NUCLEAR TERRORISM

1. NUCLEAR TERRORISM

2. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty • Ratified March 5, 1970. Limits the spread of nuclear weapons. 189 countries have signed the treaty. • Legal nuclear states under the treaty: • United States • Russia • China • Great Britain • France

3. Non-abiding countries: • India • Israel • Pakistan • North Korea India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, North Korea in 2006 and 2009, and Israel has maintaining a policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” • The DPRK (North Korea) tested nuclear weapons, declared itself a nuclear weapon state, and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2001.

4. Green: Signed Red: Not signed, illegally hold nuclear weapons Orange: Countries Dropped out of Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Map

5. Current World Nuclear Arsenals* *as of 1997, though crossed with other sources and the numbers are the same

6. Past Nuclear Terrorism • WWII • Cold War • Cuban Missile Crisis • India • Iran

7. Nuclear Weapons on the Rise • A typical modern 150-kiloton hydrogen bomb could cause somewhere between 736,000 and 8,660,000 deaths, depending on the population density of the target city. • Nuclear weapons do not stand alone as weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear capability of some states is the excuse used by others to develop or maintain biological and chemical weapons. Thus nuclear weapons exacerbate the overall threat to our global survival. • The number of countries with nuclear weapons capability, knowledge, or ambition will continue to grow unless governments and civil society commit themselves to policies and actions that will overcome the current nuclear weapons impasse.

8. (con’t) • Fissile materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) needed to produce and maintain nuclear weapons are not being controlled or accounted for effectively, and efforts to cut off the production of fissile materials are still embryonic. • The health and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons production and testing include deaths, cancers, illnesses and ever-accumulating toxic and radioactive waste. The long-term effects of radiation on individuals, future generations, or the planet are not fully understood. • Arms control and disarmament progress has come to a virtual standstill despite a universal obligation to pursue and conclude complete nuclear disarmament.

9. What Must Be Done • 1. A ban on the manufacture, transfer and sale of fissile materials. • 2. Establishment of international standards for the disposal and safeguarding of even low level radioactive wastes. • 3. Bringing all fissile materials under strict international control and safeguards with a rigorous system of accounting and international inspections.

10. 4. Increase funding for joint Russian-American programs already underway to help secure Russia's sprawling nuclear weapons complex. (Ironically, just prior to the September 11 attacks the Bush Administration proposed to cut $100 million from the Russian-American Cooperative Threat Reduction Program which seeks to secure nuclear materials in the FSU.) • 5. Entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) long viewed by the international community as an essential step in halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This will require a reversal of the Bush Administration's policy of opposing the CTBT, and a change in direction by the US Senate which refused to ratify the CTBT during the Clinton Administration.

11. 6. Deep reductions in existing nuclear arsenals as a signal that the major nuclear powers, particularly Russia and the United States, will take more seriously the commitment made in the NPT to eliminate nuclear weapons. It is essential that nuclear weapons be de-legitimized as instruments of military and political power. • 7. Diversion of the billions of dollars to be spent on missile defense to programs designed to counter the far more immediate and real threat of nuclear terrorism, including programs to secure fissile materials, purchase and destroy or render unusable all known stocks of HEU and plutonium, monitor and detect the illicit trade in nuclear materials and technology, deter the illicit international transport of nuclear weapons of any type, and provide meaningful employment for nuclear weapons scientists from the FSU.

12. 8. Increase security measures around all nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities, which represent major potential sources for nuclear proliferation and targets for would-be nuclear terrorists. Cease construction of all new nuclear power facilities and begin phasing out the approximately 430 plants still in operation. • 9. An international convention on nuclear terrorism based on a proposal by Russia in the United Nations that would define offenses deemed to be acts of nuclear terrorism, mandate sharing of information related to potential acts of nuclear terrorism among states, provide for extradition and prosecution measures for those perpetrating acts of nuclear terror, and establish standards for the handling of radioactive material, devices, or facilities seized following the commission of an offense.

13. 10. The negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC), a treaty to ban the development, testing, production, stockpiling, transfer, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons.