CIAO DATE: 4/00

The Next Wave: Urgently Needed New Steps to Control Warheads and Fissile Material

Executive Summary

Nothing could be more central to U.S. and world security than ensuring that nuclear warheads and their essential ingredients—plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)—do not fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferating states. If plutonium and HEU become regularly available on a nuclear black market, nothing else we do to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons will succeed. Similarly, unless stockpiles of nuclear warheads and fissile materials can be secured, monitored, and verifiably reduced, it will be impossible to achieve deep, transparent, and irreversible reductions in nuclear arms. Measures to control warheads and fissile materials, therefore, are central to the entire global effort to reduce nuclear arms and stem their spread. The tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of plutonium and HEU that remain in the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles represent a deadly legacy of the Cold War, and managing them securely must be a top U.S. security policy priority.

Urgent Security Threats

Today, there remains a clear and present danger that insecure nuclear materials could be stolen and fall into hostile hands. This danger is particularly acute in the former Soviet Union, where a security system designed for a single state with a closed society, closed borders, and well-paid, well-cared-for nuclear workers has been splintered among multiple states with open societies, open borders, desperate, underpaid nuclear workers, and rampant theft and corruption—a situation the system was never designed to address. As a result, there have been multiple confirmed cases of theft of real weapons-usable nuclear materials. As recently as 1998, a group of conspirators at a major Russian nuclear weapons facility attempted to steal enough material for a nuclear bomb at a single stroke. While there is no evidence that enough material for a bomb has yet fallen into the hands of states such as Iran, Iraq, or North Korea, such a proliferation disaster could occur at any moment. At the same time, virtually none of the measures that would be required to verifiably reduce stockpiles of nuclear warheads and materials to low, agreed levels are in place—and those measures will have to be developed by the states with the largest stockpiles, the United States and Russia.

Current Programs to Address the Threats

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States has undertaken dozens of programs costing hundreds of millions of dollars a year to cooperate with the former Soviet states to address these threats. Other nations have also contributed, on a far more limited scale. If judged against the almost total lack of nuclear security cooperation as recently as early 1994, the progress of these efforts is nothing short of dramatic. Thousands of nuclear weapons have been dismantled, tens of tons of nuclear material has been equipped with modern security and accounting equipment, and tens of tons more— enough for thousands of nuclear weapons—has been blended into forms that can never again be used in weapons. The many people who have worked incredibly hard under difficult conditions to move these efforts forward have made remarkable contributions to U.S. and world security. These programs—representing less than one quarter of one percent of the defense budget—are among the most cost-effective investments in U.S. security found anywhere in the U.S. budget, and deserve strong support.

But if judged against the scale and urgency of the threat, or the opportunities available to address it, current efforts still fall woefully short. After some six years of effort, less than one-sixth of the Russian plutonium and HEU is in facilities fully equipped with modern security and accounting systems. Russia¹s nuclear weapons complex remains dangerously oversized and underfunded. Seven years after the initial agreement to purchase blended HEU from dismantled Russian warheads, less than one-tenth of the HEU in Russia (and still less of the U.S. HEU stockpile) has been blended to forms that can never again be used in weapons.

This pace of progress simply does not match the scope and urgency of the threat— or the opportunities available to address it. There are many factors that constrain the pace at which these urgent security threats can be reduced. But the time has come to provide the resources needed to ensure that lack of funding and leadership from the U.S. side are no longer among the key constraints. The Clinton Administration has announced that its policy for national missile defense is to ensure that the program is ³limited only by what is technologically practical, not by money²: the same approach should be taken for the far less costly task of controlling proliferation at its source.

Unfortunately, though announced with great fanfare as a two-thirds increase in funding for programs to ³safeguard nuclear materials and technology,² President Clinton¹s Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative keeps funding for most of these programs essentially flat, and included no new initiatives to jump-start the effort to reduce the security hazards posed by these deadly Cold War nuclear stockpiles. By contrast, in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2001, the Administration has proposed a $100 million package that finally calls for real increases for programs to reduce the urgent security threats posed by weapons-usable nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, including new initiatives to accomplish that objective. That initiative deserves strong support—but it is still only a fraction of what would be required to address these security threats as rapidly and effectively as possible.

