North Korea:  Kelly to Head Delegation for Six-Nation Nuclear Talks

Although he has been deemed “arrogant” and “high-handed” by North Korean officials, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly has been tapped to lead the U.S. delegation to talks this month aimed at easing the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear standoff, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Aug. 14).

Countries involved in the six-nation talks, slated for Aug. 27 to 29 in Beijing, include North Korea, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and the United States.

“We have been on the same page for a long time; we are all agreed what the goal is,” a U.S. State Department official said.

Kelly met with officials from Japan and South Korea yesterday in Washington to formulate a unified front when dealing with Pyongyang (Agence France-Presse/YahooNews, Aug. 15).

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said he is concerned that the six-nation talks could fail if North Korea is not guaranteed a nonagression pact from the United States, AFP reported.

“We face a nuclear problem.  There are expectations for a good settlement but it is true that there is a danger,” Li said (Agence France-Presse II/Singapore Straits Times, Aug. 15).

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North Korea:  Powell Says No Economic Incentives Offered

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that the United States has not offered economic incentives to urge North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions (see GSN, Aug. 13).

“We have put no economic proposals forward at the moment,” Powell said.  In recent weeks, Powell has suggested that Washington could provide an informal nonaggression agreement to Pyongyang.

“We are looking for a different relationship with North Korea,” he said (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/London Guardian, Aug. 14).

A senior White House official said, “there is still no internally agreed upon U.S. position.”

U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that he thinks the crisis can be resolved “in a peaceful way, and we’re making good progress” (Bill Nichols, USA Today, Aug. 14).

Meanwhile, U.S., South Korean and Japanese diplomats met yesterday in Washington and discussed upcoming six-nation talks with North Korea.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing also met with South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan in Seoul and developed a coordinated approach for the negotiations, Yonhap News Agency reported.

After the meeting, Li announced he was “pleased to say that we have reached a consensus” (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, Aug. 14).

China and Russia might offer North Korea a nonaggression treaty in an effort to persuade Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons efforts, the Associated Press reported.

“The two countries might offer additional guarantees, if guarantees established by the United States fail to meet North Korea’s expectations to the full,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.  “North Korea’s wish to have security guarantees looks absolutely logical and there is every indication it will be insisting on them,” he added (Steve Gutterman, Associated Press/Moscow Times, Aug. 10).

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Iran:  Council Advances Second Bushehr Reactor

Iran’s Supreme Nuclear Council has approved the development of a second nuclear reactor in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Aug. 13).

The announcement was reported on Iranian state-run television (Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press/Kansas City Star, Aug. 13).

The council also reviewed a report from the Iranian nuclear agency on the best location for the reactor, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.  The plant would reportedly have a 1,000-megawatt capacity (Islamic Republic News Agency, Aug. 14).

The council also mentioned the potential development of a particle accelerator, Agence France-Presse reported (Agence France-Presse, Aug. 14).

Iranian nuclear chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said U.N. inspectors were allowed to visit a Tehran electric company last week, two months after they were turned away from the same site (Dareini, Associated Press).

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United States I:  Building Explodes at Minuteman 3 Motor Plant

Rocket fuel preparation activities have been halted at a California facility after an accidental explosion leveled a three-story building there last week.  The San Jose plant produces motors for rockets such as the Minuteman 3 ICBM, according to the San Jose Mercury News (see GSN, Aug. 8).

The explosion occurred during a routine mixing of 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of rocket fuel propellant, said Julie Anderson, a spokeswoman for United Technologies’ Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion Chemical Systems Division, which operates the plant.  Three employees were remotely operating the fuel mixing-equipment from a bunker about one-half mile from the explosion site, the Mercury News reported.

Safety measures at the plant helped to prevent fatalities, injuries or other structural damage from the explosion, Pratt & Whitney officials said.  The building exploded as it was designed to do so in the event of an accident, the company said (San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 8). 

