Hi all, two new papers by yours truly:

1. Where Nuclear Safety and Security Meet co-authored with Jungmin Kang, KAIST visiting professor published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Jan/Feb 2012 issue found here or here:

– “Fukushima has implicitly exposed the relationship between the nuclear safety problem and the nuclear security problem. The disaster also suggests that nuclear power plant safety and security can be strengthened simultaneously through improvements in vital areas, including on-site power supplies, the cooling system for reactors and spent fuel ponds, and the main control room.”

– “To guard against natural accidents, terrorist sabotage, and possible combinations of these, it is time for a combined approach that strengthens nuclear safety-security.”

A Fukushima-like nuclear accident does not have to be caused by nature. Similar results could be wrought by a dedicated terrorist group that gained access to a nuclear power plant and disabled its safety systems. To guard against natural accidents, terrorist sabotage, and possible combinations of these two classes of events, nuclear plant operators and regulators should consider a combined approach called nuclear safety-security. Although safety and security programs have different requirements, they overlap in key areas and could support and enhance one another. Nuclear facilities could improve safety-security in technical ways, including more secure emergency electrical supplies, better security for control rooms, and, at new plants, reactor containment structures built to survive attacks by terrorist-flown airplanes. At the institutional level, regulators could strengthen the safety-security interface by requiring that it be built into the life cycle of nuclear plants, from design to dismantlement. The authors offer technical and institutional recommendations on how, for example, the International Atomic Energy Agency can support improved safety-security at nuclear plants globally by creating design standards that relate to both accidents and threats while encouraging countries to accept International Physical Protection Advisory Service missions that review security and physical protection systems and provide advice on best practices.

2. UNSCR 1540 & the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit: A View from Seoul published by the new journal 1540 Compass Winter 2012 edition found here or here:

– “The Republic of Korea (ROK) has been and remains a staunch supporter of the global nonproliferation regime as it borders a grave security threat and proliferator of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). With the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit just months away, the Republic of Korea should be more interested in enhancing UNSCR 1540, not only as the Summit Chair but against the backdrop of a “Global Korea” policy and the nation’s growing prominence in the nuclear energy industry.”

– [T]he most realistic and practical method to advance 1540 could come in the form of  house gifts” (national voluntary commitments) from individual heads of state.”

Tauscher acknowledged there are people within the Russian government who will “never trust us” — and still have concerns about “offense and defense.”

She also suggested vestiges of a Cold War-era mentality could be a contributing factor, and ran through a potential scenario: “I’m sitting, you know, in one of their Seven Sister buildings … trying to figure out how to get my [Ministry of Defense] money, and I’ve been doing it the same old way for 25 years. Now all of a sudden somebody says, ‘We’re going to be friends with those people. You don’t have to worry about it,’ ” Tauscher said. “[I’m] sitting there thinking, what does that mean? … I need an enemy … I have to have somebody that I’m going to say: ‘This is their most recent picture on their Internet, I need to now counter this.’ Because that’s what I’ve done for 25 years.”

“I understand this,” Tauscher continued. “And every once in a while, you can imagine that these people kind of gin up their administration.”

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, speaking to reporters about the ongoing travails of NATO-Russia missile defense cooperation talks, January 12, 2011.

For  our take on the state of the missile defense impasse, see here.

Ulrika Grufman and I just published a piece on the status of NATO-Russia missile defense cooperation talks over at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation website.  They’re not going well.  We write:  

The current impasse is particularly frustrating given that the planned European missile defense architecture is not a threat to Russia’s deterrent (at least not yet). Meanwhile, the technical and financial foundations of the system are dubious at best. As four experts aptly put it: “The tragedy, if this confrontation results in a breakdown of relations between Russia and the West, is that almost nothing that anybody claims to be worrying about is real yet.”

We conclude that despite the lack of progress to date, the two sides must try to continue to work through their differences on this issue even if not much is likely to be accomplished in 2012 given Presidential elections in both the U.S. and Russia.

Read the whole thing here.

Interested in launching (or at least dabbling in) a career in peace and security? Then you should apply for the Scoville Fellowship, a truly unique and rare opportunity for recent college graduates (and postgraduates) to spend six to nine months at a p…

On January 5 President Obama, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, and other high-ranking defense officials previewed the results of the recently completed strategic defense review at a press briefing at the Pentagon. Though short on specific details about which programs and systems will be scaled back or eliminated, the review lays out a blueprint that will inform the more than $450 billion in reductions to projected defense spending increases the administration is planning to implement over the next decade. We’ll find out more about the budget impact of this blueprint when the FY 2013 budget request is released next month.

You can read of copy of the strategy document, entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” here. Our initial take on the review can be found here.

I put together some more detailed observations on the implications of the review for U.S. nuclear policy and budgets over at the mothership. Read them here.

The bottom line? The Pentagon appears to be setting the stage, albeit cautiously, for further reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the nuclear weapons budget. How the play ends, however, remains to be seen.