Year
2010
Abstract
The verified elimination of nuclear weapons will require new thinking by policymakers, military planners, and technical specialists. The methods, technology, and procedures envisioned today for verification must begin receiving much more critical review and assessment. Some of these may be found wanting. New methods and procedures may need to be devised to help solve some specific issues. For example, it may not prove feasible to keep protected from disclosure all that is considered classified and sensitive if we are to truly be successful in overcoming some of the more difficult verification problems. And probably the best, though not the least expensive approach to verified dismantlement in any of the nuclear weapons states is to build (or have built by an international organization) a special new, aboveground dismantlement facility of a design that is acceptable to the other weapons states and to all others involved in monitoring or having a stake in monitoring. Such an investment not only would simplify monitoring but also would help minimize the myriad of potential problems and impacts to other legitimate defense and homeland security activities. Specific areas that are identified as needing further work include refinement of inspection methods such as offered by radiation-based template matching for better warhead type-class differentiation while still protecting sensitive design information. Independent validation and protection of reference radiation signature template data is a pivotal problem. The possibility that nonnuclear warhead signature approaches might exist that inherently protect important warhead design information while at the same time solve certain verification problems needs considerably more attention as well. It would prove very useful if nuclear archeology techniques are explored as a way to validate both production and disposition declarations of nuclear explosive device material and items, to the same degree of efficacy that has been demonstrated for plutonium production reactor history. New, very high security unique identifiers, extending national laboratory work from the START era, for tagging and sealing warhead items and containers needs to be undertaken, focusing on active devices utilizing cryptographic keys for authentication. Similarly, cryptographic methods to facilitate warhead counting— that is, data exchanges on warhead types and locations—need to be devised and independently assessed. And while there has been excellent research success in the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom in the area of radiation-based measurement systems integrated with information barriers, the authentication of such systems (and the associated data from them) under the rigorous demands of deeper reductions has received inadequate attention. To protect state secrets, it is presumed that there will be great resistance by any of the nuclear weapons states to allow an inspectorate to use any such equipment without inspected country certification or to allow the removal of this equipment from the country once it has been used on a warhead item. The development of essentially invulnerable authentication methods and procedures is an area of great concern and needs focused attention, including the possibility of establishing national authentication authorities to advise heads of state as they eliminate their nuclear arsenals. These issues are covered in greater detail in reference 1.