Nuclear Security Goals Advance as Budgets Get Slashed

March 26, 2014 | Edited by Lauren Mladenka and Geoff Wilson

Summit progress - “53 international leaders in The Hague this week made important progress on securing nuclear materials around the world and keeping them out of the hands of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. There is still a long way to go to address the challenges of a world awash in nuclear materials and weapons, but many countries are taking constructive action.”

--“The number of countries that possess enough nuclear materials to build a weapon has fallen to 25 from 39. While this is undeniably good news, that means 25 countries still have such materials at hundreds of sites, many of which are not sufficiently secure. Moreover, pledges by government leaders to improve security and combat illegal trafficking in nuclear materials may not be fully carried out. At this week’s summit meeting, only 35 of the 53 countries agreed to enact into their laws international guidelines on nuclear security like criminalizing unauthorized acts involving nuclear materials. What is needed are binding international legal standards, applicable to all, and a treaty to ban the production of fissile material altogether.” Read the full report from the editorial board of The New York Times here. http://nyti.ms/1jIFMD4

Budget double talk - “In his closing remarks at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, President Obama emphasized the importance of accelerating nuclear security efforts over the next two years,” writes Nickolas Roth for Harvard’s Belfer Center. “His proposed federal budget, however, sends a different message. Days before President Obama left for The Hague to attend the third nuclear security summit, his administration released a fiscal year (FY) 2015 budget proposal that would cut the programs primarily responsible for helping other countries improve security for nuclear material -- the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) and International Material Protection and Cooperation (IMPC) -- by more than 20%.”

--“Overall, the administration’s budget would cut nonproliferation programs at the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) by almost $400 million, while increasing the budget for NNSA’s nuclear weapons programs by over $500 million… [including] painful cuts to the very nuclear security programs on the summit agenda as well. Indeed, the proposed cuts this year are part of an ongoing downward spiral for nuclear security budgets. Since 2011, funding requests for these programs have declined by more than 40%. The Obama administration requested more than $889 million for these programs for fiscal year 2011, but this year’s request is only $533,963.”

--“The administration argues these budget cuts are simply the result of the work being finished – the four-year effort to secure vulnerable nuclear material was four-year effort ‘successfully completed,’ NNSA says.[ii] But… President Obama’s original goal of securing ‘all’ vulnerable nuclear material has certainly not been accomplished. There’s a great deal more to do, as the administration itself emphasizes – but they propose to spend much less to do it. The proposed budgets for both GTRI and INMPC are much less than the administration projected they would need for these efforts last year, and nothing has gotten any cheaper since then. Indeed, this year’s budget request calls for spending $200 million less on nuclear security over the next four years than projected in last year’s budget. These programs are having to make do with less – and if these proposals are accepted, nuclear security progress will be slowed.” Read the full piece here. http://bit.ly/1dNs2n2

China pleased with Japan’s nonproliferation gesture - “China said on Tuesday that Japan's agreeing to turn over sensitive nuclear material of potential use in bombs to the United States was a step in the right direction, but that it had other material it still needed to hand over,” Reuters reports. “The leaders of Japan and the United States, meeting at a nuclear security summit in the Netherlands, said that hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of material of potential use would be downgraded and disposed of.”

--The Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement which said that, “China welcomes the reaching of this deal, [and that] we appreciate and support the United States' hard efforts to collect sensitive nuclear materials from overseas." Read the full report here. http://reut.rs/1juDZWz

Take it back - Canada says it has returned to the United States enough highly enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear warhead, Global Security Newswire reports. “The announcement covered about 100 pounds of weapon-grade uranium contained in thousands of ‘targets’ that were originally exported from the United States and held at the Chalk River nuclear complex. The materials were intended to have been irradiated at site reactors and converted into medical isotopes, but that never happened due to problems with the reactor technology.” Full story here. http://bit.ly/1muPM7t

Understating the problem - “The communiqués issued at the previous two Nuclear Security Summits said almost nothing about the dangers of separated plutonium. That was a problem. The 2014 Nuclear Security Summit communiqué does say something about plutonium—but the world would have been better off if it had remained silent on the issue,” writes Ed Lyman for All Things Nuclear. “The communiqué statement, although vague, promulgates the false and very dangerous notion that MOX fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium, is much less of a security threat than pure plutonium.”

