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Scene from
docudrama
Last
Best Chance.
President meeting with cabinet to discuss a nuclear terrorism
threat. |
Previous chapters have shown that while it would not be easy for terrorists to gain access to nuclear weapons or the materials needed to make them, the threat is real and the potential consequences of a nuclear terror attack are devastating. With this threat in mind, governments and international organizations are making efforts to develop a global infrastructure for preventing nuclear terrorism. While progress has been made toward this goal, most experts agree that accelerated action is needed in a number of areas.
A comprehensive response to nuclear terror threats requires a multi-track approach that both
pursues the terrorist organizations that might seek to use nuclear weapons and blocks the pathways they might use to acquire and detonate them. Acquiring intact nuclear weapons or acquiring fissile material and constructing an improvised nuclear device (IND) are very difficult undertakings. Moreover, only the most radical politico-religious or apocalyptic groups would be motivated to use nuclear explosives to cause mass casualties and destruction. Maintaining global counterterrorism efforts focused on weakening and neutralizing those few terrorist organizations that might be both motivated and capable of employing nuclear weapons or INDs is thus a crucial component of any strategy for combating nuclear terrorism.
At the same time, political instruments, diplomatic incentives, and economic sanctions can also be used to persuade groups not to resort to terrorism or to discourage states from supporting terrorists. The successful use of all these instruments requires cooperation among nations and international organizations, coordination among government agencies, and education to engage communities and individuals in a global effort to combat terrorism.
The success of such efforts, however, will always be uncertain because terrorist organizations are extremely secretive and thus difficult to target and uproot. This reinforces the importance of pursing a parallel strategy of blocking access to nuclear capabilities.
The key elements of this strategy are to protect, consolidate, reduce, and, where possible, eliminate nuclear weapons and fissile materials so as to keep them out of the hands of terrorists. This means:
• enhancing the protection of nuclear weapons and fissile material wherever they exist: where they are produced, manufactured or processed, transported, and deployed or used;
• consolidating nuclear weapons and fissile materials into as few locations as possible to simplify the task of protecting them;
• reducing existing stocks of nuclear weapons and fissile materials, while halting new production; and
• eliminating existing stocks of nuclear weapons and fissile materials, wherever possible.
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Scene from
docudrama
Last
Best Chance.
President and an advisor deliberating about an impending act of
nuclear terrorism. |
Making this program work requires a wide range of approaches, from financial and technical assistance programs, to implementing international treaties. It also requires adapting these efforts to the conditions in particular countries.
This chapter of the tutorial will survey the current status and future directions of programs and initiatives designed to accomplish these objectives. Specifically it will examine:
- protecting, consolidating, reducing, and eliminating stocks of nuclear weapons;
- protecting, consolidating, reducing, and eliminating stocks of fissile materials;
- ending civilian commerce in HEU through the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, and related efforts;
- strengthening international tools for securing nuclear weapons and fissile materials; and
- the next line of defense, blocking terrorist use of nuclear weapons or fissile materials.
In this chapter, we focus on programs and initiatives that address the threats stemming from HEU, rather than from plutonium. As former Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) have observed [Ferguson and Potter, The Four Faces of Nuclear Terrorism (Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2004)], the priority should be to secure, consolidate, and eliminate HEU, while maintaining rigorous security around plutonium. This point was reiterated by a U.S. government official from DOE’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative who said that HEU fuel at research reactors is the “most attractive material” for theft by terrorists and is often at “the most vulnerable facilities.” HEU is “much easier for terrorists to use” than plutonium, according to the official. While one can't entirely discount the possibility that a sophisticated and well-financed non-state actor could produce a plutonium-fueled device, the technical obstacles are substantial.
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