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United States II:  Conservatives Outline Need for Low-Yield Warheads

Two conservative commentators this week called for the United States to build new “bunker-busting” nuclear weapons to help destroy weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Aug. 8).

In an opinion piece published yesterday in USA Today, former U.S. House Speaker House Newt Gingrich said the United States should develop low-yield nuclear weapons to have the capability to destroy deeply buried WMD facilities.

As tunneling technology continues to improve, rogue states such as Iran and North Korea will develop new ways to hide “weapons-of-mass-death” facilities beyond the range of conventional weapons, said Gingrich, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  Bunker-busting nuclear weapons would be able to penetrate deep underground to hit and destroy such facilities, he said.

Gingrich said existing nuclear warheads could not be used to destroy deep-buried targets.  New low-yield weapons could destroy such targets with only a minimum of collateral damage, as opposed to current warheads, he said.

In his piece, Gingrich also suggested that new low-yield nuclear warheads would go beyond the deterrence purposes of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“This would be a weapon designed to be used,” Gingrich said.  “It would not simply be a weapon of deterrence, as current nuclear weapons are,” he added (Newt Gingrich, USA Today/Yahoo!News, Aug. 14).

In a commentary released Monday, Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation also advocated developing low-yield nuclear weapons, saying such weapons would be especially effective against biological weapons.  While conventional munitions may be able to destroy a biological weapons facility, they also carry the risk of spreading biological agents, Spencer said.  A low-yield nuclear weapon would be able to both destroy the facility and incinerate biological agents, preventing their release, he said (see GSN, Aug. 11).

Spencer also called on Congress to increase funding for research into new nuclear weapons.  He noted the efforts in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to reduce such funding in the fiscal 2004 energy appropriations bill (see GSN, July 17).

“The Bush administration has requested essential levels of funding for feasibility studies that would begin to define the role that nuclear weapons should play in the 21st century,” Spencer said.  “Congress should meet, or exceed, those funding requests,” he added (Jack Spencer, Heritage Foundation release, Aug. 12).

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Iran:  U.N. Inspectors Conducting Environmental Studies

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are in Iran today to collect environmental samples, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Aug. 8).

The inspectors will collect water, air and soil samples, which will be sent to Vienna and tested for radioactive traces.  The IAEA is investigating U.S. allegations that Iran is secretly developing a nuclear weapon under the guise of a civilian energy program.

Inspectors conclude their work Thursday, and the testing results will be revealed in a Sept. 8 report from IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei (Agence France-Presse/Pakistan Business Recorder, Aug. 13).

A senior Iranian official, meanwhile, said he expects “positive” results by September over negotiations on the Additional Protocol to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA.  The protocol would allow the agency to conduct more intrusive monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities.

“We have had good negotiations with Mohamed ElBaradei and I believe it is possible that, before September, we will have positive results on this matter,” said the country’s nuclear chief, Gholamreza Aghazadeh.  “I think we will assuage international fears and in return, we expect (the international community) to stand by its commitments,” he added.

Aghazadeh said that last week’s visit by IAEA legal experts dealt with “significant” uncertainties, but “the discussions must continue” (Agence France-Presse/Space War, Aug. 13).

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United States:  Energy Department Might Not Release Disbanded Committee’s Report

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON ð— Weeks after the U.S. Energy Department’s nuclear weapons agency dismissed its independent expert advisory committee, the agency is now evaluating whether to release the principal report by that committee, officials said this week (see GSN, July 30).

“The options are you’ll either get the whole report or a sanitized version, or the report will be withheld as ‘Official Use Only,’” said an Energy Department official who asked not to be identified.

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s 15-member advisory committee finished a report on the agency’s activities this past spring.  The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that reports by such committees be made public.

NNSA officials have refused to release it so far, however, saying it is being scrutinized by the administration’s general counsel’s office.

“Apparently they’re giving it to someone who’s looking over every word.  They’ve brought a specialist in … a special lawyer with an extra large magnifying glass,” the official said.

NNSA’s defense programs office has recommended that the 35-page document be withheld on grounds that information contained in it is “dated” and “sensitive,” the official said.

