From: Matthew Bunn Study Director, National Academy of Sciences Adviser, Office of Science and Technology Policy Date: 24/11/1995 This document contains the following speeches made by John Gibbons: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) KEYNOTE ADDRESS: SECOND INTERNATIONAL POLICY FORUM: MANAGEMENT AND DISPOSITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIALS MARCH 22, 1995 MANAGING NUCLEAR MATERIALS IN THE POST-COLD-WAR ERA --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) Fifty Years After Trinity: Working Toward a Happy Ending Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Trinity Test Co-Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. July 16, 1995 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (3) SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE AND PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS August 23, 1995 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- =========================================================================== THE HONORABLE JOHN H. GIBBONS ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY KEYNOTE ADDRESS: SECOND INTERNATIONAL POLICY FORUM: MANAGEMENT AND DISPOSITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIALS MARCH 22, 1995 MANAGING NUCLEAR MATERIALS IN THE POST-COLD-WAR ERA A Daunting Challenge Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most serious and urgent security challenges our nation faces: managing the vast stockpiles of bomb materials built up during four decades of Cold War. Nothing could be more central to our security than making sure this material does not fall into the wrong hands. As President Clinton has said: "reducing the size of nuclear stockpiles and enhancing the security of nuclear materials is of vital importance to our national security." The Cold War arms race is over. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are now being dismantled. Unfortunately, this historic turn away from the nuclear brink will leave both the United States and Russia with a daunting legacy: hundreds of tons of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium that must be secured and accounted for. Many of you have heard of President Clinton's recent announcement that 200 tons of fissile material will be withdrawn from the U.S. weapons stockpile: the question is, what is to be done with this material now? This challenge will be difficult enough in the United States. But Russia must grapple with it in the midst of a wrenching transition -- and with a budget crisis that makes our own difficult budget choices seem like child's play. The scope of this problem is awesome: we are talking about hundreds of tons of materials spread over scores of sites, military, civilian, and dual-use, throughout the United States and the former Soviet Union. The seizures of stolen plutonium and highly-enriched uranium that have already occurred demonstrate beyond doubt how urgent these problems are. These materials are, after all, the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons. This problem is too big for any one country to solve alone: working together is the only answer. And that is precisely what the United States, Russia, and the other states of the former Soviet Union are doing. Whatever bumps on the road our relationship may go through, over issues ranging from Chechenya to nuclear cooperation with Iran, we cannot let cooperation in managing these materials become a casualty. The security stakes are simply too high. A Comprehensive Plan A year ago, at a similar forum sponsored by the Department of Energy, I described this administration's comprehensive four-part plan to meet this challenge. Since then, working closely with the states of the former Soviet Union, we've accomplished a lot -- though far more remains to be done. Today I want to give you a progress report. Our plan is based on four fundamental pillars: securing nuclear materials, building confidence through openness, halting further accumulation, and carrying out ultimate disposition. Let me speak briefly about the successes we've had in each of these areas, and the challenges that still lie before us. Task I: Securing Nuclear Materials First, and most urgently, we are now actively cooperating to remove opportunities for bomb materials to end up on a nuclear black market. A year ago when I spoke, we had big ideas, but there wasn't a single kilogram of weapons-usable material whose security had been materially improved through these cooperative programs. That is no longer true. Today, I can report real and demonstrable progress -- hundreds of kilograms of material already secured, and a basis for cooperation established that will enable us, if we work hard, to improve the security of many tons of material over the next year. Project Sapphire -- which airlifted half a ton of HEU from Kazakhstan to safe storage in the United States last fall, at Kazakh request -- is the most dramatic and well-known of the successes in this area. Equally important are the impressive successes we have scored in our cooperative efforts to work with the states of the former Soviet Union to enhance security and accounting systems for nuclear materials. We are taking a multi-pronged approach, designed to seize opportunities as they arise. The key programs include: * government-to-government cooperation, channeled through the Ministry of Atomic Energy in Russia; * a complementary lab-to-lab effort; and * expanding cooperation with the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, known as GAN. The remarkable work done at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow is an example of the kind of success we hope to replicate elsewhere. During November