The ³Next Wave²: a Comprehensive New Nuclear Security Plan

This report outlines a comprehensive strategy for faster and more effective programs to secure, monitor, and reduce these dangerous nuclear stockpiles in the former Soviet Union and the United States, including dozens of specific proposals. The basic principle of this strategy is to provide the resources necessary to reduce the security hazards posed by these dangerous stockpiles as rapidly as technology and cooperationwith the former Soviet states will allow, giving this effort priority commensurate with the threat to U.S. security.

The strategy can be summarized as a six-point plan requiring the expenditure of $1-$1.5 billion a year for each of the next five years—roughly a doubling or tripling of currently planned funding for programs related to safeguarding warheads and fissile material. The six key elements of the plan are listed in the table below, and then fleshed out in somewhat more detail.

Two fundamental points about these programs need to be made from the outset. First, these efforts can only succeed as genuine partnerships with the former Soviet states, serving their interests as they serve U.S. interests, and with former Soviet experts playing leading roles in their design and implementation. Second, these programs are not about providing large checks to go into bank accounts of dubious ownership, in the hope that some good will result: they are about paying for specific, demonstrable goods and services—warheads dismantled, security systems installed, bomb uranium blended down. As such, they are not charity, but investments in the security of the United States, and of the international community as a whole.

• A NUCLEAR MATERIAL SECURITY AND ACCOUNTING PROGRAM NOT CONSTRAINED BY FUNDING. The programs intended to ensure that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material are secure and accounted for should be drastically expanded and accelerated, providing the resources to accomplish that job as fast as it can be done. Lack of funding should not be allowed to be among the major constraints on progress.

  An expanded and accelerated program to improve security and accounting for nuclear material should focus on accomplishing three key objectives as rapidly as possible: (a) consolidating material in the smallest practicable number of buildings and sites; (b) providing both facility-level and national-level security and accounting system improvements as quickly as practicable; and (c) helping to put in place the resources, incentives, and organizations needed to sustain effective security over time (including ensuring that security and accounting upgrades are actually used and maintained). The latter goal involves changing ways of thinking and patterns of organizational behavior, which is a challenge that involves much more than money—but the plan outlined in this report includes a wide range of specific steps to help achieve those objectives. As part of the consolidation effort, there are particularly promising opportunities to address the proliferation threats posed by the smallest, most desperate facilities by simply buying the HEU from those facilities for shipment elsewhere, while providing assistance to convert those facilities to other types of research.

  A funding level of $250 million per year for perhaps five years represents a minimum level for such a funding-unconstrained program; further creative thinking may identify opportunities that would require still larger levels of funding. To protect the U.S. investment, the program should be continued at a modest level—perhaps $50 million per year—for a considerable period after the initial upgrades are accomplished, to ensure that security and accounting systems are sustained and improved, and to maintain cooperation and communication concerning the state of nuclear security.

• PAYING FOR RAPID BLEND-DOWN OF EXCESS RUSSIAN HEU. The Russian facilities that are blending HEU from dismantled Russian weapons to forms that can never again be used in weapons, for sale to the United States as commercial reactor fuel, would need only a few additional machines—costing only about $1 million—to double the current 30-tons-per-year pace of blending. That would mean destroying enough material for thousands of additional bombs each year. (The current pace was determined by what the commercial market would bear, not by what the national security demanded.) No one yet knows how much blending capacity could be provided for investments of $10 million, $50 million, or $100 million. The United States should aggressively pursue a new initiative to pay the costs of blending all of Russia¹s excess HEU—including stocks above and beyond the 500 tons Russia has declared excess already—to non-weapons-usable forms within a few years, and provide substantial financial incentives to Russia to undertake such a rapid blending effort. The blended material would continue to be released on the market at a pace consistent with commitments made to uranium industry firms as part of the existing HEU purchase agreement. The total cost is uncertain, as no one yet knows how large a financial package would be needed to gain Russian agreement, but might be in the range of $1 billion over several years. That would be a small price to pay for permanently eliminating the security hazards posed by Russia¹s massive excess stockpiles of HEU. Some of the funding could be in the form of prepayments against future deliveries of the blended material, allowing a portion of the funds to be recouped when the material is delivered for commercial sale.