The freezing of the report and NNSA’s recently reported decision to dissolve the committee in late June have drawn criticism from Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass).

U.S. law requires NNSA to “release copies of any reports, where possible, and send such copies to the Library of Congress,” he said in a July 29 statement.

“When [the committee members] submitted the report, they were originally told it would be publicly released.  Then it was immediately stamped ‘For Official Use Only.’  Now, some year and a half later, [NNSA is] finally deciding to do something about it and it’s undergoing a review from the general counsel’s office,” said Markey spokesman Benn Tannenbaum.

Department Seeks to “Close Itself Off”

Markey, in a July 29 letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, inquired why the report had not been released, why quarterly meetings of the committee ended in May 2002 and why the committee was dismissed in June through e-mail rather than through notification in the Federal Register as required by advisory committee act.

“The Advisory Committee was created under the auspices of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which means that Congress and the public must be kept informed about the activities — including disbanding — of the committee,” he wrote.

Markey added that the Energy Department has endorsed legislation passed by the House this year that would exempt it from the FACA requirements.

That, coupled with the dismissal of the committee, he wrote, “suggest that the Department of Energy is seeking to close itself off from any independent outside expert advice regarding its nuclear weapons programs.”

NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks would continue to receive advice from a three-member group called the Nuclear Weapons Council, which consists of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the undersecretary of energy for nuclear security.

“I am uncomfortable with this situation, as the NWC is composed entirely of government officials, and therefore is not really suited to perform the functions of a federal advisory committee,” Markey wrote.

He described the committee, appointed by former NNSA Administrator John Gordon, as “the one forum for honest, unbiased external review of its nuclear policies.”

Controversial Subjects

The committee’s charter required it to evaluate and make recommendations on NNSA activities, including assessments from a policy, performance and scientific perspective of programs, projects and facilities.

Committee members contacted said they did not recall anything particularly controversial about the report.

“I don’t think we were exactly trying to burn the house down or anything.  I think we were trying to work within the system and be constructive.  So I don’t think there is anything terribly earthshaking in the report,” said Ellen Williams, a University of Maryland physics professor.

The committee did, however, review two initiatives the Bush administration is advocating this year that have been politically controversial:  reducing the time needed to prepare for a nuclear test and the Advanced Concepts Initiative, which could include research and development on low-yield nuclear weapons for attacking bunkers and on warheads for destroying deeply buried chemical and biological weapons.

Committee member and University of California at Berkeley professor Raymond Jeanloz said the report, the final version of which he has not seen, might challenge some assumptions the administration has used to argue for those initiatives.

He said, for instance, while administration officials have urged reducing legal restrictions on research and development ostensibly to enable nuclear weapons designers to exercise their skills, the committee found that the initiative mainly involved using old designs.

“Either they’re really going to start working on advanced concepts that are really new designs, in which case it seems like they are pushing toward resumption of nuclear testing if we ever put those designs into stockpile.  Or, alternatively, this whole story about how we need advanced concepts to exercise the creativity of our designers is really a sham,” he said.

Jeanloz said further that the preparation time for resuming nuclear tests was found to be not a question of physical readiness, but rather of diagnosing a suspected problem and developing a test to deal with it.

The committee was told by the national nuclear laboratories that “the nation would be able to perform a test in 3 to 6 months” if the goal was simply to produce an explosion, he said.

“From the labs’ point of view, until they know why they would have to have a test to address some hypothetical technical problem, they don’t know how long it would take them.  So this whole business of a three-year, or a one-and-a-half year, or a half-year delay before they can test is incredibly artificial,” he said.

Jeanloz and other committee members said they have not yet concluded that the NNSA’s delay indicates an attempt to suppress the results of the report.

“I don’t think NNSA is trying to bury things right now.  I think they’re confused, and in a state of confusion, they can end up doing what I think would hurt them in the long run, which is not to release this whole thing,” Jeanloz said.

