Nuclear verification

Working paper submitted by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

– The ability to verify that States are not testing nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

– The ability to verify that States are not producing fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

– The ability to verify reductions and dismantlement of nuclear weapons and warheads in any State that might have produced or otherwise acquired them, and disposition of the fissile material arising.

2. The first of these areas is addressed by the verification arrangements established by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and in particular its International Monitoring System, and by national technical means such as national civil seismological monitoring networks.

3. For non-nuclear-weapon States the second of these areas is addressed by the international safeguards system operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including the Additional Protocol, and by regional organizations such as the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM). In addition, among the nuclear-weapon States, all civil enrichment and reprocessing facilities in the United Kingdom and France are safeguarded by EURATOM and liable to inspection by IAEA. Neither country has any remaining dedicated defence facilities for production of plutonium or high enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Since 1995, there has been international consensus to negotiate a multilateral, internationally and effectively verifiable treaty to ban production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices as a priority. This will establish the necessary verification arrangements to provide confidence that no nuclear-weapon State or any other State currently operating unsafeguarded enrichment or reprocessing facilities is producing fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

4. There are, however, no existing multilateral or international verification arrangements covering the reduction, elimination and dismantlement of nuclear weapons and the ultimate disposition of the fissile material they contain. Developing effective verification capabilities and arrangements in this area will be critical to sustaining systematic progress towards achieving reductions in nuclear weapons and their eventual elimination. Bilateral and multilateral arrangements on nuclear weapons require a very high degree of confidence that all participants are complying with their obligations, but the obligations of article I of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons will impose stronger constraints on the ability of non-nuclear-weapon States and international organizations to participate in verification activity related directly to nuclear weapons and their components, as compared to verification of fissile material holdings, production and disposition. Verification of nuclear reductions and nuclear elimination is nevertheless clearly an area where all States have an interest in the development of further national and international capabilities as an essential contribution to the process of nuclear disarmament.

5. Work relevant to these issues is taking place. The United States of America has an extensive national nuclear verification research programme in its national laboratories. The United Kingdom has established a similar, smaller, programme. The United States/Russian Federation/IAEA Trilateral Initiative is examining ways and means to provide international verification that United States and Russian fissile material declared surplus to defence requirements is not diverted to further military use. The United States and the Russian Federation have also undertaken in the context of negotiations on a START III treaty to consider measures relating to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads and any other jointly agreed technical and organizational measures to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions, including prevention of a rapid increase in the number of warheads. These programmes and commitments are a welcome development, and a firm indication of commitment to systematic and progressive efforts to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons.

6. Highly intrusive verification will be less critical to the success of nuclear reduction agreements, while some nuclear weapons continue to exist as protection against potential non-compliance. But as stockpiles of nuclear weapons are reduced towards very small numbers and confidence in full compliance becomes more essential, verification requirements are likely to become increasingly rigorous. In particular, intrusive physical access to facilities and greater transparency of design information will become increasingly important. National technical means to detect undeclared facilities and materials will also have a role to play. The eventual achievement of the global elimination of nuclear weapons will require the development of extremely rigorous verification arrangements in order to provide the very high level of confidence and assurance that will be necessary. In particular, assurance would be needed that a warhead had entered the verification regime, and a continuity of knowledge would thereafter need to be maintained to ensure that no subsequent substitution of materials could take place without being discovered. However, no conceivable verification regime is likely to be able to provide an absolute guarantee of full compliance. Political acceptance of some level of risk, albeit as small as possible, will almost certainly be necessary.

7. There are three clear conceptual areas of verification for reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons:

– Authentication of warheads and their components;

– Dismantlement of warheads and their components;

– Disposition of the fissile material arising, to ensure irreversibly that it can no longer be used in nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Authentication

8. Authentication of individual warheads and their components will be crucial to any nuclear reduction and elimination verification arrangements. Verifying a warhead and then maintaining an appropriate continuity of knowledge through to its dismantlement and the ultimate disposition of the material it contains will be one of the most technically challenging verification issues to resolve. However, it also raises the fundamental issue that any verification arrangements must provide viable verification without compromising national security or proliferation sensitive design information that would fall within the obligations of article I of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any technical measurements will provide some degree of design information, and authentication will require access to a range of information in order to make a credible assessment. It is at present far from clear how the nuclear-weapon States obligations under article I can be reconciled with the likely eventual requirement for an international verification organization to be able to draw independent conclusions. This is an area likely to require considerable further political, scientific and technical consideration. Some of the work currently under way in the United States/Russian Federation/IAEA Trilateral Initiative may have potential to contribute here.

9. Verification of dismantlement will be necessary where an authenticated warhead is required to be dismantled under a bilateral or multilateral reduction and elimination agreement. Verification of this process will raise article I complications similar to those arising in the authentication process. A dismantlement process is likely to have several stages, including separation and separate storage of the warhead from its delivery vehicle, disassembly of the warhead and separation of the high explosive from the fissile material, and changing the fissile material components so that they would require significant remanufacture before they could be reused. The United States and the Russian Federation have undertaken in the context of negotiations on a START III treaty to consider measures relating to the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads. The conclusions they reach in the course of these considerations will clearly be significant in this area.

