Stanford University

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Chyba departs CISAC after five years as co-director

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After five years as CISAC's co-director, Christopher F. Chyba left Stanford University to become the co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security and a professor of astrophysical sciences and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

"We thank Chris for his superb leadership and look forward to continued collaboration with him on biological security and nuclear nonproliferation," said Scott D. Sagan, who served as co-director with Chyba and now directs the center. Chyba accepted an appointment as a CISAC affiliate.

At Stanford, Chyba was also an associate professor in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, and he held the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

Committed to providing policy-relevant research on international security from both social science and science perspectives, CISAC is traditionally co-directed by a social scientist and a scientist or engineer. The center is conducting a worldwide search for a scholar with scientific expertise to join Sagan, a political science professor, in leading its research, teaching and policy advising programs.

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Nuclear treaty 'not a failure' despite challenges, says first U.S. arms control general counsel

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May 2005 opened with a bleak couple of weeks for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Delegates from 189 countries struggled to settle on an agenda for the seventh 5-year review of the Treaty, North Korea announced a new extraction of plutonium from its reactor to make nuclear weapons, and Iran stood firm against European attempts to dissuade it from pursuing a nuclear energy program that could be diverted for weapons-making. Yet CISAC's George Bunn, in an interview with BBC's "The World," cautioned against despair.

As the first general counsel to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Bunn has watched the NPT weather many diplomatic storms since it entered into force in 1970. Far from a failure, the treaty prevented nuclear weapons from becoming a commonplace in nations' defense programs, he said.

"I think that if there were no NPT, there would be something like 35 to 40 countries with nuclear weapons," Bunn explained. "When you think that at the time of our negotiations in the 60s, Sweden and Switzerland both had programs to explore the possibility of making nuclear weapons"--ambitions that the NPT helped dissuade--the treaty has provided incalculable benefits to world security. "If Sweden and Switzerland had nuclear weapons, think how many other countries would have them," he added.

Today the treaty's main weakness is its focus on states' possession of nuclear weapons, at a time when terrorists' ambitions to acquire the weapons is a major concern. At the treaty's outset, "terrorism wasn't perceived by us as a threat. The treaty hardly deals with the threat of terrorism," Bunn said.

The radio interview with George Bunn and his son Matthew Bunn, also a nuclear arms expert, is available at the link below. (Windows Media Player is required.)

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Apocalypse Soon

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Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we've come. His counsel helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous.

This article, the cover story for the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy, began as a talk McNamara delivered at Stanford to CISAC researchers, staff, and friends on Oct. 18, 2004.

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NPT Withdrawal: Time for the Security Council to Step In

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The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) provides that a state-party intending to withdraw from the treaty must give the UN Security Council three months' notice of its intention and provide the Security Council with its reasons for withdrawal. This provision was intended to give the Security Council an opportunity to deal with any withdrawal that might produce a threat to international peace and security.

More than two years ago, North Korea renewed its 1993 notice of withdrawal from the NPT, a notice that had been suspended a decade earlier during negotiations with the United States. That announcement left the Security Council with only a single day before North Korea would become the first country to withdraw from the NPT.

The Security Council did nothing. Indeed, it has continued to ignore North Korea's action even as Pyongyang has repeatedly stated its intention to produce nuclear weapons, sending a dangerous message to other states considering withdrawal. The once-every-five-years NPT review conference that will meet in New York this month provides a valuable opportunity to address the North Korea case and prod the Security Council to address similar cases that may emerge.

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Proposal for an Energy Security Initiative

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The Energy Security Initiative (ESI) is a proposal to increase the benefits offered to countries in good standing with their NPT Obligations, to compensate for all the new supply restrictions and intrusive safeguards requirements imposed on them. The NPT Balance between benefits to signatories and impositions made on them has eroded through more restrictive interpretations of the NPT. The recently implemented Additional Protocol, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and the proposals to deny nuclear fuel cycle facilities to countries not yet operating them on the one hand, and the limited supply of low cost nuclear energy available to developing countries on the other hand, demonstrate the need to re-constitute the balance implied in the NPT. It is, in fact, in the self interest of the developed countries, to be able to offer an expanded menu of additional energy benefits to countries whose current scope of available benefits has shrank, while the costs of complying with all new restrictions imposed and proposed has increased. This is the purpose of the ESI, which represents a reinterpretation and expansion of a part of Article IV of the NPT.