• FINANCING DISPOSITION OF RUSSIAN EXCESS PLUTONIUM. Reducing excess plutonium stockpiles as rapidly as practicable is also a high priority. Russia does not have the money to accomplish this objective. Paying the $1-$3 billion needed to finance the transformation of Russia¹s weapons plutonium into forms that are no longer suitable for use in nuclear weapons—effectively eliminating the material for many thousands of nuclear weapons—would be a highly cost-effective investment in U.S. national security. If a plan can be worked out that would make it possible to carry out disposition of this excess plutonium stockpile on a reasonable timetable, it would make sense to fund this investment, over a period of perhaps 5 years. The first priority should be to ensure that all the excess plutonium is secure, placed under monitoring, and converted to unclassified forms as rapidly as practicable, pending longer-term disposition. (The needed steps on disposition of excess plutonium are described in more detail on pp. 67€€€€ 73.)

• HELPING TO SHRINK THE RUSSIAN NUCLEAR COMPLEX. Russia and the United States share crucial national security interests in shrinking Russia¹s oversized and underfunded nuclear weapons complex to a sustainable size appropriate to its post-Cold War missions, and reemploying the thousands of scientists and technicians who are no longer needed for nuclear weapons work. From Russia¹s perspective, a smaller complex would be cheaper to maintain, mitigate the social instability and proliferation risks posed by the desperate funding situation that now permeates the complex, and harness the talents of those no longer needed for weapons work to crucial civilian tasks. From the U.S. perspective, a smaller complex would have a greatly reduced ability to produce thousands of nuclear weapons to be targeted on the United States, and providing sustainable employment for the excess scientists and technicians would greatly reduce the incentives for theft of nuclear material or sale of nuclear knowledge posed by the financial desperation that currently permeates the complex. A comprehensive approach to this problem would include, at a minimum: (a) assistance for closing or converting facilities for the production of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons components, and materials for nuclear weapons; (b) a broad range of measures to support private-sector employment growth (ranging from business development centers to tax incentives for employment of excess nuclear weapons workers), including both establishment of new businesses in these cities and employment of nuclear city experts as ³knowledge workers² working for outside businesses over the internet; (c) support for employment of nuclear city experts on nonproliferation and arms control analysis and technology development (providing employment well-matched to their nuclear skills while serving other U.S. arms control and proliferation interests as well); and (d) support for employment of nuclear city experts on tasks related to nuclear cleanup, energy, and the environment. The third and fourth of these areas could be supported in a ³win-win² approach by contracting a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars the Department of Energy spends each year on R&D in these areas to experts from the nuclear cities—getting the Department¹s work done for less while providing interesting and relevant R&D employment to excess experts in the nuclear cities.

• ASSISTANCE FOR TRANSPARENT DISMANTLEMENT OF THOUSANDS OF WARHEADS. Increased transparency in the management of nuclear warhead and fissile material stockpiles (while maintaining protection for legitimate nuclear secrets) will be fundamental to achieving deep reductions in nuclear arms, as well as cooperation to secure nuclear stockpiles—and hence to reducing the nuclear threat to the United States. Unfortunately, Russian secrecy concerns have largely blocked transparency progress in recent years, and increased concern over protecting nuclear secrets in the United States in the wake of the Chinese espionage scandal is likely to make increased transparency a hard sell in the United States as well. To date, the United States has not offered Russia any significant incentives— strategic, financial, or otherwise—to agree to accept wide-ranging transparency for warhead and fissile material stockpiles.

  To jump-start the stalled process of formal negotiations over warhead limitations and transparency, President Clinton should propose a new initiative, modeled on the successful informal reciprocal-unilateral initiatives launched by President Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev in 1991, which resulted in the pull-back and dismantlement of many thousands of nuclear weapons. For example, President Clinton could offer to place a large fraction of the U.S. strategic reserve and tactical nuclear warheads (stockpiles unregulated by arms control to date, and which will represent the vast majority of the total U.S. warhead stockpile under START II) in secure storage open to Russian monitoring, and commit them to verifiable dismantlement (with specific procedures to be worked out later), if Russia would do the same with its comparable warhead stockpiles. This could address Russian concerns about the U.S. maintenance of a large stockpile of reserve strategic warheads that could be rapidly returned to missiles, and U.S. concerns about the huge Russian tactical warhead stockpile. Within a few months, the majority of all the warheads in both sides¹ nuclear arsenals could be under reciprocal monitoring, and committed to dismantlement. Indeed, technology exists that would make it possible to permanently and verifiably disable these warheads, pending their eventual dismantlement, rather than only subjecting them to monitoring.

