Dismantling The Bomb And Managing The Nuclear Materials

Experts have been investigating how to use, control, or dispose of nuclear materials -- plutonium & highly enriched uranium -- that are recovered from dismantled warheads & could pose long-term environmental, safety, & health risks. This report analyzes the current programs & policies & evaluates the prospects for future success. Policy initiatives were presented: a national dismantlement policy; strengthening Dept. of Energy management; nuclear materials storage, & disposition; a new materials management organization; information access; & cooperation with Russia.

Experts have been investigating how to use, control, or dispose of nuclear materials -- plutonium and highly enriched uranium -- that are recovered from dismantled warheads and could pose long-term environmental, safety, and health risks. This report analyzes the current programs and policies and evaluates the prospects for future success. Policy initiatives were presented: a nat'l. dismantlement policy, strengthening DOE mgmt., nuclear materials storage, and disposition, a new materials mgmt. organ., info. access, and coop'n. with Russia.

Describes environmental, safety, and health problems throughout the nuclear weapons complex and what the U.S. Dept. of Energy is doing to address them. Covers: building nuclear warheads: the process; wastes and other byproducts of the cold war (spent nuclear fuel, plutonium residues, radioactive waste, transuranic waste, hazardous waste, etc.); contamination and cleanup; an international perspective; transition to new missions; and looking to the future. Over 100 b/w photos. Extensive glossary and bibliography.

The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.

In this study, CISAC tackles the technical dimensions of a longstanding controversy: To what extent could existing and plausibly attainable measures for transparency and monitoring make possible the verification of all nuclear weaponsâ€"strategic and nonstrategic, deployed and nondeployedâ€"plus the nuclear-explosive components and materials that are their essential ingredients? The committee's assessment of the technical and organizational possibilities suggests a more optimistic conclusion than most of those concerned with these issues might have expected.

"But Allison does more than weave a tale of doom, because his second proposition is that nuclear terrorism is preventable. He outlines an ambitious but feasible strategy by which we can essentially eliminate the danger of nuclear terrorism."--BOOK JACKET.