This presentation includes a detailed description of what ESI could offer under a new reading of article IV; which countries could qualify as beneficiaries of such program, how much might the total program cost, and how to fund it. A special case dealing with small national enrichment plants in countries such as Iran or Brazil is also considered.

Chaim Braun is a vice president of Altos Management Partners, Inc., and a CISAC science fellow and affiliate. He is a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Non-Proliferation Trust International, and others. Braun has worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. Braun has worked on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, he was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors, and most recently co-authored an article with CISAC Co-Director Chris Chyba on nuclear proliferation rings. His research project this year is entitled "The Energy Security Initiative and a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Center: Two Enhancement Options for the Current Non-Proliferation Regime."

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Researchers suggest steps to halt spread of nuclear weapons

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The nine nations that possess nuclear weapons have enough plutonium and high-enriched uranium collectively to build more than 100,000 additional nuclear weapons, according to a new report aimed at controlling the spread of such weapons and the materials to make them.

This considerable surplus of nuclear-explosive, or fissile, materials threatens global security, as other nations or terrorists seek the means to build nuclear weapons. "Despite a compelling security requirement to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists and additional countries," the report warns, "not nearly enough is being done today to achieve this objective."

A group of 23 nuclear experts, convened by Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security (PS&GS), issued the report, "Preventing Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Terrorism: Essential Steps to Reduce the Availability of Nuclear-Explosive Materials."

The report details which nations currently have the means to produce nuclear weapons and how much fissile material they possess. "This distribution of fissile material defines the critical tasks facing the international community," the report states. It calls for nations to cooperate on seven steps.

At the top of the report's "to-do list for the international community" is closing what some see as a gaping loophole in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)--the ability of a nation to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities and then withdraw from the NPT without penalty. So the report first proposes that the U.N. Security Council establish sanctions to impose against any country that withdraws from the NPT and attempts to build weapons using fissile materials and facilities obtained under the treaty for ostensibly peaceful purposes.

The NPT, in effect since 1970, will undergo its seventh 5-year review by more than 180 member states May 2-27 in New York. The report, issued in time for this review, recommends six additional steps for consideration by the conference delegates and other nuclear nonproliferation specialists:

-- "strengthen international physical security standards;

-- "stop the uncontrolled spread of uranium enrichment plants," and "subject all enrichment plants to an extra layer of multinational monitoring;"

-- declare a moratorium on building new plants to reprocess spent nuclear fuel that could be diverted to weapons production;

-- "conclude a verified global treaty ending all further production of fissile materials for weapons;

-- "dispose of much more of the excess fissile materials recovered from dismantled Cold War weapons; and

-- "phase out the use of high-enriched uranium (HEU) as a reactor fuel," in favor of low-enriched uranium, which cannot be made into nuclear weapons without further enrichment.

Some of the study group's recommendations "have been on the international agenda for decades," the report points out, but "most are barely moving forward, if not completely stalled. These measures urgently need high-level attention."

"All of the report's proposals focus on weapons-usable fissile materials--highly enriched uranium and plutonium--because they are the essential materials for nuclear weapons," said CISAC Co-Director Christopher F. Chyba, who led the study with PS&GS Co-Directors Harold Feiveson and Frank von Hippel. "They and the technologies to produce them must be much more strictly controlled if further nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism are to be prevented. The report lays out a series of steps to do so," Chyba added.

The researchers intended to strengthen similar proposals under discussion. The report "gives technical details and support to policy ideas on the control of nuclear explosive materials and their means of production that Mohamed ElBaradei (director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency) and others have been forwarding," explained Feiveson.

