UK: Nuclear Verification

1. Verification of nuclear reductions and the global elimination of nuclear weapons will clearly involve a wide range of complementary capabilities and arrangements. The issues and interrelationships involved are of considerable complexity. The international community has in particular identified three main areas relevant to this process:

• 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….

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….

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....

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.

777 UN Plaza - 6th Floor - New York, NY - 10017 - Ph: 212.682.1265 - Fax: 212.286.8211 - info@reachingcriticalwill.org
This site was created by Kache Productions ©2008