University receives grant for panel on nukes

The MacArthur Foundation awarded a grant of $2.2 million to the Wilson School's Program on Science and Global Security (S&GS) for the creation of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM).

The grant, approved by the foundation on Sept. 22, will be administered by the Wilson School to fund research and international conferences on reducing and securing fissile materials, the main ingredient in nuclear weapons.

The panel — to be formally instituted in January — will be co-chaired by Wilson School professor Frank von Hippel, co-director of S&GS, and José Goldemberg, a professor at the University of São Paolo, Brazil, and will consist of a diverse group of nuclear experts from countries with and without fissile material stockpiles.

Fissile materials, which can undergo an explosive fission chain reaction, include highly-enriched uranium and plutonium.

"Today, there is enough plutonium and highly-enriched uranium outside of nuclear weapons to make perhaps 50,000 nuclear weapons," von Hippel said in an email, noting that there are already between 20,000 and 30,000 extant nuclear weapons.

In response to this situation, the panel's main objective is "to strengthen the analytical basis for policies that reduce global stockpiles of fissile materials and the number of locations where such materials can be found," von Hippel said.

Plans for IPFM have been in motion for "about a year," said Wilson School professor Harold Feiveson, co-director of S&GS. "The idea ... was hatched even earlier, but it's been more ... focused for the past year."

"[The goal] is certainly to make more vivid to policymakers the issues they should be thinking about in controlling, securing and getting rid of weapons of fissile materials in various countries," Feiveson added.

Members of the panel will meet twice a year for five years in different capitals.

The panel will conduct analyses to educate policymakers and the public on a range of issues regarding the regulation of fissile materials, including a cutoff of fissile material production for weapons by nuclear-weapon states, and the monitoring of programs to strengthen the security of nuclear facilities.

The panel's work will also seek to support the next Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which will be held in 2010. NPT was created in 1970 by the United Nations and has 187 signatories, five of which are nuclear-weapons states. The treaty is reviewed every five years.

"The [review conference] this year went badly in a lot of ways and if the next one goes badly I think it could really put in jeopardy the Nonproliferation Treaty, which would be a tragedy," Feiveson said.

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"One thing we want to do [to help support the NPT] is to look at undertakings that would involve commitments and actions by the nuclear-weapon states to reduce their arsenals and their stocks of fissile materials or to not produce any more fissile materials," Feiveson added.

Though IPFM has yet to discuss how to reduce tension between states with and without nuclear weapons, Feiveson said one possible approach would be to institute international regulations about fissile material reductions and the construction of nuclear facilities that all nations must obey.

A website for IPFM will also provide information about fissile materials to update and educate the public about the panel's efforts, another important aspect of IPFM, Feiveson said.

Students at the University may also have the opportunity to participate, with plans underway for an annual Wilson School graduate student policy workshop on a problem of interest to the panel, said von Hippel, who is co-leading a seminar on the spread of national nuclear fuel-cycle facilities this semester.

Feiveson also said that there might be related undergraduate policy task forces at the Wilson School, but details have not yet been finalized.