and December of last year, a dramatically improved security system was installed at a building housing two critical HEU facilities, including double fences, portal monitors, cameras, and motion detectors. A computerized accounting system has also been installed. This was a fully joint effort, involving Kurchatov, an institute known as Eleron that produces Russian security equipment, Sandia, Los Alamos, and other U.S. labs. I toured this system myself in December, and I can tell you, the difference compared to what was there before is like night and day. But the significance of that effort goes far beyond one building, for it has sown the seeds of similar successes elsewhere. Funded through DOE's lab-to-lab program, this effort had the flexibility to "buy Russian" -- with the result that the Russian participants, full partners in the effort, have become enthusiastic salesmen, working hard to convince other facilities to undertake similar improvements. Indeed, after getting the pitch from Kurchatov, the Russian nuclear regulatory agency has said that they would like to see similar systems installed at every nuclear facility in the Russian Federation. Kurchatov is only one of an ever-expanding list of cooperative efforts. Also in the lab-to-lab program, a new, modular material control and accounting system has been set up at Arzamas-16, one of Russia's two main weapons laboratories, to demonstrate technologies that could be deployed throughout Russia's nuclear complex. In January, the U.S. and Russian multi-lab teams agreed on a far-reaching plan of cooperation that will lead to improved control and accounting for tons of bomb-grade materials at several sites. Similarly, in the government-to-government effort, we have agreed on a list of key facilities containing tons of weapons-usable material, where our initial cooperation will focus. And we are working closely with the Russian nuclear regulators to develop a new cooperation agreement, which we hope to complete at the first opportunity. Through this year, much of this work has been funded from Department of Defense's Nunn-Lugar program. But in our FY96 budget request, we have consolidated the lab-to-lab and government-to-government programs in the Department of Energy -- with some continuing regulatory support from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The DOE budget request includes $70 million for cooperation in improving security for nuclear materials. I believe we have a compelling case to make to Congress, and that this program will receive strong bipartisan support. I cannot think of a better investment in our nation's security. Indeed, because this problem is so important, I asked a task force of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to conduct an urgent independent review of our efforts, and make recommendations for improvement. They are scheduled to report to the President at the end of this month. Task II: Building Confidence Through Openness Our second task is to build confidence through openness. Here too, we've made considerable headway over the past year. You need to know how big a problem is before you can solve it. So in September of last year, President Clinton and President Yeltsin agreed that for the first time ever, our two countries would tell each other how many nuclear weapons and how much plutonium and highly-enriched uranium we have. These declarations will mark a major step toward the goal the two Presidents laid out at their previous summit -- ensuring the "transparency and irreversibility" of nuclear arms reductions. In March of last year, Secretary of Energy O'Leary and Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov agreed that the two sides would develop a system of mutual, reciprocal inspections to confirm the inventories of plutonium and HEU removed from dismantled weapons. Since then, U.S. and Russian technical experts have worked together to determine what measurements will be taken, and what equipment will be used. Visits to plutonium storage sites at Rocky Flats and Tomsk to experiment with these technologies have already been exchanged. In December, during the Gore-Chernomyrdin meeting, the United States tabled a sweeping proposal to tie together these elements of "transparency and irreversibility." Under our approach: * dismantlement of weapons would be confirmed -- by inspecting the weapons before they were dismantled, and examining the plutonium and HEU components afterward; * the irreversibility of these reductions would also be confirmed -- by inspections that would verify a commitment on each side never again to use the materials that are now excess to military needs in nuclear weapons; * a new basis for cooperating to ensure the safety and security of nuclear materials would be established -- by opening up virtually our entire nuclear complexes. Under our proposal, all of the sites in both the United States and Russia where plutonium or HEU are stored would be opened to reciprocal visits, excluding only nuclear weapons that will remain in the enduring stockpile, and naval reactor fuel. That will allow experts to see for themselves what improvements may need to be made. In short, we are saying to Russia: we are willing to open up if you are. We are offering more openness than any nuclear weapon state has ever offered before: reciprocity is the watchword. Yet our proposals are also carefully crafted to allow each side to protect secrets that remain important to its security, and to minimize the cost of building confidence. As we discuss these proposals, we are also working to negotiate an "agreement for cooperation" that will provide the legal basis, under the Atomic Energy Act, for exchanging sensitive