“At this point, one can say either they are trying to do something illegal or they are just being slow and not being very responsive because that’s their nature.  I just don’t know,” said Sidney Drell, a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University.

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North Korea:  Washington Might Offer Economic Concessions

Washington might offer economic concessions to North Korea if Pyongyang abandons its nuclear weapons ambitions, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Aug. 12).

The economic assistance would only arrive after North Korea scrapped its nuclear weapons program, according to a Bush administration official.

“There’s no such thing as you-do-this and suddenly Ed McMahon shows up with a check for $10 billion,” the official added.

The United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia are scheduled to meet in Beijing Aug. 27 to 29 for talks on defusing the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

“There are a lot of ideas being discussed,” said an Asian diplomat.  “The question is how they will be packaged, and in what sequence.  The United States clearly wants its concerns addressed at an early stage, while the North Koreans want their concerns addressed at an early stage,” the diplomat added (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Aug. 13).

North Korea demanded a nonaggression pact from the United States and said it would not agree to an early inspection of its nuclear facilities.

“It is clear that as long as the U.S. insists on its hostile policy toward the D.P.R.K., the latter will not abandon its nuclear deterrent force,” a North Korean spokesman said.  “An ‘earlier inspection’ is impossible and unthinkable before the U.S. abandons its hostile policy against the D.P.R.K.,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 13).

Russian officials, meanwhile, held negotiations with North and South Korean diplomats today to prepare for the late August talks.

“We are counting on finding out about the moods of Pyongyang and Seoul and the ideas they intend to put forward,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.  “In a way Moscow is in a better position to do this, since we conduct regular contacts with North Korea,” he added (Steve Gutterman, Associated Press, Aug. 13).

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CTBT:  Palau Signs Treaty

Palau signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty yesterday, according to the CTBT Organization (see GSN, Aug. 11).  To date, 168 nations have signed the treaty and 104 have ratified it, including 32 of the 44 nations whose ratifications are necessary for the treaty to enter into force (CTBT Organization, Aug. 13).

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North Korea:  Diplomats to Meet Ahead of North Korea Talks

As they prepare for six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis, U.S. diplomats will host South Korean and Japanese envoys in Washington tomorrow (see GSN, Aug. 11).

The preliminary talks are expected to take place tomorrow and Thursday, according to State Department spokesman Philip Reeker.  The six-way talks are scheduled to begin later this month, perhaps Aug. 26 or 27 (BBC online, Aug. 13).

During the three-nation talks this week, diplomats are discussing how to convey their positions to North Korea most effectively.

“It is still undecided whether the three nations will make a joint proposal or go to the (multilateral) talks with individual offers.  This will be determined in Washington this time,” said South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck (Seo Hyun-jin, Korea Herald, Aug. 12).

Bolton Will Not Attend

After angering Pyongyang recently with harsh criticisms of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, top U.S. arms control official John Bolton will not take part in the negotiations, Reuters reported today.  U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said, however, that many in Washington supported Bolton’s comments.

“Mr. Bolton was not scheduled and will not be participating in these talks,” Armitage said (Michelle Nichols, Reuters, Aug. 12).

China, meanwhile, announced its support for a Russian plan to guarantee North Korea’s security in exchange for Pyongyang scrapping its nuclear weapons program.  Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov met in Beijing Monday (Kyodo News Agency, Aug. 12).

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Iraq:  United States Shuts Down Iraqi Nuclear Agency

U.S. officials Saturday shut down the Iraqi Nuclear Energy Organization, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (see related GSN story, today).

As a replacement, the United States has established the Iraqi Science and Technology Ministry, IRNA reported.  The ministry will be headed by former Iraqi nuclear scientist Khidhr Hamza, who defected to the United States in 1990 (see GSN, April 15; Islamic Republic News Agency, Aug. 10).

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United States:  Los Alamos Workers Contaminated

Two workers at the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have suffered skin contamination and might have inhaled plutonium-238, Energy Daily reported today (see GSN, July 23).

