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Threat Reduction / Nunn-Lugar

  • Arms Control Today
    July 7, 2011

    "Redirecting" scientists who worked in programs to produce weapons of mass destruction is a key part of U.S. nonproliferation efforts. In spite of current budget constraints, the United States needs to improve its capacity in that area. The difficulties that such programs faced in Iraq provide valuable lessons for future work.

     

  • Arms Control Today
    January 10, 2011
  • Arms Control Today
    June 4, 2009

    The Obama administration is asking Congress for significant funding increases in programs designed to secure nuclear material in Russia and detect radioactive material passing through the world's busiest ports, according to budget documents released in May. (Continue)

  • Arms Control Today
    May 8, 2009

    In the initial weeks of the Obama administration, former Vice President Dick Cheney stated that there was a "high probability" of a terrorist attempt to use a nuclear weapon or biological agent and that "whether they can pull it off depends on what kind of policies we put in place." President Barack Obama, in his April 5 Prague speech, said that terrorists "are determined to buy, build, or steal" a nuclear weapon and that the international community must work "without delay" to ensure that they never acquire one. Obama also outlined a number of policies for locking down vulnerable nuclear material and strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime. (Continue)

  • Arms Control Today
    October 6, 2008

    Russia’s conflict with Georgia in August caused a serious rift in U.S.-Russian relations but does not appear to have harmed the two countries’ cooperation on improving the security of nuclear materials and weapons in Russia, according to administration officials and members of Congress. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Sept. 17, Thomas D’Agostino, administrator of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), discussed the administration’s views on the effect of the recent conflict on nonproliferation programs in Russia. (Continue)

  • Press Room
    September 10, 2008

    Early this week, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal published articles in which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice extolled the Bush administration’s record in limiting global nuclear dangers. Those articles apparently stemmed from an extended response that Rice delivered to a reporter’s question at a Sept. 7 press conference in Rabat, Morocco. Rice asserted that the administration’s record on nonproliferation and counterproliferation was “very strong” and “left this situation…in far better shape than we found it.” In making her case, Rice claimed success on a raft of issues, including progress on nuclear affairs with India, Iran, and North Korea. (Continue)

  • Arms Control Today
    September 2, 2008

    At a July 8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan, the heads of government of the Group of Eight (G-8), a forum of the largest economies worldwide, continued discussions on expanding their current nonproliferation partnership from a focus on the former Soviet Union to a more global approach. They also took note of the program's achievements to date in the former Soviet Union as well as remaining projects there. (Continue)

  • Arms Control Today
    September 2, 2008

    In early July, U.S. forces transferred 550 metric tons of yellowcake, the compound made from mined natural uranium ore, from the Iraqi nuclear site of Tuwaitha to a port in Montreal. If the material were processed for military purposes, it would be sufficient for as many as 50 nuclear weapons. The Canadian corporation Cameco purchased the nuclear material.

    In a July 7 briefing, Department of State spokesperson Sean McCormack said the operation was conducted according to applicable International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regulations. Citing "security concerns," McCormack noted that the transfer was done secretly. An unnamed senior U.S. official told the Associated Press in July that the transferal took nearly three months, beginning in April. (Continue)

  • Arms Control Today
    June 11, 2008

    U.S. threat reduction programs in Russia registered three significant successes in April. First, the Department of Defense announced April 9 that its Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program had helped Russia completely dismantle and destroy its stockpile of SS-24 ICBMs. Later the same month, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that the U.S.-Russian Material Consolidation and Conversion (MCC) program had downblended 10 metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium in its nine years of existence. Finally, with U.S. funding and support from the NNSA, Russia completed the shutdown of a reactor that produces weapons-grade plutonium in Seversk. (Continue)

  • Arms Control Today
    March 1, 2008

    After Congress bumped up the budgets for a number of nonproliferation programs for countries in the former Soviet Union in its 2008 appropriations bills, the Bush administration has requested less money in a number of cases for fiscal year 2009. (Continue)

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