The 2000 NPT Review
Conference (RevCon)
14 April - 19 May 2000, New York
Presentations
By
Non-Governmental
Organizations (NGOs)
Nuclear Weapons Research, Development, Testing, and Production
Speaker: William Peden, Greenpeace International
Mr. Chairperson, delegates, and
non-governmental observers,
My name is William Peden
and I am the Nuclear Disarmament Coordinator for Greenpeace
International. I have been asked by my colleagues to make a presentation
on the current status of nuclear weapons research, development, testing,
and production programs in the nuclear weapons states.
In previous years you
have heard American and French NGO representatives speak on this topic,
with a focus on the programs of those two countries. However, while the
United States continues to outspend all the other nuclear weapons states
in developing new infrastructure for nuclear weapons development, the
others have not been idle. In particular, the United Kingdom is actively
colluding with the United States and France, to maintain and develop
their respective nuclear arsenals through an extensive cooperative
effort on nuclear weapons research and development.
Whereas I and my
colleagues in the United States, France and elsewhere are involved in
the opposite -- an extensive cooperative effort to monitor, educate
about and actively oppose these programs.
My short presentation
today will not be comprehensive -- if it were we would be here for at
least as long as this Review Conference is to last -- but to rather
illustrate to you one central reality: nuclear weapons are now increasing,
not decreasing, in legitimacy, sophistication, and importance in some if
not all of the nuclear weapon states.
Illustrative of this
trend is a description provided by U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen
in his February 2000 Report to the President and Congress, of an
expansive role for nuclear weapons "to
deter any potential adversary from using or threatening to use nuclear,
chemical, or biological (NBC) weapons against the United States or its
allies, and as a hedge against defeat of U.S. conventional forces in
defense of vital interests."
This capability is being
concretely manifested through programs which are rebuilding and
modernizing nuclear weapons research, development, testing and
production infrastructures in the leading nuclear weapons states,
including new generations of super-technologically advanced experimental
facilities.
In the five years since
the last Review Conference there have many disturbing developments in
this field:
* Advances in
microelectronics and other technologies, which can give new military
capabilities to nuclear weapons in some cases without further nuclear
testing;
* Advances in surrogate
nuclear testing and simulation capabilities in the nuclear weapon
states, tempting them to develop both immediate arsenal improvements
and longer-term studies aimed at revolutionary new developments;
* Institutional
consolidation and advancement by nuclear weapons advocates in the
U.S.; and not least,
* A more cunning and
pervasive pattern of dissimulation by the nuclear weapons
institutions, through which domestic public and political and, it is
hoped, diplomatic opinion can be lulled into complacency.
An example of this last
is the poster display mounted by the United States in the hall outside,
which is factually wrong in several particulars and which entirely
contradicts the reality of the nuclear weapons program in this country.
Among the nuclear weapon
states, the U.S. is at the top of the league in its proliferation of new
military roles for nuclear weapons, in the development of new techniques
for circumventing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and in the
scale of its proposed investment in new nuclear weapons design,
development and production facilities (estimated cost: $60
billion U.S. dollars over a 13 year period).
The increasing emphasis
on, and legitimacy of, nuclear weapons in the nuclear weapons states is
not necessarily inexorable. I will conclude with a few concrete
recommendations by which you could halt and even reverse this trend.
My colleagues and I can,
of course, provide you with further details, background, and analysis
upon request. But in the time left to me I would like to outline the
conclusions we have drawn from our extensive research through a wide
variety of corroborative official documents and other evidence.
1. Despite the NPT
requirement to end the arms race, all five nuclear weapon states are
engaged in programs to modernize their nuclear forces.
These activities are often disguised behind or within euphemisms such as
"stockpile stewardship" programs, "safety" studies,
"life extension programs," and "routine
maintenance." – anything but what they are – programs to
maintain and enhance existing nuclear arsenals. Most of these programs
are anything but routine, and most involve great expenditures to
preserve and extend nuclear design and production capabilities. In the
U.S., for example, the rate of spending for nuclear weapons design,
testing, and production now significantly exceeds, in constant dollars,
the average annual expenditure for directly comparable activities during
the Cold War.