10. The elimination of nuclear weapons will require that all fissile material produced for nuclear weapons should be placed under international safeguards. This is recognized in paragraph 13 of the 1995 decision entitled Principles and objectives for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Insofar as is possible, the nuclear-weapon States, and those other States that have produced fissile material outside international safeguards, will therefore need to account for the material they have produced. This contributes to the process of nuclear disarmament by developing confidence that as States reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons, they have not retained concealed stocks of fissile material outside international supervision with which to construct nuclear weapons clandestinely. Such accounting was crucial to the initial verification by IAEA of the comprehensive safeguards agreement signed by South Africa when it eliminated its nuclear-weapons programme and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon State. The United States has produced a comprehensive report on its production of plutonium for defence purposes, and is working on a similar study on its production of high enriched uranium. The United Kingdom is conducting a similar programme, and has just published figures on plutonium transferred to AWE Aldermaston for the defence nuclear programme.

11. Historical accounting is a lengthy and complex process. Moreover, in the light of its own experience and that of the United States and South Africa, in this area, the United Kingdom does not believe that it will be possible for any of the relevant States to be able to account with absolute accuracy and without possibility of error or doubt for all the fissile material they have produced for national security purposes over decades.

12. A further complication is that technical information about the early years of the defence nuclear programmes of the nuclear-weapon States is likely to be of particular value to any aspiring proliferator seeking to build a low-level, unsophisticated nuclear capability. The nuclear-weapon States in particular will therefore have to consider the implications of declassification in this area very carefully in the light of their obligations under article I of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

13. In the interests of irreversibility there may well be circumstances where it is desirable that fissile material declared surplus should, if practicable, be converted into forms and compositions less suitable for use in nuclear weapons, requiring very significant processing and specialized facilities. This will be a lengthy and expensive process. The United States, the Russian Federation, other members of the G-8, and members of the European Union, have all given this consideration both nationally and collectively since the 1996 Moscow Nuclear Safety Summit. This work continues and will need to continue.

14. In addition to the verification and disposition requirements set out above, a necessary element of the elimination of nuclear weapons will be measures to verify the destruction or conversion to other activities of the facilities used to develop, produce and maintain nuclear weapons. Knowledge and understanding of the infrastructure necessary will be critical to any verification regime. There is a range of existing and emerging technologies, skills and techniques that can be used to establish the existence and/or the status of a nuclear-weapon infrastructure complex and its operations, and this is an area where aspects of the approach underlying development of IAEA capabilities under the Additional Protocol may well be relevant.

15. On the basis of the analysis above, the United Kingdom believes that the Review Conference could usefully make several recommendations for further work relating to verification in a number of areas:

– Welcoming the work carried out to date to establish the verification arrangements for the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, in particular the International Monitoring System, and calling on all States Parties to the Treaty fully to support the work of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty organization, including through the provision of adequate funding;

– Stressing the role of a fissile material cut-off treaty in providing the verification arrangements necessary to provide international confidence that the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices has ended;

– Stressing the importance of the work being carried out in support of the IAEA Additional Protocol in developing international verification capabilities in the area of fissile material production and nuclear infrastructure that are likely to be important elements in verification of nuclear disarmament;

– Stressing the importance of fissile material designated as no longer required for defence purposes being placed under IAEA or other international verification, welcoming the designation of such material by the United States, the Russian Federation and the United Kingdom, and welcoming the commitments in relation to the application of safeguards to plutonium transferred from military to peaceful use made by the nuclear-weapon States in adopting the 1997 guidelines for the management of plutonium, calling on the nuclear-weapon States to keep their stockpiles of fissile material for defence purposes under review with a view to ensuring that any material they designate as no longer required for defence purposes is placed under international verification as soon as practicable.

– Welcoming the United States/Russian Federation/IAEA Trilateral Initiative in this regard, and as a significant contribution to developing national and international verification capabilities in the field of nuclear reductions and disarmament and fissile material disposition, and encouraging the members of the Trilateral Initiative to continue this work and to keep the international community informed of the progress of these efforts;

– Welcoming national programmes on nuclear verification issues, particularly in the nuclear-weapon States, and encouraging further work in this area, including developing international cooperation and consultation on these issues where practicable, and consistent with the nuclear-weapon States obligations under article I of the Treaty;

– Welcoming the commitment by the United States and the Russian Federation in the context of START III negotiations to consider measures relating to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads and any other jointly agreed technical and organizational measures to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions including prevention of a rapid increase in the number of warheads, and encouraging them to take this work forward;

– Noting the role that historical accounting for fissile material production by the nuclear-weapon States and others who have produced fissile material outside international safeguards will have in the verification of nuclear disarmament while recognizing its limitations, welcoming the progress already made in this area by South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, and encouraging further work by all relevant States where practicable;

– Welcoming the work by the G-8 and others on the disposition of surplus plutonium as a contribution to irreversible reductions in nuclear stockpiles, and encouraging them to continue their efforts, including by formal agreement of an international programme on disposition of surplus Russian plutonium.

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