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Nuclear proliferation

Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. Proliferation has been opposed by many nations with and without nuclear weapons, as governments fear that more countries with nuclear weapons will increase the possibility of nuclear warfare (up to and including the so-called countervalue targeting of civilians with nuclear weapons), de-stabilize international or regional relations, or infringe upon the national sovereignty of nation states.

See also: Chemical weapon proliferation

Four countries besides the five recognized Nuclear Weapon States have acquired, or are presumed to have acquired, nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. None of these four are a party to the NPT, although North Korea acceded to the NPT in 1985, then withdrew in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006.[1] One critique of the NPT is that the treaty is discriminatory in the sense that only those countries that tested nuclear weapons before 1968 are recognized as nuclear weapon states while all other states are treated as non-nuclear-weapon states who can only join the treaty if they forswear nuclear weapons.[2]


Research into the development of nuclear weapons was initially undertaken during World War II by the United States (in cooperation with the United Kingdom and Canada), Germany, Japan, and the USSR. The United States was the first and is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon in war, when it used two bombs against Japan in August 1945. After surrendering to end the war, Germany and Japan ceased to be involved in any nuclear weapon research. In August 1949, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon, becoming the second country to detonate a nuclear bomb.[3] The United Kingdom first tested a nuclear weapon in October 1952. France first tested a nuclear weapon in 1960. The People's Republic of China detonated a nuclear weapon in 1964. India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974, which prompted Pakistan to develop its own nuclear program and, when India conducted a second series of nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan followed with a series of tests of its own. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.

Non-proliferation efforts[edit]

Early efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation involved intense government secrecy, the wartime acquisition of known uranium stores (the Combined Development Trust), and at times even outright sabotage—such as the bombing of a heavy-water facility in Norway thought to be used for a German nuclear program. These efforts began immediately after the discovery of nuclear fission and its military potential.[4] None of these efforts were explicitly public, because the weapon developments themselves were kept secret until the bombing of Hiroshima.


Earnest international efforts to promote nuclear non-proliferation began soon after World War II, when the Truman Administration proposed the Baruch Plan[5] of 1946, named after Bernard Baruch, America's first representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). The Baruch Plan, which drew heavily from the Acheson–Lilienthal Report of 1946, proposed the verifiable dismantlement and destruction of the U.S. nuclear arsenal (which, at that time, was the only nuclear arsenal in the world) after all governments had cooperated successfully to accomplish two things: (1) the establishment of an "international atomic development authority," which would actually own and control all military-applicable nuclear materials and activities, and (2) the creation of a system of automatic sanctions, which not even the U.N. Security Council could veto, and which would proportionately punish states attempting to acquire the capability to make nuclear weapons or fissile material.


Baruch's plea for the destruction of nuclear weapons invoked basic moral and religious intuitions. In one part of his address to the UN, Baruch said, "Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of Fear. Let us not deceive ourselves. We must elect World Peace or World Destruction.... We must answer the world's longing for peace and security."[6] With this remark, Baruch helped launch the field of nuclear ethics, to which many policy experts and scholars have contributed.


Although the Baruch Plan enjoyed wide international support, it failed to emerge from the UNAEC because the Soviet Union planned to veto it in the Security Council. Still, it remained official American policy until 1953, when President Eisenhower made his "Atoms for Peace" proposal before the U.N. General Assembly. Eisenhower's proposal led eventually to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957. Under the "Atoms for Peace" program thousands of scientists from around the world were educated in nuclear science and then dispatched home, where many later pursued secret weapons programs in their home country.[7]


Efforts to conclude an international agreement to limit the spread of nuclear weapons did not begin until the early 1960s, after four nations (the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and France) had acquired nuclear weapons (see List of states with nuclear weapons for more information). Although these efforts stalled in the early 1960s, they renewed once again in 1964, after China detonated a nuclear weapon. In 1968, governments represented at the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) finished negotiations on the text of the NPT. In June 1968, the U.N. General Assembly endorsed the NPT with General Assembly Resolution 2373 (XXII), and in July 1968, the NPT opened for signature in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow. The NPT entered into force in March 1970.


Since the mid-1970s, the primary focus of non-proliferation efforts has been to maintain, and even increase, international control over the fissile material and specialized technologies necessary to build such devices because these are the most difficult and expensive parts of a nuclear weapons program. The main materials whose generation and distribution are controlled are highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Other than the acquisition of these special materials, the scientific and technical means for weapons construction to develop rudimentary, but working, nuclear explosive devices are considered to be within the reach of industrialized nations.


