Forget Your Twitter Following; Nuclear Weapons Materials Gone Missing: What Does History Teach?

President Barack Obama looks at Rembrandt's "Self-portrait as the Apostle Paul" during a tour of the Gallery of Honor at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 24, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson examines missing US nuclear fissile materials in a chapter of the new book Nuclear Weapons Materials Gone Missing: What Does History Teach? (published by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.) The chapter examines incidents of missing materials (such as missing highly enriched uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Pennsylvania from the 1960s) and provides an overview of U.S. military control and accounting systems and recommendations on how to improve these systems.

Ever since President Obama made securing nuclear weapons assets a top priority for his global arms control agenda, guarding and disposing of these holdings have become an international security preoccupation. Starting in 2010, multilateral nuclear summits on how to prevent nuclear theft and sabotage have been held every two years — the first in Washington, the second in Seoul, the third in [just completed] The Hague. Scores of studies have been commissioned and written, and nearly as many workshops (official and unofficial) have been held.

Yet, in all of this, the urgent task of securing and disposing of known nuclear weapons assets has all but sidelined what to do about nuclear weapons-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium that we have lost track of. This is understandable. It also is worrisome.

How likely is it that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could detect even a large amount of MUF [material unaccounted for] in a timely fashion at declared civilian nuclear sites? What of national means of detection? What can we learn from the history of civilian MUF discoveries in Japan and the UK and of military MUF in the United States and South Africa? How well can the IAEA or any existing nuclear material accountancy system track the production of special nuclear material or account for past production?

This volume gives us more than a few answers. Much of the analysis is technical. Most of it, technical or not, is downbeat. The good news is that this is the first dedicated volume on this specialized topic. There is likely to be more of such histories written in the future. How they might read, however, ultimately will depend on how much unnecessary civilian and military material production is curtailed, which is itself a matter worthy of another book.

Published by: The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; text by the Center . Download the Complete Edition or a Chapter: Read the chapter here (PDF).

Releases about the the 3rd Nuclear Summit March 24th and 25th, The Hague:

-03/25/14   Joint Statement by President Obama and President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan on Cooperation in the Sphere of Nonproliferation and Strengthening Nuclear Security
-03/25/14   Joint Statement by the United States and Ukraine
-03/25/14   Joint U.S.-EU Statement on Combating Illicit Trafficking
-03/25/14   Joint Statement on Multinational Cooperation on High-Density Low-Enriched Uranium Fuel Development
-03/25/14   Fact Sheet: U.S. - Kazakhstan Cooperative Activities in Nuclear Security
-03/25/14   Fact Sheet: Enhancing the Security of the Maritime Supply Chain Gift Basket
-03/25/14   Fact Sheet: U.S. Counter Nuclear Smuggling Activities
-03/24/14   Fact Sheet: Advancing Global Nuclear Security
-03/24/14   Fact Sheet: Belgium Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium Removals
-03/24/14   Fact Sheet: Italy Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium Removals
-03/24/14   Fact Sheet: Cooperation at Japan's Fast Critical Assembly
-03/24/14   Fact Sheet: United States-Japan Nuclear Security Working Group
-03/24/14   Joint Statement by President Obama and Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo of Belgium on the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit
-03/24/14   Joint Statement by the Leaders of Japan and the United States on Contributions to Global Minimization of Nuclear Material
-03/24/14   Joint Statement by the United States and Italy on the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit
-03/24/14   Joint Statement on Countries Free of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)
-03/20/14  Joint Statement on the Contributions of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT) to Enhancing Nuclear Security; Office of the Spokesperson; Washington, DC
-03/24/14   Statement on Enhancing Radiological Security

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Forget Your Twitter Following; Nuclear Weapons Materials Gone Missing: What Does History Teach?

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