2. In the U.S., this
process has already resulted in the development and deployment of one
new nuclear weapon variant, without the need for underground tests.
This weapon, called the "B61-11," is an earth-penetrating
air-launched nuclear bomb with widely-variable yield suitable for both
tactical and strategic roles. In 1996, its use was threatened against
Libya.
3. A
militarily-significant upgrade of more than 3,200 deployed
submarine-launched nuclear weapons is currently underway in the U.S.
Under the misleadingly-named "Submarine Warhead Protection
Program" two new warhead design options are being pursued to
replace the W76 (100 kiloton) and theW88 (475 kiloton). One, a
"mature" pre-tested design, would use a recycled plutonium
pit. The other would use an entirely new, untested design, to be
certified without underground tests. A third possibility involves
an upgrade of the W76, the most numerous warhead in the U.S. arsenal.
Under the pretense of replacing aging weapons parts to prevent potential
age-related defects, this upgrade will give them a near-ground-burst
capability, making them extremely lethal against hardened targets, and
upgrading them to potential "first strike" weapons. This could
effectively compensate for the loss of ICBM hard-target killers, slated
to be removed from the arsenal under START II. Under the Stockpile
Stewardship program, modifications or upgrades -- including enhanced
military capabilities -- are planned for every weapon type in the U.S.
arsenal. In a recent interview, Undersecretary of Energy Ernest Moniz
declared: "Our tools under
stockpile stewardship are working so well today that we are not only
able to certify safety and reliability... but we are also able to meet
new military requirements."
4. In the U.S. and
Russia, official military doctrine has been evolving to more closely
integrate nuclear with conventional military options.
In Russia the emphasis has been on defense and in the U.S. it has been
on counterproliferation and force-projection missions. Official
statements from the U.K. and NATO now mention a broader,
"sub-strategic," role for nuclear weapons and they now view
nuclear weapons as a "political tool" essential to deter
aggressors.
5. In all of the nuclear
weapon states, the development of advanced experimental and simulation
capabilities for nuclear weapon design and development is corroding the
"C" (Comprehensive) in the "CTBT."
The creation and subsequent proliferation of these new technologies
worldwide -- technologies which would be unnecessary if the goal were
merely to maintain existing nuclear forces -- through overt sharing of
facilities, technology and knowledge, cooperative research, conferences,
and university contracts is as tragic as it is gratuitous.
6. Some of these
technologies appear to violate the letter of the CTBT.
Inertial confinement fusion (ICF), for example, aims to create a nuclear
explosion without using fissile material. So far, this has not happened,
but large sums of money are being spent on its achievement by a variety
of means. Most of these funds are being spent by nuclear weapons design
laboratories, directly or indirectly for the purpose of nuclear weapons
design. Whether attempted directly with high explosives, indirectly with
high explosives (an approach now being pursued jointly by the U.S. and
Russian weapons laboratories), with lasers (e.g. at the National
Ignition Facility (NIF) in the U.S. and the Projet Megajoule in France),
with capacitor discharges, with particle beams, or with anything else
they can create, these facilities and experiments are very useful for
advanced nuclear weapon design and related military-scientific research.
The U.S. NIF, which will
be forty times larger than any laser in the world today, is slated to be
used for a wide range of applications, from training weapons designers
in nuclear weapons science to nuclear weapons effects testing. The NIF,
in combination with other Stockpile Stewardship facilities could
potentially lead to the development, over the long term, of pure fusion
weapons not requiring plutonium or uranium. It may also play a role in
researching new missile defenses. Official U.S. documents indicate that
the NIF may prove useful in research on low-yield nuclear interceptors
for use against ballistic missiles capable of carrying biological or
chemical agents, as well as nuclear warheads.
According to some
independent experts, the superlaser is the most important technological
development of the past 10 to 15 years in the realm of nuclear weapons.