Since its founding by the United Nations in 1957, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has promoted two, sometimes contradictory, missions: on the one hand, the Agency seeks to promote and spread internationally the use of civilian nuclear energy; on the other hand, it seeks to prevent, or at least detect, the diversion of civilian nuclear energy to nuclear weapons, nuclear explosive devices or purposes unknown. The IAEA now operates a safeguards system as specified under Article III of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which aims to ensure that civil stocks of uranium and plutonium, as well as facilities and technologies associated with these nuclear materials, are used only for peaceful purposes and do not contribute in any way to proliferation or nuclear weapons programs. It is often argued that the proliferation of nuclear weapons to many other states has been prevented by the extension of assurances and mutual defence treaties to these states by nuclear powers, but other factors, such as national prestige, or specific historical experiences, also play a part in hastening or stopping nuclear proliferation.[8][9]

The IAEA is to be given considerably more information on nuclear and nuclear-related activities, including R & D, production of uranium and (regardless of whether it is traded), and nuclear-related imports and exports.

thorium

IAEA inspectors will have greater rights of access. This will include any suspect location, it can be at short notice (e.g., two hours), and the IAEA can deploy environmental sampling and remote monitoring techniques to detect illicit activities.

States must streamline administrative procedures so that IAEA inspectors get automatic visa renewal and can communicate more readily with IAEA headquarters.

Further evolution of safeguards is towards evaluation of each state, taking account of its particular situation and the kind of nuclear materials it has. This will involve greater judgement on the part of IAEA and the development of effective methodologies which reassure NPT States.

two 150 MWe BWRs from the United States, which started up in 1969, now use locally enriched uranium and are under safeguards,

two small Canadian PHWRs (1972 & 1980), also under safeguards, and

ten local PHWRs based on Canadian designs, two of 150 and eight 200 MWe.

two new 540 MWe and two 700 MWe plants at Tarapur (known as TAPP: )

Tarapur Atomic Power Station

 , with its civil nuclear infrastructure and experience, has a stockpile of separated plutonium that could be fabricated into weapons relatively quickly.[91]

Japan

 , according to some observers, may be seeking (or have already achieved) a breakout capability, with its stockpile of low-enriched uranium and its capability to enrich further to weapons-grade.[92][93]

Iran

For a state that does not possess nuclear weapons, the capability to produce one or more weapons quickly and with little warning is called a breakout capability.[90]

Bas, Muhammet A., and Andrew J. Coe. "A dynamic theory of nuclear proliferation and preventive war." International Organization 70.4 (2016): 655-685 .

online

Cimbala, Stephen J. "Nuclear proliferation in the twenty-first century: realism, rationality, or uncertainty?." Strategic Studies Quarterly 11.1 (2017): 129–146.

online

Cohen, Michael D., and Aaron Rapport. "Strategic surprise, nuclear proliferation and US foreign policy." European Journal of International Relations 26.2 (2020): 344-371 .

online

Dunn, Lewis A., and . "The next phase in nuclear proliferation research." Asia's Nuclear Future/h (Routledge, 2019) pp. 1–33.

William H. Overholt

Lanoszka, Alexander. "Nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation among soviet allies." Journal of Global Security Studies 3.2 (2018): 217-233 .

online

Lanoszka, Alexander. . (Cornell University Press, 2018); case studies of West Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation

Lavoy, Peter, ed. Nuclear Weapons Proliferation in the next decade (Routledge, 2020).

Narang, Vipin. "Strategies of nuclear proliferation: How states pursue the bomb." International Security 41.3 (2017): 110-150 .

online

Narang, Vipin. 2022. . Princeton University Press.

Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation

Rezaei, Farhad. "The American response to Pakistani and Iranian nuclear proliferation: a study in paradox." Asian Affairs 48.1 (2017): 27-50 .

online

Sagan, Scott. 2011. "" Annual Review of Political Science.

The Causes of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.

Smetana, Michal. Nuclear Deviance: Stigma Politics and the Rules of the Nonproliferation Game ( Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).  978-3-030-24224-4 online H-DIPLO review

ISBN

Ploughshares Fund Video: A World Without Nuclear Weapons

National Counterproliferation Center – Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Official website of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

Archived 5 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine – A non-technical public policy and global security magazine that has reported on nuclear proliferation issues since 1945.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

or CND, is a UK-based non-proliferation movement based in the UK which advocates a complete ban on all nuclear weaponry.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nonproliferation Website

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Council for a Livable World

Federation of American Scientists

or IPPNW, is a US-based non-proliferation movement advocating amongst other things, a complete ban on all nuclear weaponry.

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

Archived 22 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine or ISPNW, is a US-based non-proliferation movement advocating the full control of the world's nuclear arsenal by a restructured UN.

International Society for the Prevention of Nuclear War

Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Monterey Institute of International Studies

Disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation - Stockholm International Peace Research Institute