Former U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry, co-director of CISAC's Preventive Defense Project, has been named chair of a Congressional bipartisan commission nominated March 19 to examine America's strategic military posture, including the "appropriate role" of nuclear weapons. The 12-member commission also will assess the role of nonproliferation programs and missile defenses in U.S. strategic policies. The group is expected to present a set of recommendations on future U.S. strategic policies to Congress and President George W. Bush by Dec. 1, 2008.

"A sound strategic posture and a healthy nuclear complex are vital to America's national policy," said Duncan Hunter, (R-CA), ranking member of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. "We look forward to receiving [the commission's] recommendations on how we can improve our strategic posture and ensure the longterm sustainability of our nuclear complex."

Subcommittee Chairman Ellen Tauscher, (D-CA), said the commission is needed, "to get the nation's nuclear policy back on track. For too long we have missed the forest for the trees, and I am hopeful this commission will encourage a vital national discussion that is both open and transparent about the appropriate role of nuclear weapons in our national security."

The members nominated to the commission by the House Armed Services Committee are:

• William Perry, commission chairman, former Secretary of Defense;
• John Foster, director emeritus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory;
• Lee Hamilton, former Congressman and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission;
• Keith Payne, CEO and president, National Institute for Public Policy;
• Ellen Williams, University of Maryland distinguished professor;
• Harry Cartland, former physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The members nominated by the Senate Armed Services Committee include:

• James Schlesinger, commission vice chairman, former Secretary of Energy and Secretary of Defense;
• John Glenn, former senator and NASA astronaut;
• Fred Ikle, former director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency;
• Morton Halperin, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs;
• James Woolsey, former director, Central Intelligence Agency;
• Bruce Tarter, former director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

North Korea has shut down its key nuclear facilities and is discussing how to retrain workers at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, CISAC Co-Director Siegfried S. Hecker said Feb. 20 following a five-day visit to the country.

"The disablement actions at the three key nuclear facilities--that is [the] fuel fabrication plant, the reactor, and the reprocessing plant--those disablement actions are just about complete at this point," Hecker told reporters during a press conference at Stanford. "In my judgment, they are very serious actions, and they will require serious time and effort to restart those facilities."

Hecker, a research professor of management science and engineering and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, visited scientists at Yongbyon and government officials in Pyongyang from Feb. 12 to 16. Joel Wit, a former U.S. State Department official, and Keith Luse, a staffer for Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, accompanied him during a private visit that also involved discussions on formalizing health and educational exchanges between the two nations. "All the way around, it was a very good visit, a very professional one on the DPRK's side," Hecker said, referring to the country's acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

According to Hecker, "significant hurdles" remain before North Korea will offer a "complete declaration," or complete list of its nuclear program, both past and present. The North Koreans told Hecker that the process has been delayed because other parties in the six-party talks, which aim to find a peaceful resolution to the country's nuclear weapons program, have been slow in delivering compensation such as heavy fuel oil. Despite this, Hecker said, cooperation between the U.S. and North Korean technical teams was excellent during the visit.  "The DPRK wants these obligations [of the other member nations] to be met quickly so they can move on to the next stage, that's the stage of dismantlement," he said, referring to agreements reached Oct. 3, 2007, during talks to achieve a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula.

To avoid that and other nightmare scenarios, a group of 12 scientists with extensive nuclear expertise, headed by Stanford physicist Michael M. May, is urging an international push to improve the science of nuclear forensics.

May is a research professor emeritus and former co-director the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He also is the former director of the U.S. nuclear weapons design laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Other members have experience in nuclear intelligence and defense research. One member, Jay Davis, was a United Nations inspector in Iraq.

They say there is an urgent need for more nuclear detectives, armed with science PhDs and instilled with the instincts of an investigator. And those detectives will need training, advanced equipment and stronger ties to intelligence agencies, political leaders and law enforcement.

With the right mobile equipment, nuclear detectives could sift through the debris and the radioactive cloud of an attack in this country or elsewhere and quickly glean crucial information, the scientists argue in a 60-page report to be discussed Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.

The report, Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, Program Needs, was written by a joint working group of the AAAS and the American Physical Society.

Using radiochemistry techniques and access to proposed international databases that include actual samples of uranium and plutonium from around the world, the nuclear investigators might be able to tell the president—and the world—where the bomb fuel came from, or at least rule out some suspects.

“Nuclear forensics can make a difference,” May said in an interview.

But the U.S. capacity for such investigations has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, when the capabilities were well supported at the nuclear weapons laboratories. “Presently available trained personnel are highly skilled, but there are not enough of them to deal with an emergency and they are not being replaced,” according to May. “A program to refill the pipeline of trained personnel should be undertaken.”

There’s also a need for development of new equipment, both in the lab and on the street, which could provide a faster analysis during a crisis. The authors also recommend more coordination between scientists and law enforcement; even simple steps such as trading phone numbers could prove crucial. “You really want the top decision makers to know where to get information,” May said.

The remnants of an atomic explosion carry a host of clues, even at the microscopic level, including crystal structures and impurities.

Uranium, for example, varies in isotopic composition and impurities according to where it was mined and how it was processed. Weapons-grade plutonium can be exposed during its production to different neutron fluxes and energies, depending on the particular reactor used. It is also possible to establish the length of time plutonium spent in the reactor.

In some cases, it may be possible for scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or Los Alamos National Laboratory to use their experience, intelligence data and software codes to reverse-engineer a nuclear bomb from its debris and learn telltale details of the design of the explosive.

These clues would not be the equivalent of fingerprints or DNA, May said, but would in most cases allow officials to at least rule out or in broad classes of possible sources.

Tracing bomb material to its source may be only the beginning of an investigation, rather than the end, as the authors acknowledge. Discovering that a terrorist explosive was made of uranium stolen from a specific site in Russia, for example, does not identify the terrorists, but it does provide a starting point, especially if there is suspicion that the bomb makers had inside help.

In their report, the scientists recommend that atomic sleuthing be applied also to radioactive materials seized by law enforcement agencies or border guards. Tracking the substances back to their source might prevent or deter attacks, they said. The authors note that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Illicit Trafficking Database contains 1,080 confirmed events involving illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials between 1993 and 2006.

Convincing the nuclear states to share database information about their own uranium and plutonium may be difficult, May said. He suggests that the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has databases of its own, could play an important role.

The authors of the report:

Michael M. May, Chair, Stanford University

Reza Abedin-Zadeh, International Atomic Energy Agency (retired)

Donald A. Barr, Los Alamos National Laboratory (retired)

Albert Carnesale, University of California-Los Angeles

Philip E. Coyle, Center for Defense Information

Jay Davis, Hertz Foundation

Bill Dorland, University of Maryland

Bill Dunlop, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Steve Fetter, University of Maryland

Alexander Glaser, Princeton University

Ian D. Hutcheon, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Francis Slakey, American Physical Society

Benn Tannenbaum, American Association for the Advancement of Science