The incident occurred Aug. 5 as the workers were taking inventory of older plutonium cans at the Los Alamos facility.  The laboratory disclosed the situation Friday.

Officials said they have not yet discovered the source of the leak that caused the contamination, but plutonium-238 is so fine that even small defects in the plutonium containers could allow a release, Energy Daily reported.

Testing revealed contamination on the head of one worker and on the head, neck and shoulders of another worker.  Both also had nasal contamination, which indicates that they might have inhaled the plutonium (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, Aug. 12).

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North Korea:  Three-Day Nuclear Talks Set to Begin Aug. 25

Six-nation talks to defuse the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula are scheduled to begin Aug. 25 and to last three days, the Sydney Morning Herald reported today (see GSN, Aug. 8).

The talks will also involve more senior officials than those who took part in an inconclusive April meeting, according to Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi.  The talks are not expected to produce an immediate solution to the crisis, the Morning Herald reported.

The negotiations are “just a beginning,” according to Chinese President Hu Jintao (Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 11).

Meanwhile, Russia will hold talks with North and South Korea in Moscow this week, according to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov.

“The consultations will begin literally the day after tomorrow,” Losyukov said yesterday.  “We are working on the possibility of conducting a similar meeting with Japan in the near future,” he added (Reuters/Pakistan Business Recorder, Aug. 11).

Another senior Russian official dismissed reports that North Korea agreed to multilateral talks only after receiving assurances they would be allowed to meet with U.S. diplomats directly.

“The North Korean side has put forward no conditions, and to my understanding Pyongyang is interested exactly in six-way talks,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov (Reuters/Planet Ark, Aug. 8).

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United States I:  Nuclear “Bunker Busters” May Disperse WMD Agents, Not Destroy Them, Expert Says

By Shawn M. Schmitt
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — An explosion caused by low-yield nuclear “bunker-busting” devices meant to destroy deeply buried chemical and biological weapons would probably not sterilize those agents, but rather would disperse them into the surrounding environment, a Council on Foreign Relations expert said recently (see GSN, Aug. 8).

According to Robert Nelson, senior fellow in science and technology at the council, a nuclear weapon used to attack an underground storage facility would not emit enough heat to properly destroy all the chemical or biological agents that may be stored there.  Because low-yield nuclear weapons would probably need to bore through several feet of solid rock to reach their target, the surrounding earth would simply absorb much of the heat from the nuclear explosion.

The U.S. understanding of the heat produced by nuclear explosions was developed during Cold War-era atmospheric nuclear tests, Nelson said, and many low-yield weapon development advocates may be under a false impression that an underground explosion would produce the amount of heat necessary to disarm the hazardous weapons.

This year, the Bush administration has asked Congress to lift a 1994 ban to allow the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, those with yields below five kilotons.

“The scenarios for bunker busting [and] agent defeat that proponents use to justify new weapons are either ineffective, or only marginally more effective, than conventional alternatives,” said Nelson, who has written a paper on the topic that will be published in the journal Science & Global Security.  “Using a nuclear weapon to destroy CBW [chemical and biological weapons], for example, is more likely to disperse active agent into the environment,” he added.

The U.S. military’s precision-guided weaponry won’t help either, Nelson claimed.  Even the most technologically advanced missiles would still have to hit any chemical and biological weapon cache head-on, with little room for error.

According to Nelson, even if a bunker buster missed its target by only a few feet, there would be a strong possibility that the targeted agents could be released.  The chances for success are decreased even further, Nelson said, when one further considers the uncertainty of military intelligence and the possibility of an enemy routinely shifting the location of its underground stockpiles.

In addition, Nelson noted, the fallout from a low-yield explosion could produce devastating effects and could contaminate civilians and members of the U.S. military in the theater with radiation or dispersed WMD agents.

“Everyone seems to agree that earth-penetrating weapons would produce a lot of fallout,” he said.  “I was surprised at the agent-defeat scenario.  My intuition was wrong like everyone else:  I assumed the heat would sterilize the germs.  But our intuition based on air explosions like the Hiroshima weapon is just wrong when you detonate below ground, where the density of dirt is 2,000 times higher than air.

