BBC on the UK-Norway Initaitive

BBC's Gordon Corera has a nice piece on the UK-Norway Initiative's OSI exercise last month:

"The nuclear weapon is carefully lifted out of a large container and moved onto the floor. Two engineers use an electric screwdriver to open up a side compartment and remove the "physics package" containing the sensitive parts of the bomb. A scientist with a radiation detector beckons me forward as he points his machine towards the box. It begins to emit an accelerating beeping noise. "The measurement is approximately a hundred times normal background radiation," he tells me. "But it is not dangerous, I promise," he adds with a smile.

The lack of danger is because the bomb is not real. To inject an element of realism into this experiment, a weak radioactive material - Cobalt 60 - is used. The dismantlement experiment is a joint exercise between the UK and Norway - the first of its kind - and was held a few miles from Oslo. The five-day exercise has been keenly anticipated internationally as a way of building trust between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states. It is designed to see if one country can verify the disarmament of another country's nuclear weapon, but without any sensitive information about national security and weapon design being compromised. In a role reversal, the Norwegians play a nuclear weapons state (called Torland) and the UK team play inspectors from Luvania, a non-nuclear weapons state.

There is currently a new push for global nuclear disarmament. Russia and the US announced in Moscow in early July that they would reduce their stockpiles and the UK has said it might be willing to reduce further its nuclear deterrent as part of any global disarmament talks. The non-nuclear weapons states have been pressing for more active disarmament and if there were further moves then allowing non-nuclear states to verify the disarmament would help increase confidence between the two sides.

The 10 inspectors from UK/Luvania remain in character as soon as they enter the gates of the nuclear facility. During meal breaks they are kept separate from both the Norwegian/Torland team and the joint planning group. A huge amount of work goes in to making the exercise as realistic as possible. A large, white binder contains briefing packs with fake Torland letters inviting the team to verify dismantlement of one of their Odin gravity bombs. Stamped "secret", the Torland brief states that all details about the size, shape, composition, etc, "must be kept outside the knowledge of inspectors at all costs". To complicate matters, inspectors are given a printout from a fake website which features what is alleged to be leaked pictures of the weapon.

"The aim is to develop methodologies we could use in inspections of a real nuclear facility but in an environment in which can do trial and error," explains Andreas Persbo of Vertic, which helped organise the event. It is not an exercise in which the nuclear state is trying to clandestinely divert nuclear material or the inspecting side search for a covert facility.

The main aim instead is to try to look for practical lessons and solutions to build confidence between the haves and have-nots in the nuclear world. Even so, the British/Luvania team push the boundaries during the long negotiating sessions that begin and end each day, at one point submitting 15 questions, some of which the Norway/Torland team refuse to answer. There is even an early disagreement over the question of what type of warning - if any - the guards would give before firing their weapons.

The guards, who follow the inspectors everywhere, are real Norwegian soldiers but armed with non-lethal weapons, similar to paintball guns.
The key task for the inspectors is to establish a chain of custody and ensure that at no point is any sensitive material diverted. But this has to be done without ever actually seeing the sensitive material itself. Initially, a truck takes a container carrying the device to the disarmament facility.

From the start inspectors watch, photograph, seal and tag key items. They cover entry and exit points to the disarmament chamber, sweeping all those going in and out to ensure no radioactive material is smuggled away. "It is a very choreographed process, almost like a ballet," says Mr Persbo. "Timings are very precise."

The amount of fissile material in a nuclear bomb is itself classified, so a number of techniques have to be employed by the inspectors to ensure nothing is diverted when they are not able to measure it in detail themselves. Each country's scientists have separately designed and built their own prototype devices known as "information barriers", which can confirm that an agreed amount of radioactive material is present in any container. The machines provide a green light if the contents match the last reading but the actual contents are not revealed.

There is genuine relief from the scientists when both come out with an agreed result of what is inside the container. The other means for assuring the chain of custody are tags and seals.

A tag is any form of identifying label, while a seal is used to ensure a room or box is not tampered with during times inspectors are not physically watching it. These are surprisingly low-tech. A purple strip of adhesive goes across a door hinge. If it is moved then the colour changes and a warning appears on it. Additionally, the seal has a blob of glue with multi-coloured glitter inside. This is photographed close-up by the inspectors once it is in place and then again when inspectors return. The unique pattern would be almost impossible to replicate perfectly in a relatively short space of time. More high-tech variants are available involving fibre-optics and the next stage of the project may involve looking at ways of designing the most effective seals.

After the "physics package" is removed from the bomb and placed in a container, the inspectors are allowed to return into the room and watch it being placed in a storage room for the night. A tampered seal provoked a crisis on one day of the experiment The next morning, in the pouring rain, inspectors follow the container as it is moved by a cart to another part of the facility where the radioactive material is - at least notionally - removed in a hot cell using robotics arms. Finally it is moved to a storage site.

"This is about having an understanding of what it means to take some material from A to B without really knowing what it is," explains Norwegian official Ole Reistad. "Under other verification arrangements, it might be special types of fuel, it might be commercial secrets or it might be other security interests that you have to protect in some way."

In practice no nuclear weapons state has ever allowed a non-nuclear weapons state to verify disarmament. But if there was to be multilateral disarmament in the future, it may well be important to provide such states with confidence over its actions.
Officials on both sides hope that this and any future events will lead to better understanding between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states and more collaborations, allowing trust and confidence to be increased.