information regarding our nuclear stockpiles. To build the far-reaching openness we envision will take time. So we are beginning now with some initial steps. Already, for example, tons of weapons-usable fissile material removed from the U.S. weapons program are under International Atomic Energy Agency inspection -- demonstrating beyond doubt our commitment that these materials will never again be used to restart a new arms race. These steps toward mutual nuclear glasnost are as important, in their way, as our arms reduction commitments themselves. They provide a critical underpinning for all of the rest of our four-part plan -- for without openness, there can be no true and enduring cooperation. While Cold War arms control agreements focused on eliminating the nuclear launchers that could launch a deliberate attack, measures to control nuclear weapons themselves and the fissile materials needed to make them will be a fundamental part of future arms control and nonproliferation efforts. Task III: Halting Accumulation of Excess Stocks Third, there's what I like to call the "theory of holes." That is, if you find yourself in a hole, you ought to stop digging. If we have too much plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, we should stop making more. In June of last year, Vice President Gore and Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin signed an historic agreement under which our two countries pledged to stop producing plutonium for weapons. The United States has already stopped, and Russia will shut its remaining production reactors by the year 2000. The two sides have largely worked out the measures that will be needed to confirm that the plutonium produced in the meantime is not used in weapons. And we are working hard on joint studies of means to replacing the heat and power these reactors provide, so they can be turned off for good. This agreement will be the first step toward a global treaty designed to end mankind's production of these fissile materials for weapons forever. Task IV: Disposition of Fissile Materials Fourth and finally, we are working hard to pick the best option for disposition of these fissile materials -- transforming them into forms that will pose drastically lower security risks, so we won't have to guard them forever. The HEU part of the problem is straightforward in principle: excess HEU can be blended with other uranium to make low-enriched reactor fuel that cannot be used to build nuclear weapons, and is a valuable product for sale on the commercial market. As you know, Russia and the United States have signed a purchase agreement under which the United States will purchase low-enriched fuel blended from 500 tons of HEU from dismantled Russian weapons. After working out some final issues, we expect to begin receiving the blended material this spring. And we plan to do much the same with substantial quantities of our own HEU. Final decisions on that score are scheduled for January, 1996. Plutonium poses a much more difficult problem. Since virtually any isotopic mix of plutonium can be used in a nuclear bomb, similar blending doesn't solve the security problem. And there is no money in plutonium -- except, perhaps, on the nuclear black market. Making reactor fuel from plutonium is so expensive that the fuel cannot compete on the commercial market, even if the plutonium itself is "free." Like oil shale, plutonium has energy locked inside, but the cost of getting that energy out is more than the energy is worth in today's market. Over the last year, the Department of Energy and the interagency plutonium disposition working group have been working hard to analyze the pros and cons of various options. Already, our analyses have led us to some important conclusions. First, we believe the National Academy of Sciences was right in telling us that our disposition efforts should aim to achieve "the spent fuel standard." That is, we must make the excess weapons plutonium as hard to make bombs from as it would be to make bombs from the much larger amount of plutonium that exists in spent fuel from the world's commercial power reactors. There are basically two classes of options for achieving this goal -- using the plutonium as reactor fuel, or immobilizing it with highly radioactive fission products headed for disposal. A third class of approach, burying plutonium in deep boreholes, is still in the running, but the licensing issues look formidable. The second important conclusion we've reached is that you don't need advanced new technologies to do this job. Developing and building new reactor types such as gas reactors or liquid metal reactors for this purpose would take longer, cost more, and involve more technical risk than using existing reactors or immobilization technologies, modified to do this job safely. There are important issues that remain to be sorted through. We expect to have a final decision on what the United States is going to do with its excess plutonium in late-1996. Given the security stakes, we cannot afford to delay in putting this problem on a path to resolution. Here, too, cooperation with Russia is critical. Neither the United States nor Russia is likely to be willing to eliminate its stockpile of thousands of bombs' worth of excess plutonium while the other side keeps its stockpile in reserve. So this job is going to be done together, or not at all. That does not necessarily mean, however, that the specific technology that is right for the United States is right for Russia. As President Kennedy once said, we need to make the world safe for diversity. At Los Alamos in January, following up on discussions in Moscow last year, we initiated a major U.S.