“There just isn’t enough heat available to sterilize more than a few percent of the material ejected from the crater,” Nelson added.

Nelson said the best way to ensure that chemical and biological agents are properly secured is to seal off the site and sterilize the weapons using conventional means.

“If they are buried underground, the best thing to do is to leave [them] there” until military crews can safely disarm them, he said.

Nelson released his findings during a recent press conference to launch the new book Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Emergent Threats in an Evolving Security Environment, to which he contributed a chapter that focused on the low-yield nuclear issue.  Nelson said officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration are aware of his pending paper, but they plan to conduct their own study.

Resumed Testing Could Answer Questions

Heritage Foundation Fellow Baker Spring said Nelson’s assertions may very well prove true, and the United States could only learn for certain if it resumed nuclear testing.

Nelson said he isn’t opposed to “conceptual” work inside laboratories, but he opposes a U.S. return to explosive testing or the deployment of new weapons.

“By returning to new weapon development and/or testing, the United States would signal that it is still interested in finding new uses for nuclear weapons — especially low-yield tactical or battlefield weapons to be used in Third World conflicts,” he said, noting that various countries may decide to counter the perceived threat from the United States by building and testing their own weapons.

“Russia and China would likely test if the U.S. tests,” Nelson said.  “Russia is also more dependent now on its nuclear forces given that NATO has such conventional superiority.  A renewed U.S. program would give ammunition in Russia and China to their nuclear proponents who wish to develop new weapons of their own,” he said.

Spring, however, said he suspects Nelson’s research is a political work disguised as a scientific study.

Nelson’s technical argument “asserts the ineffectiveness of the weapon prior to testing it,” Spring said.  “Dr. Nelson may well be right.  He believes strongly in his position, so he should have no fear of being proven wrong by the testing program.  Indeed, I suspect he does not fear being proven wrong.  I suspect what he fears is that the testing program itself has policy implications he dislikes,” he added.

“Though I have a different view in this case, there is nothing wrong with Dr. Nelson arguing for a particular policy.  What is wrong is to hide policy arguments behind technological arguments and use the supposedly unassailable technological arguments to imply that all informed and reasonable people must agree to support the same policy position,” Spring said.  Unless direct and compelling policy arguments against undertaking development and testing of this class of weapons are made, it is my view that the program should go forward.”

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Japan:  Taboo Eases on Discussing Nuclear Weapon Possession

The Japanese taboo of discussing the development of nuclear weapons is disappearing, the Associated Press reported Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 20).

“People are clearly waking up to the idea,” said opposition lawmaker Shingo Nishimura, who was forced to step down in 1999 as vice minister for defense after he suggested that Japan should consider acquiring nuclear weapons.

Senior ruling party officials Yasuo Fukuda and Shintaro Abe have suggested this year that Tokyo consider the nuclear option, AP reported.

“Japan must start saying right now that it might go nuclear,” said Tadae Takubo, a professor of policy at Kyorin University.  “For a nation to entirely forsake nuclear weapons is like taking part in a boxing match and promising not to throw hooks,” Takubo added.

While the discussion of nuclear weapons is becoming more acceptable, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Japan will not seek a nuclear capability.

“Our country’s stance on this will not change,” he said.  “We will do our utmost to advance the call for smaller nuclear arsenals and nuclear nonproliferation while working toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons,” Koizumi added (Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press/Boston Globe, Aug. 9).

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Russia:  Moscow to Begin Testing Bulava SLBM in 2004

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Col. Gen. Alexei Moskovsky has said Russia plans to begin testing the new Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile next year, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported today (see GSN, Aug. 7).

Russia is set to begin testing the Bulava SLBM in 2004 on a Typhoon-class submarine, Moskovsky said.  The missile is then set to be installed on three Borey-class submarines, which are scheduled to be operational by 2010, he said. 