  As part of this package, the United States should offer to provide financial assistance for warhead dismantlement in return for Russian agreement to a transparency package that would also be implemented reciprocally at the Pantex dismantlement facility in the United States. The transparency measures would have to be designed jointly by U.S. and Russian experts, to give both sides confidence that they could confirm dismantlement was taking place without revealing sensitive information. Preliminary U.S.-Russian lab-to-lab work in designing such measures is already under way. The total cost of such an effort, including the financial assistance for warhead dismantlement, might be in the range of half a billion dollars over several years.

• EXPANDING AVAILABLE REVENUE FOR NUCLEAR SECURITY. The cost of many of the nonproliferation and arms reduction tasks that are urgently needed is substantial, and the former Soviet states are facing desperate budget problems. At the same time, there is increasing ³donor fatigue² among the states providing assistance, and there is a wide range of critical steps that are difficult or impossible for foreign governments to fund— such as paying the salaries of nuclear guards. Hence, finding new sources of revenue for nuclear security is critically important. Promising concepts include commercial spent fuel storage in Russia, with a substantial portion of the revenues going to nuclear security and cleanup; additional purchases of HEU, premised on a portion of the proceeds being directed to nuclear security efforts; a ³debt-for-security² swap, in which a portion of Russia¹s foreign debt would be canceled in return for Russia paying smaller amounts into an auditable fund to finance nuclear security; and modifications to the stringent trade restraints limiting Russia¹s access to markets for civilian nuclear exports, premised on Russian agreement to devote an agreed portion of the proceeds of expanded exports to nuclear security. Such initiatives could provide billions of dollars in much-needed revenue to address the security hazards posed by the dangerous Cold War legacy of nuclear warheads and materials.

The Need for Leadership

Unfortunately, there is no single ³silver bullet² that will address the myriad risks to international security posed by the gigantic nuclear stockpiles and complex of the former Soviet Union. A broad ³next wave² of new measures to reduce these risks is needed, representing roughly a doubling or tripling of current funding for programs devoted to reducing these security threats. Such an expanded effort can only succeed in close cooperation with the states of the former Soviet Union, who will have to play a central role in its design from the very outset. While important progress is already being made in nuclear security cooperation with these states, at the current pace there can be no confidence that a proliferation catastrophe will be averted, or the foundation laid for transparent and irreversible nuclear arms reductions.

To reinvigorate these efforts with new initiatives, to make them work as a package, to coordinate, prioritize, and integrate them into a strategic plan, and to negotiate them with Russia and the other former Soviet states, will require a dramatic increase in sustained leadership from the highest levels of the U.S. government. Too often in recent years, President Clinton has said a few words about the high priority of these issues, and then has failed to follow through with the sustained commitments of money, personnel, and political attention needed to get the job done. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and their White House staff have allowed myriad other events to distract attention from the fundamentally important task of ensuring that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons do not fall into the wrong hands.

There is still time to correct this situation—and if President Clinton fails to do so, the next President must act. In addition to a sea change in sustained Presidential leadership on these issues, two fundamental steps are necessary: the appointment of a senior official with direct access to the President, with full-time responsibility to carry out these efforts, and the development of a strategic plan setting priorities, targets, and timetables, and identifying the key synergies among the many efforts being pursued. The current organizational structure of the government, with programs scattered through many departments and no one in charge of coordinating and leading them on a full-time basis, is simply not suited to the task of managing this broad range of crucial nonproliferation and arms reduction efforts. A senior, full-time point person for these efforts is needed, with direct access to the President and appropriate staff and resources—on the model of former Secretary of Defense William Perry¹s return to government to reshape the U.S. approach to the North Korean nuclear and missile threat, or even on the model of Gen. Barry McCaffrey¹s White House office leading U.S. anti-drug efforts. Preventing nuclear material from falling into the hands of states like North Korea or Iraq is certainly no less critical to U.S. security than drugs or the North Korean nuclear program itself. There is much to be done to address the security risks posed by the deadly Cold War legacies of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The cost of taking action now to address this threat is tiny by comparison to the cost and risk of failing to act and finding that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons find their way into the hands of terrorists or proliferant states. The time for action is now. Indeed, we cannot afford to wait.

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