SECOND TASK of Nuclear Global Plan
Getting all nations to agree to a stronger nonproliferation regime will require skillful diplomacy and new thinking.
Which brings me to the second task: the nuclear states must stop making new weapons and must reduce the size of their existing arsenals.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) commits non-nuclear states to forego nuclear weapons, and it also commits the nuclear weapons states to the goal of nuclear disarmament.
To get others to take the NPT seriously, we need to take it seriously ourselves. We should re-affirm our commitment to the long-term goal of global nuclear disarmament, and we should invite the Russians to join us in a moratorium on all new nuclear weapons. And we should negotiate further staged reductions in our arsenals, beyond what has already been agreed, over the next decade.
In a world in which nuclear terrorism rather than war with Russia is the main threat, reducing all nuclear arsenals, in a careful, orderly way, makes everyone safer.
Negotiations to reduce our arsenal also are our diplomatic ace-in-the-hole. We can leverage our own proposed reductions to get the other nuclear powers to do the same -- and simultaneously get the non-nuclear powers to forego both weapons and nuclear fuel enrichment, and to agree to rigorous global safeguards and verification procedures.
The United States also should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, not only because it is good policy, but also to send a signal to the world that America has turned a corner, and once again will be a global leader, not a unilateralist loner.
THIRD TASK of Nuclear Global Plan
Our third task is to put the lid on the most dangerous civilian technologies.
Currently, there are over 50 tons of HEU in civilian power and research programs in over 50 nations. It takes as little as 25 kg to produce a nuclear weapon. There are no fewer than 272 operational research reactors, in 56 countries. Some 128 of these have 20 kg or more of HEU stocks. Many are poorly secured.
Civilian plutonium is even more worrisome. Commercial reprocessing plants in Britain, France, and Russia separate about 20 tons of civilian plutonium from spent fuel each year, but most of it is not used as civilian reactor fuel.
Rather, it accumulates -- as do the risks of it falling into the wrong hands. Today there are well over 200 tons of separated plutonium in civilian stockpiles around the world.
This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. We need to close down or phase out as many of these facilities as we can, and rapidly secure all materials of potential interest to terrorists.
Negotiations to accomplish this will be very difficult, but a comprehensive strategy to stop nuclear terrorism must, at a minimum, stop the construction of new facilities that use bomb-grade fuel, and establish rigorous international security standards and monitoring procedures for those facilities that already exist.
FOURTH TASK of Nuclear Global Plan
Our fourth task is to consolidate all existing fissile materials, and all future uranium enrichment and spent-fuel disposal in a limited number of highly secure facilities in the nuclear states.
Uranium enrichment for nuclear energy is inherently dangerous. It is too easy to convert into a weapons program, and the more places it happens, the more opportunities there are for terrorists to acquire fissile material.
Accordingly, the nuclear weapons states should agree to an international program that provides non-nuclear weapons states with LEU nuclear fuel at stable prices, and which then receives all spent fuel for disposal in a limited number of highly secure facilities in the nuclear states.
Such a program would eliminate the economic rationale for non-nuclear weapons states to enrich their own uranium.
U.S. Nuclear Policies in the 21st Century Must change
The obstacles to accomplishing these multiple goals are many and intertwined.
To prevent nuclear terrorism we will need to overcome vested interests, old suspicions and habits, ideological rigidities, religious and ethnic rivalries, bureaucratic inertia and national pride.
The only way to cut this nuclear Gordian Knot, in my view, will be through a focused global effort led by a United States government fully committed to solving this problem, and willing to listen as well as to talk.
And this will require American leaders who recognize that the nuclear postures and policies which worked in the last century will not work in this new century.
Greatly Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Terrorism,
Some have said that nuclear terrorism is just inevitable - that we can never put the lid back on the Pandora's Box of nuclear technology. They are right that we cannot turn back the clock.
But we can greatly reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, just as the 1925 the Geneva Protocol greatly reduced the use of chemical and biological weapons, and Cold War arms talks reduced the threat of war between the US and the USSR.
We can prevent the ultimate preventable catastrophe if we have the courage to recognize and embrace the challenge.
This is what the New Realism is all about. It's about not denying dangers, but rather moving forward to meet them. It's about recognizing that times have changed, that we live in a different world than our parents did -- and that we must act decisively if we wish to leave this world intact to our children.
We need to look at the world through cool eyes and see it for what it really is. But we also must have the vision and the optimism and the courage to do what we can to make it a safer place."
Bill Richardson in 2008 Info Center at About.com Liberal Politics
