Foreign Policy Blogs

Arms Control and Proliferation

Doses and exposures and plutonium – oh my!

No, I am absolutely not downplaying the potential contamination and exposures that are arising as a result of the ongoing mess at Fukushima. I have seen ample photos of severe radiation burns resulting from exposure to powerful strontium-90 sources discarded by Soviet authorities and stumbled upon by hapless woodsmen in the Republic of Georgia.  I […]

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Senate Energy Committee Member Meeting on Fukushima

Senate Energy Committee Member Meeting on Fukushima

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the one that has jurisdiction over both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy, held a Member Meeting to hear updates from both agencies regarding the ongoing nuclear messiness at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan.  You will recall that three of the […]

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And Speaking of Carnegie….

The Carnegie Nuclear Policy program has released two nice papers worthy of a look-see. The first, entitled “Gambit or Endgame? The New State of Arms Control”, is written by Alexei Arbatov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program and a former member of the Russian State Duma.  The paper ponders the future of […]

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Carnegie Corporation Grants for Nuke Projects

I’m pleased to post this release from the Carnegie Corporation, which has announced $3.15 million in grants to eight nonprofit projects aimed at preventing nuclear proliferation and securing vulnerable fissile materials.   Worthy expenditures indeed! Carnegie Corporation Gives $3.15 Million to Prevent Nuclear Proliferation, Secure Vulnerable Fissile Material Japan Crisis Highlights Need to Re-Think Energy As […]

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Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference 2011

The biennial Carnegie international conference on things nonproliferation convenes today at the Reagan Building here in Washington DC and anyone who’s anyone in the field converge on this auspicious confab. This year, topics will include the ongoing nuclear mess at Fukushima, the CTBT, safeguards and the nuclear renaissance, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Watch this […]

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What If?

This week has not been about nuclear weapons or arms control, but about controlling three wildly malfunctioning units at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, damaged following last Friday’s devastating 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.  The operators of the plant in Sendai, just near the epicenter of the huge quake, found themselves racing against […]

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Syria and the SAL

Last week, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano reported what he considered a mini-advance in ongoing deliberations with the Syrian government over access to the Dair Alzour, or Al-Kibar site.  In lieu of allowed access to that site, the Syrian government offered up the Homs acid purification facility.  On a scale of “meh” to “wow!”, this […]

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The Four Horsemen Ride Again…

And they’re taking on the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence.  In their fourth collaboration, former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, one-time Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga) wrote in an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal today that the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence should finally, […]

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Bushehr, Chernobyl, and Stuxnet

he disclosure by Iran last week that it has had to remove the initial fuel load from its newly built Bushehr power reactor has ignited or re-ignited a storm of speculation, much of which is best ignored. Well before the latest difficulties, a controversy was raging among experts as to whether the plant had been […]

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Be My Guest: Why we need to keep nuclear facilities in plain sight By Francis Slakey

This piece originally appeared in The Hill’s Congress Blog today.  I am repeating it here.  The petition to which Dr. Slakey refers seeks to close what some believe is a dangerous loophole in U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of technologies that can be used in covert nuclear weapons programs.   It picks up on a […]

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Nuke Safeguards 101: What Can and Can’t the IAEA Do?

It is very easy to think you understand what it is the IAEA, or, as it is called in so many media stories, the “UN Nuclear Watchdog”, can actually do to detect a covert nuclear weapons program or the diversion of nuclear material. You envision IAEA safeguards inspectors busting down doors like nuclear superheroes, pointing […]

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Away We Go! The case for a nuclear fuel bank and U.S. consistency

News of Iran’s intensified global search for uranium supplies has hit the wires, underscoring the need for the IAEA to get its nuclear fuel bank up and running.  The Agency received the final green light it needed when its Board of Governors approved a proposal by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) to establish a bank […]

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And Now for Something Completely Different….

This is my maiden post for the Foreign Policy Association, so I thought I’d briefly introduce myself and share some thoughts about what I hope to accomplish with my blog posts for FPA. I have served in various capacities in and around the Washington, D.C. policy community over the last twenty years or so, where […]

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New Start Ratification

The Senate’s ratification today of the New Start treaty comes as an immense relief, not mainly because of considerations directly associated with nuclear arms control or with U.S.-Russian relations, but because of what defeat would have said about the state of U.S. politics. So trivial and senseless were the objections advanced by Republican critics of […]

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Iran Assassinations

Every informed and honest observer has known since 2002-3 that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program and that, in the absence of a general regional agreement, nothing ultimately will stop it from obtaining nuclear arms. It’s also pretty clear that the holocaust deniers currently running the country might actually use their bombs, and use […]

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