Each Borey-class submarine will be armed with 12 Bulavas, Russian defense industry sources said.  Each Bulava, designed to have a range of more than 8,300 kilometers, is expected to be equipped with multiple warheads, according to Jane’s.

The Borey-class submarine has a displacement of 17,000 tons, measures 170 meters in length and has a crew of 130, Jane’s reported.  The submarine is equipped with both a nuclear reactor for high speeds and a low-noise electric engine.  The submarine is also equipped with the latest in underwater noise reduction measures, project officials said (Nikolai Novichkov, Jane’s Defense Weekly, Aug. 13).

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United States II:  GAO Finds Management Problems With Stockpile Maintenance

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Congressional auditors have found budgeting, cost accounting and management problems associated with a U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration program to extend the operational life of U.S. nuclear weapons, according to a U.S. General Accounting Office report released Friday (see GSN, Aug. 5).

In 1996, the U.S. Energy Department created the Stockpile Life Extension Program, which is now conducted by the NNSA’s Office of Defense Programs.  The purpose of the program is to use a standardized approach to refurbish nuclear weapons to extend their operational life. 

As of May, three types of nuclear weapons were undergoing research activities in advance of their refurbishment — the W-80 warhead, the B-61 bomb and the W-76 warhead, according to the report.  The W-80 is intended for use on a cruise missile launched from an attack submarine or B-52 bomber and is scheduled to begin refurbishment in February 2006.  The B-61 bomb is designed to be carried on the B-52 and B-2 bombers and is expected to begin refurbishment in June 2006.  The W-76 warhead is designed to be used on the Trident 2 submarine-launched ballistic missile and is scheduled to begin refurbishment in September 2007.

In its report, the GAO said there are opportunities to improve the budgeting, accounting and management of the stockpile extension program.  The report also says that NNSA officials agreed with the need to improve the management of the program.

The GAO found the NNSA budget for the stockpile extension program to be neither comprehensive nor reliable, the report says.  For example, the NNSA fiscal 2003 budget for the program was developed by broad function, such as research and development activities, instead of by an individual weapon system or program, such as the stockpile extension program, it says. 

The report did find, however, that the NNSA has begun to create a more comprehensive picture of the stockpile extension program for fiscal 2004.  In its fiscal 2004 budget, the NNSA attributed a larger portion, but not all, of life-extension work to the stockpile extension program, the report says.  It recommends that the NNSA further improve budgeting procedures associated with the stockpile extension program by including it as a formal section in the overall NNSA budget submission.

The NNSA also lacks a system for tracking refurbishment costs, according to the report.  It says that the NNSA has yet to create a cost accounting system that provides full costs of refurbishment activities.  Instead, the NNSA has several systems to track various portions of refurbishment costs, but these are used for various purposes and cannot be reconciled with each other, the report says, adding that the NNSA administrator should improve cost accounting procedures associated with the stockpile extension program.

In addition, there are other management concerns related to the planning, organization and oversight of cost and schedule factors for the stockpile extension program, the report says.  For example, the NSSA has yet to prioritize the stockpile extension program among other Office of Defense Program activities or to prioritize the various refurbishment activities, it says.  The report also says that the NNSA lacks an adequate process to report cost and schedule changes against established baselines.  The GAO has recommended that the NNSA begin improving specific management-related activities associated with the program.

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CTBT:  Kyrgyzstan Ratifies Treaty

Kyrgyzstan has ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced last week (see GSN, July 23).

In a statement released Aug. 6, the ministry praised Kyrgyzstan’s decision to ratify the CTBT, saying the move was “another step toward ensuring the universal nature of this treaty, which is one of the important tasks facing the international community now” (Russian Foreign Ministry release, Aug. 6).

When Kyrgyzstan submits its ratification to the United Nations, it will become the 105th party to the treaty.  Kyrgyzstan is not one of the 44 nations that must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force.  Of those 44 nations, 32 have ratified the treaty (CTBT Organization).

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