KSG Report Urges Faster Nuclear Disarmament

According to a new Kennedy School report, the lack of true U.S. commitment to nuclear disarmament in Russia poses an ever-growing risk to national and world security.

The report's author, Matthew G. Bunn, the Kennedy School's assistant director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, said surplus stores of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) have posing an increased threat to U.S. security. Both plutonium and HEU can be used to make nuclear bombs.

According to a Boston Globe article published Saturday, Russia is believed to have a stockpile of 160 tons of plutonium and more than 1,000 tons of HEU located in 40 sites.

Bunn said Russia's depressed economy, combined with theft and corruption, results in serious risks that plutonium or HEU could fall into "the wrong hands."

Bunn said he attributes the slowness of the reduction effort the U.S. administration's failure to commit to the effort.

"There's been an unfortunate lack of high level leadership from the White House," Bunn said.

"[There's been] a tendency to give lip service to the idea that this is a priority without actually putting in the sustained effort, money and people behind it that would signal that it was a priority," he said.

In his report, Bunn calls for a doubling or tripling of current funding for the safeguarding and reduction of nuclear stockpiles. The increased budget, from $1 to $1.5 billion, would comprise one half of one percent of the U.S. defense budget.

Bunn also recommends the HEU be mixed with low-grade uranium which, while making the uranium unusable in bombs, would still be useful as power-reactor fuel.

The report comes on the heels of efforts by the U.S. to improve U.S.-Russia relations on the monitoring of nuclear weapons material.

In October, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson signed an agreement with Russia inaugurating a joint center to monitor the use of nuclear materials.

But Bunn argues that more comprehensive measures are needed.

"Although the U.S. has a wide range of specific programs on different aspects, much more needs to be done if we're going to avoid a possible proliferation catastrophe," he said.

Bunn said he attributes the fact that such a catastrophe has not yet occurred to many of the parties involved.

"First, we've been lucky," he said. "Second is the amazing patriotism and devotion of the vast majority of nuclear scientists and technicians in Russia."

Bunn said the combined effort by the Russian and U.S. governments also played a role.

The report will be published by Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.