--“The problem is that… converting plutonium into MOX would offer little barrier to theft and subsequent use in producing nuclear weapons. One MOX fuel assembly contains many bombs’ worth of plutonium, and can be rapidly disassembled, if necessary, to facilitate theft.” Read the full analysis here. http://bit.ly/1h9PCPi

Tweet - @CNS_Updates: .@MilesPomper explains the "wiggle room" on the Pu language in #NSS2014 final communique. http://bit.ly/1ePEZjM

The greater threat - “President Barack Obama dismissed Tuesday a 2012 assertion by Mitt Romney that Russia is the U.S.’s No. 1 foe,” writes Lucy McCalmont in Politico. “‘Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength, but out of weakness,’ Obama said during a press conference at The Hague. ‘Russia’s actions are a problem, they don’t pose the No. 1 national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned, when it comes to our security, with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.’” Full piece here. http://politi.co/1pyCvIr

The perfect storm - “For American taxpayers, the biggest unheralded threat from the crisis in Ukraine may be its effect on the military budget. Foreign policy hawks already have seized upon the so-called ‘new Cold War’ as a rationale for shelling out billions of additional dollars on nuclear weapons,” writes Josh Harkinson for Mother Jones. Further, “the Crimean takeover comes at the exact moment when military planners are debating how to update America's nuclear arsenal.

--“It will certainly be much more difficult to reduce spending on nuclear weapons in the current environment," concedes Tom Collina. However, “our nuclear weapons did not stop Russia from going into Crimea," he points out. "There's a case that what we really need to do is spend more on economic aid," such as the proposed International Monetary Fund bailout for Ukraine. To fund this initiative, Collina argues the U.S. could save billions of dollars by cutting programs with little strategic impact, such as the Navy’s plan to build 12 new nuclear submarines. Read the full article here. http://bit.ly/1dr4g5t

Completely unnecessary - “The recent truck fire and radiation release from the government’s troubled nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico were “near misses” at a facility whose workers proved unprepared to respond to the emergencies, the head of an independent oversight agency said. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Chairman Peter Winokur also said the Feb. 5 underground truck fire at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant was preventable, and that the initial response to a radiation release that contaminated 17 employees working above ground nine days later was unsatisfactory.” Get the full story from AP here. http://wapo.st/1juJYdW

Missile launch - “ North Korea demonstrated its ballistic missile capabilities by launching two mid-range missiles on Wednesday, after the leaders of the United States, Japan and South Korea gathered in the Netherlands to discuss the North’s nuclear threats,” reports Choe Sang-Hun for The New York Times. “The missile launches were “a troubling and provocative escalation that the United States takes very seriously,” says a U.S. State Department official. Full article here. http://nyti.ms/1iAnQLA

Tweet - @armscontolnow: We'll miss our friend and arms control colleague John B. Rhinelander. His obit in The Boston Globe http://bit.ly/NTYjln

Quick-hits:

--“Nuclear Security Bid Trimmed Amid U.S.-Russian Discord” by Jonathan Tirone and Corina Ruhe for Bloomberg. http://bloom.bg/1hY2yWu

--“Obama Brings Leaders of Japan, SKorea Together” By Jim Kuhnhenn for the AP. http://abcn.ws/1muQdyA

--“Getting Past Crimea at the Nuclear Security Summit” by Stewart M. Patrick and Claire Schacter for Defense One. http://bit.ly/1hrPPd0

Events:

--“Implications on Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in South Asia.” Discussion with Jeffrey McCausland. March 26 from 12:30-2:30 at the Stimson Center, 1111 19th St. NW, 12th floor. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1kBZQbR

--“Separated Plutonium: Friend or Foe?” Discussion with Andrew Worrall. March 26 from 4:00-5:30 at George Washington University, room 111, 1957 E St. NW. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1kXIZjN

--“Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom.” Discussion with Elaine Scarry. March 27 from 5:00-7:00 at George Washington University, room 505, 1957 E St. NW. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1psdNJx

--“Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons Initiative and its Relationship to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” Discussion with Ira Helfand and Guakhar Mukhatzhanova. March 31 from 9:30-11:30 at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/NxfOaY

--“Creating a Legacy for the Nuclear Security Summit.” Discussion with Kenneth Luongo and Sharon Squassoni. April 2 from 12:00-1:30 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2nd floor conference room A, 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. RSVP by email to PPP@csis.org

Dessert:

Games people play - “The 58 world leaders gathered in The Hague to discuss nuclear security were asked to explore how they would react to a nuclear attack or accident by taking part in a simulation set in a fictional country called Brinia,” reports Thomas Escritt in Reuters. “It was a big departure from the formats typically adopted at major multilateral summits, and some of the leaders said on Tuesday they were impressed at the exercise set up by their Dutch hosts,” who “wanted to bring a fresh, interactive element to the conference.” Read the full article here. http://reut.rs/1muS3j2