Can President Barack Obama Save the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Physicist Holdren is undoubtedly well qualified to advise about these challenges. He is: Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University; and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center. His expertise includes: the causes and consequences of global environmental change; the analysis of energy technologies and policies; and ways to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons. As a long-term participant in the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Holdren is well aware of the arguments for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and for nuclear disarmament.

Early in his Presidency, Obama will have to grapple with the American stance at next year’s Conference to Review the operation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Treaty, which was signed in 1968 and came into force in 1970, calls for a Review Conference every five years (1). The NPT is a fragile Treaty. The 2010 Review Conference will make or break it. If it is to survive, President Obama will need to repair the enormous damage done to the non-proliferation regime by the administration of George W. Bush (2).

In an article (3), the late Wolfgang Panofsky explains that the NPT set up a complex bargain between Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) and Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS). Panofsky, an influential former member of the US President's Science Advisory Committee and many other high-level American government panels, was a leading expert on nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

The NWS (China, France, the UK, the USA, and the former USSR) are defined in the NPT as those countries that had tested nuclear weapons by 1968; the NNWS are those that had not done so. The NNWS are prohibited by the Treaty from acquiring nuclear weapons; the NWS are forbidden to transfer nuclear weapons and the wherewithal to make them to a NNWS. To make this one-sided bargain more palatable to the NNWS they were given, under Article IV of the Treaty, an "inalienable right" to the peaceful application of nuclear energy and, under Article VI, the NWS promised to work in good faith towards nuclear disarmament.

The fact that the NWS have not fulfilled their side of the bargain is a major threat to the NPT regime. The NWS all continue to depend on nuclear weapons for their security and to indicate that they will continue to do so for the indefinite future. Only

China

has officially declared a no-first-use policy, pledging not to use nuclear weapons unless attacked with nuclear weapons first.

It is true that the numbers of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the NWS have decreased since the end of the Cold War. But their quality, particularly their reliability and the accuracy with which they can be delivered unto their targets, is being steadily improved by all the nuclear-weapon powers. Accurate and reliable nuclear weapons can be used to attack enemy nuclear forces in a pre-emptive, or first, strike. With them, a nuclear-weapon power will be tempted to make a first strike in a tense international situation.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), as of January 2008, the world’s nuclear forces contained about 10,000 deployed nuclear warheads, enough to destroy civilization many times over (4). About 91 per cent of them are in the American and Russian arsenals. Each of the USA and Russia keep about 2,500 of their nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched on warning in case of a nuclear attack.

Another threat to the NPT is that three countries, India, Israel and Pakistan, have not joined the NPT and

North Korea

withdrew from it after being accused of violations. Each of these four countries has developed nuclear weapons. And Iran is invoking its ‘inalienable right’ to pursue a uranium-enrichment programme and many suspect it of planning to acquire nuclear weapons.

Article IV of the Treaty allows, and even encourages, NNWS to develop uranium-enrichment and plutonium-reprocessing technologies - technologies that can also be used to acquire the fissile material needed for nuclear weapons. In other words, the NPT encourages the spread of the very technologies it seeks to control.

The nuclear renaissance now underway will spread civil nuclear technology to more countries so that 40 or so countries will, in the foreseeable future, acquire the capability to produce fissile material that could be used in nuclear weapons, becoming latent or actual nuclear-weapon powers (5). The international community will then be faced with the threat of nuclear anarchy.

Despite statements to the contrary, there is no "proliferation-proof" nuclear fuel cycle. Proposals have been made to internationalize the enrichment and reprocessing elements of the cycle by putting them under the ownership and control of, for example, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would guarantee an assured supply of nuclear fuel to all countries while providing for safeguards of their nuclear facilities (6 and 7). Such a fuel bank would, however, be discriminatory and, therefore, unacceptable to many countries. Some uranium suppliers, countries that want to develop their own nuclear fuel cycles, and countries that do not want to rely on foreign suppliers of energy object to the proposal.

Some countries will not agree to put their nuclear fuel cycles into the hands of the IAEA when the NWS continue to operate and control their own nuclear technologies. The NWS, however, perceive a need to keep their civil nuclear technology up-to-date to support their nuclear-weapon programmes.

We will avoid global nuclear anarchy only if President Obama leads the way to strengthen the NPT. A good start would be to get the US Senate to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and to negotiate an agreement with the Russians to take their nuclear weapons off alert. But much more will have to be done. There is little time left. It is, unfortunately, hard to avoid the conclusion that a world of many nuclear-weapon powers is the most likely future. But let’s hope for a better outcome.

References
1. The text of the NPT is given at: www.disarmament.un.org/wmd/npt/
2. Declan Butler, The Wasted Years, Nature, Vol.457, issue no. 7227, 15 January 2009, pp. 250-251.
3. Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, The nonproliferation regime under siege, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 5 August 2007.
www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-nonproliferation-regime-under-siege
4. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, SIPRI Yearbook 2008, Oxford University Press, 2008, p.367.
5. World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Power Reactors and Uranium Requirements, 5 January 2009.
www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
6. Debora Mackenzie, Could a fuel bank curb proliferation? New Scientist, Vol.201, No.2690, 10 January 2009, pp.6-7.
7. International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA Press Release 2006/15, IAEA Seeks Guarantees of Nuclear Fuel, 15 September 2006.
www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2006/prn200615.html

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Comment by Sherry

3 Mar, 2009 12:22 pm

There could be no better investment in America than to invest in America becoming energy independent! We need to utilize everything in out power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil including using our own natural resources.Create cheap clean energy, new badly needed green jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.The high cost of fuel this past year seriously damaged our economy and society. The cost of fuel effects every facet of consumer goods from production to shipping costs. After a brief reprieve gas is inching back up.OPEC will continue to cut production until they achieve their desired 80-100. per barrel.If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV's instead had plug-in electric drive trainsthe amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota.There is a really good new book out by Jeff Wilson called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence Now. http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com

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Future Energies

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future energies,

nuclear

obama

non-proliferation treaty

Can President Barack Obama Save the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

By Frank Barnaby

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nuclear

obama

non-proliferation treaty

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