing-as the dramatic rise of the Islamic State in 2014 makes clear. The job of improving security for nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials is never "done"-security must constantly evolve as the threat changes, technologies shift, and new vulnerabilities are revealed. In the two years since the last nuclear security summit, security for nuclear materials has improved modestly-but the capabilities of some terrorist groups, particularly the Islamic State, have grown dramatically, suggesting that in the net, the risk of nuclear terrorism may be higher than it was two years ago.
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Radiological Security Progress Report: Preventing Dirty Bombs, Fighting Weapons of Mass Disruption
Andre J. Bieniawski, Ioanna Illiopulos, and Michelle Nalabandian, Nuclear Threat Initiative
March 2016
A new report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative finds that the vulnerability of these radiological sources, such as cesium-137 and cobalt-60, has caused concern for years, but today the risk is growing.
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