While the report emphasizes physical security measures geared toward reducing the supply of nuclear weapons materials, its authors acknowledge that "demand-side measures" are "equally important." A comprehensive strategy to halt nuclear proliferation must also "address the reasons that certain states choose to pursue nuclear weapons," the report states.

The research group of scientists, political scientists, and international legal experts from leading research and regulatory institutions met at Stanford University in August 2003 to begin their assessment of the global stock of nuclear weapons and the nuclear-explosive materials needed to make them and to outline a plan for limiting the spread of these materials. They continued to refine their recommendations, to produce their report in time for this year's NPT review.

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Right to Withdraw from the NPT: Article X is Not Unconditional, The

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Do the nations that belong to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have a right to withdraw from it at any time they wish and for any reason? This is a key question when considering international legal constraints on nuclear proliferation, and one that will confront the States Parties when they meet in New York on May 2. This article argues that the NPT and the United Nations Charter provide limits on the right of withdrawal from the treaty by authorising the UN Security Council to take action against NPT withdrawals that could lead to threats to international peace and security.

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From Russia with Love: Post Soviet U.S.-Russian Nuclear Cooperation

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When the Soviet Union dissolved on Dec. 25, 1991, the nuclear threat changed from the Cold War concern of ending civilization as we know it to one of securing "loose nukes" in chaotic Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union. I had the opportunity to visit the secret cities of the Russian nuclear complex six weeks after the collapse and to initiate a program of scientific collaboration between U.S. and Russian nuclear scientists. Together, we made remarkable progress in reducing the threat in the early and mid-1990's because of the trust we were able to build based on mutual respect, similar objectives, and a common heritage in the great early-20th century school of European physics.

Although the number of joint U.S. - Russian cooperative threat reduction programs increased and the U.S. funding rose dramatically at the turn of the millennium, real progress slowed as U.S. and Russian objectives began to diverge, and the programs became politicized and bureaucratized. Major opportunities to reduce the long-term threat were lost. Cooperation was re-energized by the tragic events of 9/11 and the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism. Today, both Presidents Bush and Putin agree that keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is their highest security priority. Yet, strategy and commitment on both sides appear incommensurate with the threat. I will discuss critical barriers to and opportunities for renewed cooperation to meet the threat.

Siegfried S. Hecker is currently a Senior Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker was Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997. He joined the Laboratory as technical staff member of the Physical Metallurgy Group in 1973, following a postdoctoral assignment there in 1968-1970 and a summer graduate student assignment in 1965. He served as Chairman of the Center for Materials Science and Division Leader of the Materials Science and Technology Division before becoming Director. From 1970 to 1973 he was a senior research metallurgist with the General Motors Research Laboratories.

Dr. Hecker received his B.S. in metallurgy in 1965 and M.S. in metallurgy in 1967 from Case Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in metallurgy in 1968 from Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the TMS (Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society), Fellow of the American Society for Metals, Honorary Member of the American Ceramics Society, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among other awards, Dr. Hecker received the American Nuclear Society Seaborg Medal (2004), the Acta Materialia J. Herbert Hollomon Award (2004), the Case Western Reserve University Alumni Association Gold Medal (2004) and Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award (2001), the New Mexico Distinguished Public Service Award, (1998); was named Laboratory Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, (1998); received an honorary Doctor of Science degree (Honoris Causa) from Case Western Reserve University (1998); received the Department of Energy's Distinguished Associate Award, (1997); the University of California's President's Medal, (1997); the ASM Distinguished Life Membership Award, (1997); an Honorary Degree of Scientiae Doctoris, Ripon College (1997); the Navy League New York Council Roosevelt Gold Medal for Science (1996); the Aviation Week Group Laurels Award for National Security (1995); the James O. Douglas Gold Medal Award (1990); the ASM International's Distinguished Lectureship in Materials and Society, (1989); the Kent Van Horn Distinguished Alumnus Award, Case Western Reserve University (1989); an Honorary Degree of Scientiae Doctoris, College of Santa Fe, (1988); the Year's Top 100 Innovations Award from Science Digest (1985); the Department of Energy's E. O. Lawrence Award, (1984); the American Society for Metals, Marcus A. Grossman Young Author Award (1976); and the Wesley P. Sykes Outstanding Metallurgist Award, Case Institute of Technology (1965). He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Council on Foreign Relations, Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Fraternity, Alpha Sigma Mu Honorary Metallurgical Fraternity, and the Society of Sigma Xi.

