Christopher Paine

When peer review fails

Problems with a giant laser project.

The Moscow Treaty: Making matters worse

When it comes to reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons, less is not more. Less is less. Less verification, less cooperative inspection, less warhead and launcher destruction, and less accountability mean less security.

Nuclear Islands: International Leasing of Nuclear Fuel Cycle Sites to Provide Enduring Assurance of Peaceful Use

Current International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards do not provide adequate protection against the diversion to military use of materials or technology from certain types of sensitive nuclear fuel cycle facilities. In view of highly enriched uraniums relatively greater ease of use as a nuclear explosive material than plutonium and the significant diseconomies of commercial spent fuel reprocessing, this article focuses on the need for improved international controls over uranium enrichment facilities as the proximate justification for creation of an International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Association (INFCA). In principle, the proposal is equally applicable to alleviating the proliferation concerns provoked by nuclear fuel reprocessing plants and other sensitive nuclear fuel cycle facilities. The INFCA would provide significantly increased nonproliferation assurance to its member states and the wider international community by holding long-term leasehold contracts to operate secure restricted zones containing such sensitive nuclear facilities.

The Politics of Verification: Limiting the Testing of Nuclear Weapons

From 1982 to 1990, the United States and the Soviet Union renegotiated verification arrangements for two unratified arms control agreements that had nevertheless been observed since 1977: the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty. The negotiations yielded new verification procedures, changed attitudes regarding Soviet compliance, and established useful precedents for further restrictions on nuclear testing. The negotiations also demonstrated how technical arguments can be misused to promote a particular political agenda—in this case, the continued testing of nuclear weapons. By misrepresenting the uncertainties in US monitoring procedures, and then falsely characterizing these uncertainties as a fatal flaw of seismic verification techniques, opponents of a nuclear test ban clouded the sensitive issue of verification enough to delay progress towards a complete ban on nuclear weapons testing. The primary obstacle to further restrictions on nuclear testing was not the feasibili...