This project in a way shows our commitment to try and find good practical ways of making sure we have nuclear disarmament
Gry Larsen, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Norway
"Norway is very much committed on the disarmament agenda," explains Gry Larsen, Norway's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
"This project in a way shows our commitment to try and find good practical ways of making sure we have nuclear disarmament."
UK inspectors and observers say they learnt about the challenges of being a non-nuclear weapons state and providing confidence, as well as ways of ensuring their own sensitive material is protected.
The Norwegians say they garnered a first-hand perspective of the sensitivities of nuclear states in protecting classified information.
The UK has talked of acting as a "disarmament laboratory" and being part of the process allows the UK to say that it is living up to its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty for disarmament, although the emphasis is on developing the technical aspects of verification.

"It was lots of hard work but there's opportunity for more progress in the future," said one UK Ministry of Defence official.
Other countries are also said to have shown interest in the work, including the US, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan."

Gary Samore at IISS

Gary Samore today visited the IISS where he gave a spirited and forceful talk on the Obama Administration's priorities over the coming year. I'll try to type up my notes in a way that doesn't completely distort everything he said.

A began by stating an underlying assumption that is today guiding White House policy on non-proliferation and disarmament. Namely that proper containment of states wanting to cheat on their obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty cannot be attained unless the regime is strengthened. The belief of the Administration is also that once the regime is shored up, it will be easier to deter or contain future cheaters.

Mr. Samore had already outlined some of the Administration's tactical objectives in this respect at a luncheon hosted by the Arms Control Association. They are well known:

• Ensuring CTBT ratification;
• Support negotiations on a verifiable FMCT; and
• Getting a new START agreed.

He said that there was a "reasonably good chance" to get agreement with the Russian Federation on START before it expires in December 2009. This agreement would be facilitated by a common understanding on ballistic missile defence. To that end, the US and Russia have started on a joint assessment of Iran's ballistic missile threat. Mr. Samore noted that Iran had shown increased capabilities in this area recently, and this was a cause for US concern. He felt that there were four major problems in US-Russian negotiations at present:

1. Missile defence (especially the issue of the third site).
2. US plans to put conventional warheads on ballistic missiles.
3. Coming up with a number of delivery vehicles that does not require Russia to produce more missiles, or the United States to destroy many of theirs.
4. Agreement on a verification protocol.

On verification he said that he did not believe that the old START verification procedure needed to be preserved in its entirety. However, a reduced, yet credible, verification system needed to be produced. This would take a lot of difficult, technical, work, and he foresaw many meetings of US-Russian technical working-groups in the months ahead.

Mr. Samore said that the really difficult task will be to agree on deeper cuts. Here, the Russians want to discuss the US strategic reserve forces, and the US wants to address Russian tactical nuclear weapons. As the two sides move to lower numbers, he anticipated that missile defence would be a problematic nut to crack.

He said that it would be easier to get agreement amongst the parties to the NPT on stronger non-proliferation measures if the US and Russia, as the holders of the largest nuclear arsenals, supports nuclear disarmament. There has been a plethora of ideas on how to strengthen the non-proliferation regime, many developed in the UK and France, and the key now was to formulate them in a concrete way, and to get them supported by the NPT membership. On withdrawal, in particular, the US would explore the possibility to get the UN Security Council to agree language by way of binding resolution, in a similar fashion as under UNSCR 1373 and 1540.

Many of the proposals that Mr. Samore referred to stems from the discovery of Iran's clandestine nuclear programme, and the country's subsequent reluctance to cooperate with the IAEA and the UN Security Council. Not surprisingly, therefore, Iran featured heavily in the question and answer session. Asked about the prospect of direct negotiations with Iran in 2009, Mr. Samore answered that negotiations were not possible until the domestic situation in Iran had settled somewhat. However, the Iranian government should know that if no progress on the nuclear issue has been made until January 2010, the US would seek stronger action from the UN Security Council. Adding that Russia felt more comfortable with the US, and that Europe felt upset about the political repression in Iran, Mr. Samore felt that getting consensus on stronger actions against the country would be comparably easy.

The DPRK also featured in questions and answers. Mr. Samore said that the question of uranium enrichment was now firmly on the US agenda and that talks, when resumed needed to address this. There were "so many unknowns", he said, "which needs addressing". He felt, though, that the DPRK now wanted to reduce tensions with the rest of the six parties. He did not see a "big deal" in the DPRK's 4 July 2009 "shooting of a few missiles".

Mr. Samore recognized that many developing nations might not support these initiatives unless their right to develop a nuclear fuel cycle was assured. He felt, thought, that it would be possible to support growth in the nuclear industry without spreading sensitive technology. The key was to set up fuel centres, such as the Russian Federation's fuel centre in Angarsk, and a framework for assured supply of nuclear fuel.

Finally, he addressed the question of the IAEA. He said that the White House had welcomed the election of Japanese Ambassador Amano to the Director-Generalship, and that the US is now proposing an eight per cent increase in the IAEA's budget. He added that there was European resistance to this, in his mind, moderate proposal. He emphasized that the IAEA will get these funds if they commit to efforts to make their management structures more efficient.

He also encouraged the IAEA to use more of the authority that they already have, by for instance pushing for special inspections in Syria.

All in all, an interesting afternoon. And I did enjoy lunch.

Trust & Verify No. 125

Why have I not blogged lately? I'm not going to make many excuses, but one of the reasons is Trust & Verify, VERTIC's old newsletter. Many of you have asked where it went. That's not important. What is important is that it's back.

Please enjoy edition number 125 of the organization's newsletter. We do encourage your views. Did we get anything wrong? Did we get anything right? Do you want to air some views. Let the editors know, and we'll make sure that you're views are published.