Limiting the Spread of Weapon-usable Fissile Materials

Limiting the Spread of Weapon-usable Fissile Materials PDF Author: Brian G. Chow
Publisher: RAND Corporation
ISBN: 9780833014689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This report examines the problem of rapidly accumulating weapon-usable fissile materials and proposes an agenda to help the United States and other countries manage these materials. Weapon-usable fissile materials come from both dismantled nuclear weapons and the spend fuel from civilian nuclear power plants. This report should be of interest to nuclear nonproliferation planners and analysts in the United States, the former Soviet republics (FSRs), and other countries, and also to nuclear energy planners. The study started in October 1991. By June 1992, we had briefed our interim recommendations to planners and analysts in various DoD offices and also in the National Security Council, Livermore National Laboratory, and the nuclear industry. We also solicited reactions from public interest groups, particularly on the ramifications of our key recommendation: that the United States purchase highly enriched uranium from the FSRs after it is diluted and also their weapon-grade plutonium. The present report incorporates the latest data on nuclear weapon dismantling and elaborates on the proposed agenda, but its basic recommendations differ little from the interium proposals.

Limiting the Spread of Weapon-usable Fissile Materials

Limiting the Spread of Weapon-usable Fissile Materials PDF Author: Brian G. Chow
Publisher: RAND Corporation
ISBN: 9780833014689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This report examines the problem of rapidly accumulating weapon-usable fissile materials and proposes an agenda to help the United States and other countries manage these materials. Weapon-usable fissile materials come from both dismantled nuclear weapons and the spend fuel from civilian nuclear power plants. This report should be of interest to nuclear nonproliferation planners and analysts in the United States, the former Soviet republics (FSRs), and other countries, and also to nuclear energy planners. The study started in October 1991. By June 1992, we had briefed our interim recommendations to planners and analysts in various DoD offices and also in the National Security Council, Livermore National Laboratory, and the nuclear industry. We also solicited reactions from public interest groups, particularly on the ramifications of our key recommendation: that the United States purchase highly enriched uranium from the FSRs after it is diluted and also their weapon-grade plutonium. The present report incorporates the latest data on nuclear weapon dismantling and elaborates on the proposed agenda, but its basic recommendations differ little from the interium proposals.

Nuclear Weapons-Grade Fissile Materials. The Most Serious Threat to US National Security Today?.

Nuclear Weapons-Grade Fissile Materials. The Most Serious Threat to US National Security Today?. PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 13

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Book Description
The American public has generally recognized the dangers of weapons of mass destruction. Less understood or well known is the fact that the most important threat to US national security may be the growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons-grade fissile materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium [HEU]), much of which is uncontrolled and unsecured in the former Soviet Union. Fissile materials are the essential elements for nuclear bomb making. Access to these materials is the primary technical barrier to a nuclear weapons capability since the technological know-how for bomb making is publicly available. Given the already prevalent availability of technology and information associated with building nuclear weapons, the greatest threat and challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation regime, recently reaffirmed by the international community with the approval in May of 1995 of the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), is controlling and limiting the spread of nuclear weapons-usable fissile materials. Controlling fissile materials is important because once these materials are acquired, construction of nuclear weapons is a relatively straightforward proposition for sophisticated terrorists or proliferant states. Even relatively unsophisticated terrorist groups could make a crude-but-workable nuclear bomb in the 10- to 100-kiloton range.

Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation

Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation PDF Author: Allan S. Krass
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100020054X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Originally published in 1983, this book presents both the technical and political information necessary to evaluate the emerging threat to world security posed by recent advances in uranium enrichment technology. Uranium enrichment has played a relatively quiet but important role in the history of efforts by a number of nations to acquire nuclear weapons and by a number of others to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For many years the uranium enrichment industry was dominated by a single method, gaseous diffusion, which was technically complex, extremely capital-intensive, and highly inefficient in its use of energy. As long as this remained true, only the richest and most technically advanced nations could afford to pursue the enrichment route to weapon acquisition. But during the 1970s this situation changed dramatically. Several new and far more accessible enrichment techniques were developed, stimulated largely by the anticipation of a rapidly growing demand for enrichment services by the world-wide nuclear power industry. This proliferation of new techniques, coupled with the subsequent contraction of the commercial market for enriched uranium, has created a situation in which uranium enrichment technology might well become the most important contributor to further nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the issues addressed in this book are: A technical analysis of the most important enrichment techniques in a form that is relevant to analysis of proliferation risks; A detailed projection of the world demand for uranium enrichment services; A summary and critique of present institutional non-proliferation arrangements in the world enrichment industry, and An identification of the states most likely to pursue the enrichment route to acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy PDF Author: Committee on International Security and Arms Control
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309518377
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
The debate about appropriate purposes and policies for U.S. nuclear weapons has been under way since the beginning of the nuclear age. With the end of the Cold War, the debate has entered a new phase, propelled by the post-Cold War transformations of the international political landscape. This volume--based on an exhaustive reexamination of issues addressed in The Future of the U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Relationship (NRC, 1991)--describes the state to which U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and policies have evolved since the Cold War ended. The book evaluates a regime of progressive constraints for future U.S. nuclear weapons policy that includes further reductions in nuclear forces, changes in nuclear operations to preserve deterrence but enhance operational safety, and measures to help prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, it examines the conditions and means by which comprehensive nuclear disarmament could become feasible and desirable.

Weapons of Terror

Weapons of Terror PDF Author: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (Stockholm, Sweden)
Publisher: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC)
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are designed to cause destruction on a vastly greater scale than any conventional weapons, with the potential to kill thousands in a single attack and with effects that may persist in the environment and in our bodies indefinitely. This report by the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Dr Hans Blix, sets out 60 recommendations on how the world community, national governments and civil society should address this global challenge under the following headings: preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons; preventing nuclear terrorism; reducing the threat and numbers of existing nuclear weapons; moving from regulating nuclear weapons to outlawing them; biological and toxin weapons; chemical weapons; weapons of mass destruction (WMD) delivery means, missile defences and weapons in space; export controls, international assistance and non-governmental actors; compliance, verification, enforcement and the role of the United Nations.

Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors

Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors PDF Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309379210
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
The continued presence of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civilian installations such as research reactors poses a threat to national and international security. Minimization, and ultimately elimination, of HEU in civilian research reactors worldwide has been a goal of U.S. policy and programs since 1978. Today, 74 civilian research reactors around the world, including 8 in the United States, use or are planning to use HEU fuel. Since the last National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report on this topic in 2009, 28 reactors have been either shut down or converted from HEU to low enriched uranium fuel. Despite this progress, the large number of remaining HEU-fueled reactors demonstrates that an HEU minimization program continues to be needed on a worldwide scale. Reducing the Use of Highly Enriched Uranium in Civilian Research Reactors assesses the status of and progress toward eliminating the worldwide use of HEU fuel in civilian research and test reactors.

Storage and Disposition of Weapons-usable Fissile Materials

Storage and Disposition of Weapons-usable Fissile Materials PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 756

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Book Description


Ibss: Political Science: 1994

Ibss: Political Science: 1994 PDF Author: British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415127844
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
The IBSS is the essential tool for librarians, university departments, research institutions and any public or private institution whose work requires access to up-to-date and comprehensive knowledge of the social sciences.

Stemming the Plutonium Tide

Stemming the Plutonium Tide PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations, and Human Rights
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description


U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy PDF Author: William James Perry
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
ISBN: 0876094205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
The report notes that in the near term nuclear weapons will remain a fundamental element of U.S. national security. For this reason it emphasizes the importance of maintaining a safe, secure, and reliable deterrent nuclear force and makes recommendations on this front. The report also offers measures to advance important goals such as preventing nuclear terrorism and bolstering the nuclear nonproliferation regime--Foreword.