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Introduction: Overview
![[ click here for larger photo ]](../../../images/cnwmphoto_overview1_sm.jpg) A terrorist nuclear bomb could multiply the devastation of September 11 manyfold. |
The possibility that nuclear weapons and materials could be stolen and fall into the hands of terrorists or hostile states poses an urgent danger to U.S. and world security. Fortunately, concrete steps are available which could greatly reduce the danger. As former Senator Sam Nunn has said, "terrorists are racing to get weapons of mass destruction. We need to be racing to stop them." |
A comprehensive program to:
- secure and account for the world’s nuclear stockpiles;
- detect and block nuclear smuggling;
- shrink oversized nuclear complexes and re-employ weapons scientists and technicians who are no longer needed (to relieve the desperation that might tempt someone to sell nuclear materials or nuclear knowledge);
- monitor these dangerous stockpiles;
- end further production of potential bomb material; and
- reduce the vast stockpiles of bomb material built up over the decades of the Cold War,
would have an excellent chance of preventing terrorists from ever getting a nuclear bomb or the means to make one, and of stopping hostile states from following this route to the bomb. Because these nuclear stockpiles exist in states all over the world, this is a threat that can only be addressed through cooperation on a global scale — it cannot be solved through forces of arms, or through improved defenses alone.
This section provides:
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Issue Summary: A brief summary of the global problem of controlling nuclear warheads and materials, including the threat the world now faces, what is now being done to reduce the threat, and the next steps that are urgently needed. |
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Blocking the Terrorist Pathway to the Bomb: By walking through the conceptual steps a terrorist group would need to undertake to launch a nuclear attack, this page provides an analytical framework for considering the kinds of actions needed to prevent such nuclear terrorism. |
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Funding Summary: A summary of what the U.S. government is spending (and has spent in the past) on international cooperative efforts to control warheads and fissile materials. This also describes “what’s in and what’s out” of the different budget categories we use, and provides an introduction to our comprehensive cooperative threat reduction budget database and how to use it to generate your own budget tables. |
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Legislative Summary : A summary of recent U.S. legislative action on the issue. |
Links
| Securing the Bomb Reports | |
|
Matthew Bunn and Anthony
Wier, Securing
the Bomb 2006 (Cambridge, Mass. and Washington,
D.C.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University,
and Nuclear Threat Initiative, July 2006). Download 1.7M PDF |
| The latest report in our series 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. | |
|
Matthew Bunn and Anthony
Wier, Securing the Bomb 2005:
The New Global Imperatives (Cambridge, Mass.
and Washington, D.C.: Project on Managing the Atom,
Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative,
May 2005). Download 1.9M PDF |
| 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. | |
|
Matthew Bunn and Anthony
Wier, Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action (Cambridge,
Mass. and Washington, D.C.: Project on Managing the
Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative,
May 2004). Download 1.2 M PDF |
| 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. | |
|
Matthew Bunn, Anthony Wier, and John P. Holdren, Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, March 2003). |
| A new 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. | |
|
Matthew Bunn,
John P. Holdren, and Anthony Wier, Securing Nuclear
Warheads and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action
(Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the
Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, May
2002). Download 528K PDF |
| Describes the urgent global threat posed by insecure nuclear weapons and weapons materials that might be stolen and fall into the hands of terrorist groups, and recommends seven specific steps to reduce the threat. | |
| Key Resources | |
|
President George W. Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin, "Joint Statement by U.S. President George Bush and Russian Federation President V.V. Putin Announcing the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism" (St. Petersburg, Russia: The White House, July 2006). |
| On July 15, 2006, U.S. President Bush and Russian President Putin announced the formation of a Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism at their bilateral meeting at the G8 Summit meeting in St. Petersburg. The joint statement and a fact sheet are available at the White House page on the G8 summit. Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph explained the initiative in greater detail in July 2006 speech, while the State Department has more coverage of the initiative. | |
|
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Security Council, 2006). |