In addition to his current research activities in plutonium science and stockpile stewardship, he works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy on a variety of cooperative threat reduction programs. Dr. Hecker is also actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving on the Council of the National Academy of Engineering, serving as chair of the newly established Committee on Counterterrorism Challenges for Russia and the United States, and as a member of the National Academies Committee on Nuclear Nonproliferation. He is a member of ASM International and TMS, the Minerals/Metals/Materials Society, having served both in numerous local and national positions, and a member of the Materials Research Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council. He serves on the Corporate Advisory Panel of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, is a member of the Advisory Group to the Cooperative Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), and previously served on the Board of Regents for the University of New Mexico.

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Siegfried S. Hecker

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Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Preventing Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Terrorism: Essential Steps to Reduce the Availability of Nuclear-Explosive Materials

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This report proposes a set of initiatives aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons to more countries and to non-state terrorist and criminal organizations. The most effective way to do this is to strictly limit access to the key nuclear-explosive materials required to make nuclear weapons: high-enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. These materials must be secured and, where possible, eliminated; and the number of locations where they can be found or produced drastically reduced.

We propose measures to strengthen international security standards on the storage and transport of fissile materials; stop the spread of facilities capable of producing fissile materials (reprocessing and enrichment plants); end verifiably the production of fissile material for weapons; dispose of excess weapons and civilian fissile materials; and phase out the use of HEU as a reactor fuel.

Although the measures called for have been on the international agenda for decades, most are barely moving forward, if not completely stalled. These measures urgently need high-level attention.

Specifically, we call for the following initiatives:

  • A finding by the U.N. Security Council that a country that withdraws from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and seeks to use for weapons purposes materials and technology acquired while it was a member constitutes a threat to international security and that such country will be subject to a clearly articulated escalating set of sanctions imposed by the international community. Exporters and importers should negotiate bilateral safeguards as a backup to international safeguards to assure that, in addition to a country's obligations under the NPT, they have a bilateral agreement that any nuclear facilities, equipment, or material that is exported will not be converted to weapons use. Such backup safeguards are already mandated in some agreements for nuclear cooperation between supplier and receiver countries;
  • The establishment of internationally verified minimum standards for the physical protection of fissile materials;
  • An international agreement that countries will build new uranium enrichment plants only if they have been first reviewed and approved under agreed criteria by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or a special committee under the U.N. Security Council and are subject to an additional level of multinational oversight;
  • A moratorium on building new spent-fuel reprocessing plants until the existing plutonium stocks, including excess military stocks, are disposed of, and phase-out of plutonium separation at existing reprocessing plants if there is no compelling economic rationale to continue;
  • A Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) to end further production of fissile materials for weapons or outside international safeguards;
  • Actions by the United States and Russia to dispose of fissile materials recovered from excess weapons;
  • A phaseout of the use of HEU in reactor fuel and critical assemblies.
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Right to Withdraw from the NPT: The Views of Two NPT Negotiators, The

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Do NPT parties like North Korea have a right to withdraw from the NPT for any reason? What does the history of the withdrawal clause suggest? Two NPT negotiators look at the history of negotiations, to analyze the meaning and implications of the treaty's withdrawal clause.

A shorter version of this article appeared in Arms Control and Security Letters, vol. 5, no. 161, September 2005, published by the PIR Center (the Center for Policy Studies) in Russia.

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