Last year saw the formal entry of the United Kingdom into collaboration
with the United States on the NIF. The U.K. Ministry of Defence
announced plans to invest a substantial amount, on the order of £100M
British pounds, in order to expand the NIF’s experimental
capabilities. The U.S. has also made direct collaboration agreements
with Germany that are independent of similar agreements made with
England, France and Japan. It is particularly disturbing to see that
Germany is listed as the prime partner to the United
States for the development of this technology since Germany is not a
nuclear weapon state, and the superlaser technology has, in this case
and others, been presented as a "peaceful" technology.
The questions surrounding
the legality of these ICF facilities and the implications of developing
such devices led a United States Senator, Tom Harkin, to ask some
probing questions of the U.S. Administration. As Senator Harkin notes in
his letter, "some of these explosions would go well beyond the four
pounds of TNT nuclear yield equivalent that the nation renounced in
August 1995 when President Clinton announced that the United States
would support a ‘zero yield’ treaty." As far as we are aware,
he is still waiting for an official response. The one response he did
receive was from the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control,
John Holum, who has admitted that these questions were "fair"
to ask and deserved an answer. We would encourage other NPT states
parties to ask similar questions of the U.S. State Department.
7. An intensified
schedule of subcritical nuclear tests involving explosively-driven
fissile material is underway at the U.S. and Russian test sites and
laboratories, including above-ground tests in tanks using new,
highly-advanced diagnostic equipment.
The U.S. Nevada Test Site remains ready for resumption of underground
testing and is in use for a wide range of weapons experiments, including
"subcritical" tests in which packages of high explosives and
plutonium are exploded underground without quite reaching
self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions. Similar tests are conducted in
steel tanks above ground at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico, using an isotope of plutonium with a higher critical mass than
that used in weapons. This procedure may allow weapons designers to use
test devices which more closely resemble nuclear weapons primaries, the
first stage of thermonuclear warheads. Since signing the CTBT in
September 1996, the United States has exploded eleven subcritical tests
underground at the Nevada Test Site.
8. The United States is
developing multi-billion-dollar plans for the renewed large-scale
production of nuclear weapons components.
These plans envision a capacity of 450-500 new plutonium pits and
thermonuclear explosive packages per year, despite an inventory of
thousands of spares.
9. In Britain, a work
plan for the Atomic Weapons Establishments, recently found in a dustbin,
makes quite clear that their priorities lie on the side of maintaining
and improving upon the status quo rather than on disarming.
Strategic Imperative Number Two of the British nuclear weapons
laboratories is to ensure the "continuing availability of a
research and development program to support the nation’s current and
future requirements for nuclear weapons." Number Three is to
"provide production capability and capacity to meet national weapon
programme requirements." By December 2000 a plan is to be produced
to "safeguard UK options and capabilities for a future nuclear
weapon…"
10. In France they are
more blunt about the true objective of their current nuclear weapons
program. A recent article in Le
Monde extolled the scientific brilliance of the French program and
the French have no problem in admitting that they are currently
spending, this year alone, $70 million U.S. dollars, on developing a
replacement warhead for their submarine launched system and at least
2,300 million US dollars on a new warhead for their nuclear bombers.
France is developing new computers, new lasers and other paraphernalia
to support this perceived need.
The one and only
conclusion we have come to, knowing all of the above, is that all of the
declared nuclear-weapon states are involved to differing degrees in
maintaining the nuclear status quo well into this new millennium. This
undermines their stated "unequivocal" commitment to the goal
of global elimination of nuclear weapons and is fundamentally
inconsistent with both the "cessation of the nuclear arms
race" and disarmament obligations of NPT Article VI, not to mention
in the case of ongoing British -- French -- U.S. cooperation, their NPT
Article I, commitments.
Finally, one should not
assume that the nuclear weapons programs of India, Pakistan, and Israel
are static. Nuclear weapons design and "stockpile
stewardship" are not two separate activities, whether one is
discussing the nuclear weapons programs of the declared nuclear weapons
states or of the other states known to possess nuclear weapons.