| Arguing that the "proliferation of nuclear weapons poses the greatest threat to our national security," because "nuclear weapons are unique in their capacity to inflict instant loss of life on a massive scale," this document outlines, among other matters, the steps the Bush administration plans to take to address that threat. In 2002 the White House released a National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (413 K PDF) | |
|
Executive Office of the
President, Plan for Securing Nuclear Weapons, Material,
and Expertise of the States of the Former Soviet Union (Washington,
D.C., March 2003). Download 578K PDF |
| Section 1205 of Public Law 107-107, the FY 2002 Defense Authorization Act, required the President, in consultation with all the relevant agencies, to submit to Congress the administration's plan for securing nuclear weapons, material and expertise. The plan organizes the various related U.S. programs by functions rather than by agencies (as with this web section). It provides a program description, a summary of accomplishments and key milestones, an analysis of the program's future and its exit strategy, and a summary of recent funding. | |
|
9/11 Public Discourse
Project, "Report on the Status of 9/11 Commission
Recommendations: Part III: Foreign Policy, Public Diplomacy,
and Nonproliferation" (Washington, D.C.: 9/11
Public Discourse Project, 2005). Download 196K PDF |
| Update on progress made since the 9/11 Commission issued its initial report (available here) which stated that preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction warrants "a maximum effort." The former members of the 9/11 Commission concluded that "insufficient progress" had been made in the year since their report. | |
|
Charles D. Ferguson, William C. Potter,
and Leonard S. Spector (with Amy Sands, and Fred
L. Wehling), The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism (Monterey,
Cal.: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey
Institute of International Studies, 2004) Download 3.0M PDF |
| Monterey's Center for Nonproliferation Studies looks in detail at potential motivations for nuclear terrorism, and considers four types of nuclear-related terrorist attack: the use of a stolen nuclear weapon, the use of a crude nuclear bomb terrorists might make themselves from weapons-usable nuclear material, sabotage of a major nuclear facility, or dipersal of radioactive material in a so-called "dirty bomb." | |
| Further Reading | |
|
Christopher F. Chyba, Hal Feiveson,
and Frank Von Hippel, Preventing Nuclear Proliferation
and Terrorism: Essential Steps to Reduce the Availability
of Nuclear-Explosive Materials (Palo Alto, Cal.:
Center for International Security and Cooperation,
Stanford Institute for International Studies, Stanford
University and Program on Science and Global Security,
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
Princeton University, 2005) Download 2.3M PDF |
| Report proposing measures to strengthen international security standards on the storage and transport of fissile materials; to stop the spread of facilities capable of producing fissile materials (reprocessing and enrichment plants); to end verifiably the production of fissile material for weapons; dispose of excess weapons and civilian fissile materials; and to phase out the use of HEU as a reactor fuel. | |
|
Brian Finlay and Andrew Grotto, The
Race to Secure Russia's Loose Nukes: Progress Since
9/11 (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center and
the Center for American Progress, September 2005). Download 1.2M PDF |
| This report "assesses progress by the U.S. government on implementing the recommendations of the Baker-Cutler Task Force’s 2001 report." It finds that "the United States has failed to dramatically hasten efforts" since the 2001 report. | |
|
Howard Baker and Lloyd
Cutler (co-chairs), A Report Card on the Department
of Energy’s Nonproliferation Programs with Russia (Washington,
D.C.: The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, United
States Department of Energy, January 10, 2001). Download 4.5M PDF |
| A distinguished bipartisan panel concludes that "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states," and calls for a drastic increase in funding for addressing this threat, with the appointment of a high-level official responsible for developing and implementing a strategic plan to address the problem within 8-10 years. | |
|
National Research Council,
Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism,
“Nuclear and Radiological Threats,” in Making the
Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in
Countering Terrorism (Washington, D.C.: National
Academies Press, June 2002). Download 299K PDF |
| This report, released on June 25, 2002, warns that a "technically competent" terrorist group would be able to make a nuclear bomb from stolen plutonium or HEU, and concludes that "the first challenge, then, for the United States and its allies is to improve security for weapons and special nuclear material wherever they exist, but especially in Russia." | |
|
Matthew Bunn, The Next
Wave: Urgently Needed New Steps to Control Warheads
and Fissile Material (Washington, D.C. and Cambridge,
Mass.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and
the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University,
2000). Download 10.5M PDF |
| A comprehensive discussion of the threat of nuclear theft in the former Soviet Union, what is being done to address the threat now, and what should be done to reduce these threats to international security as rapidly as possible. | |
Written by Matthew Bunn.
Last updated by Anthony Wier on August 1, 2006.
The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.