The US Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure and a Stable Global Regime for Nuclear Weapons

To assure stability of any future global regime for nuclear arms, it will be crucial to configure nations’ weapon production infrastructures so that, when tensions among nations or in the overall world situation increase, there will be less risk from nuclear arms races – rapid, competitive production or reconstitution of larger arsenals. Of course, weapon development and production capabilities are central to the proliferation problem, and so-called “latent” weapons (weapons that do not exist, but could be built) and “latent proliferation” will be the central concern in a regime with very small inventories of weapons. To reinforce and complement stable relationships among existing and future arsenals, the responsiveness of weapon infrastructures should be balanced between responsiveness and restraint, and production facilities and operations configured for transparency and verification. Responsiveness should not be so limited that potential adversaries are tempted to “steal a march”, or that technical or deterrence problems go unresolved. But infrastructures should not be so responsive that arsenals can be increased rapidly – thereby undermining stability and, in effect, reversing the course of arms reductions. In striking the right balance, adequate transparency and monitoring can assure nervous neighbors or peers that their own similarly limited production capacities and small inventories are a sufficient hedge. As the US builds badly needed replacement facilities for production and refurbishment of plutonium pits and HEU components, the planned capacities seem to us to provide adequate but not undue responsiveness. However, there is an opportunity for explicit provision for transparency and future arms control monitoring in these facilities’ designs. A “reversibility” problem not so easily addressed is capability for rapid reassembly of partially disassembled and stored weapon components. Currently there are large inventories of components and large capacities for reassembly in both the US and Russia. (In the US, this has been due, in part, to the lack of dependable manufacture for plutonium and enriched uranium components.) Further arms reductions will raise the need for renewed attention to limits on and transparency and monitoring measures for weapons component storage and reassembly.