Previously the experiments undertaken at above-ground experimental
facilities culminated in the underground test of a new nuclear weapons
design. Now, these experiments culminate in ever-more sophisticated and
complex nuclear weapons computer simulations and, it is hoped by the
nuclear weapons authorities, new, deployable, nuclear weapons designs.
India and Pakistan also have laboratory testing programs that they will
rely upon to provide them with new information about nuclear weapons.
While these programs may be limited in comparison with the five NPT
nuclear weapons states, it is clear that they are functional programs.
After all, India and Pakistan relied upon them to design the devices
that were exploded in 1998. Similarly, Israel, which is widely believed
to have a comparatively large and modern arsenal, has managed to
develop its stockpile largely on the basis of experimental and
computational facilities not involving nuclear tests.
Before proceeding to our
conclusions and detailed recommendations, I cannot but help observe that
we are meeting at a moment of great crisis and opportunity in the
history of nuclear weapons. At this particular time, the substantive
decisions made here -- or (and it would be tragic) the lack of such
decisions -- will have profound consequence for humankind in the years
to come. Your decisions will not only affect the future of the NPT
regime, but the substantive weight of your decisions will also greatly
color the context of U.S./Russian bilateral negotiations, upon which so
much depends.
The new Russian national
security doctrine, released in January of this year, explicitly
recognizes the profoundly dangerous and destabilizing implications of
the new nuclear research and development regime:
The growing
technological surge of some leading powers and their growing
possibilities to create new-generation weapons and military hardware
are creating prerequisites for a qualitatively new stage in the arms
race and a dramatic change in the forms and methods of waging
hostilities."
We truly stand at the
crossroads. It is a time for decisive action, because without such
action, the options we have today will not be available tomorrow.
Contrariwise, with your strong and substantive action, new options will
appear for everyone. What Petra Kelly of the German Green Party once
said applies to our work here in these brief few weeks: "If we do
not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable."
This Review Conference could, however, reverse this trend.
Our recommendations to
this NPT Review Conference are as follows:
1. An immediate
unequivocal commitment to end the qualitative improvement of nuclear
arms -- a commitment that no state will design, develop, produce, or
deploy new, modified, or repackaged nuclear weapons in any way that
endows any weapon with improved military characteristics.
2. An immediate
moratorium on all activities related to the National Ignition Facility
and the French Megajoule laser due to their presumptive illegality under
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Further, there should be an
independent international investigation of all Inertial Confinement
Fusion research activities for a) their compliance or non-compliance
with the CTBT, and b) their proliferation potential.
3. An immediate halt to
all underground subcritical experiments. Further, the two remaining
active nuclear test sites, Nevada in the U.S. and Novaya Zemlya in
Russia, should be closed and decommissioned.
4. An immediate halt to
all programs of above-ground subcritical tests involving fissile
material now taking place at the weapons laboratories of at least some,
if not all, of the nuclear weapon states.
The closure and
monitoring of the nuclear weapons infrastructure in all nuclear weapons
states must begin early in the process of disarmament. Nuclear
weapons research, testing, and component production should be halted
while reductions are in progress, not after, with nuclear weapons
production and research facilities subject to intrusive verification
regimes at the earliest possible time. The continued pursuit of
increased nuclear weapons knowledge by one state will be matched to a
greater or lesser degree by others. The longer such activity continues
prior to achievement of an abolition regime, the greater and more
widespread the technical capability for breakout is likely to be.
Meaningful progress on nuclear disarmament will require disarming the
institutions that continue to drive the arms race -- in flagrant
disregard for the NPT and in the face of overwhelming international
demands for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Thank-you for your
attention.
Conveners: Jacqueline
Cabasso, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, USA
Hisham Zerriffi,
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Takoma Park, Maryland,
USA
Greg Mello, Los Alamos
Study Group, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Contributors: William
Peden, Greenpeace; Andrew Lichterman, Western States Legal Foundation;
Andre Gsponer, Independent Scientific Research Institute; Dominique
LaLanne, CNRS, France
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