-Russian joint study of plutonium disposition -- called for by the two Presidents in their summit statement. Together, we will examine a broad set of disposition options, and compare them against a consistent set of criteria. Before long, we hope to have established a basis for moving forward -- in both countries. The Way Forward This is an ambitious agenda: securing fissile material, building confidence through openness, limiting further accumulation, and ultimately transforming it into forms that pose less security risk. Our vision is of the United States and Russia running our nuclear weapons complexes in reverse -- dismantling thousands of nuclear weapons rather than building more, getting rid of nuclear weapons materials rather than producing ever larger stockpiles, cleaning up rather than further fouling our nuclear sites, fostering openness and trust rather than secrecy and suspicion. This administration is committed to making that vision a reality. What better gift could we leave our children as a legacy? None of this will be easy, however. The history of mistrust still lingers, so each new nuclear site opened, each new secret revealed, requires painstaking work on both sides. Finding the money to do the job also remains an important issue -- on both sides. We need the help and the wise counsel of people like those in this room. Working together, we can get this job done. The future of efforts to reduce nuclear arms and stem their spread depends on our success. THE HONORABLE JOHN H. GIBBONS ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Fifty Years After Trinity: Working Toward a Happy Ending Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Trinity Test Co-Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. July 16, 1995 This bell is fashioned after the "bonshoo" bell in the Hiroshima Peace Park. Its solemn tone reminds us of both the peril of destruction and the hope of peace inherent in the awesome power of the unleashed atom. I ring it in commemoration of those tumultuous events benchmarked by Trinity, and in commemoration of the heroic people who participated in them. We are here today to signal the dawn of a double-edged age. The nuclear fire lit at Trinity 50 years ago, just 30 months after Stagg Field, was an unparalleled scientific accomplishment, reflecting an extraordinary marshalling of talented people, many of whom are here today. That fire raised the hope for a transformed world, an end to major war -- and indeed, there has been no large-scale war among the major powers for the past 50 years. But it also raised an unprecedented peril, giving our species the key to its own destruction for the first time. Promises of Heaven; perils of Hell. Awesome potential for good, combined with awesome danger -- and therefore awesome responsibility for governance. Today we are embarking on a new nuclear era, double-edged in a different way, whose ultimate shape remains shrouded in the future. It is an era of great hope: we have stepped decisively away from the nuclear brink. For the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, the United States and Russia have no missiles targeted on each other, and our relations are now more partner than adversary. The United States is dismantling nuclear warheads literally as fast as we can -- some 1500 every year -- and everything we know suggests that Russia is doing the same. But this is also an era of new dangers. The collapse of the Soviet Union and of the Cold War rivalry has raised new proliferation risks and lifted the lid on age-old ethnic, racial, and religious conflicts. The dismantlement of thousands of nuclear weapons leaves us with the daunting task of coping safely and securely with the hundreds of tons of fissile material these weapons contain. The technological revolution that is bringing our world closer together -- parts of which had their origins in the Manhattan Project -- is also bringing problems closer to our shores. A peril and a hope. Our challenge is to bequeath to our children a world in which the peril is forestalled and the hope fulfilled. Five decades ago, even as the world was engulfed in the flames of war, Niels Bohr offered a remarkable vision of such a world -- a planet transformed for the better by the fearsome power of nuclear weapons. His profound insight was the "complementarity" of the bomb: he called the invention of nuclear weapons a great and deep difficulty which contained within itself its own solution. Bohr imagined that far-seeing statesmen would understand that a world armed with thousands of nuclear weapons ready to be launched at any moment was clearly an unacceptable danger to human survival. The unmistakable need to forestall this danger would force them to do what they otherwise would not -- to compromise national sovereignty in the interest of international control. Since no one would give up such a weapon without absolute confidence that others were doing the same, verification would require a world of absolute openness. As Oppenheimer summarized it, "in principle everything that might be a threat to the security of the world would have to be open to the world." And that universal openness, in Bohr's vision, would itself transform the earth in favor of democracy, freedom, and the unending advancement of science and technology. Unfortunately, over four decades of Cold War, we built precisely the world from whose terrors Bohr rightly shrank. Now our problem is: where do we go from here? The time has come, 50 years after Trinity, for a deep national reflection on what we want our nuclear future to be. As the strategist Fred Ikle once asked so memorably: "Can nuclear deterrence have a happy ending?" We don't know, even today, what such a happy ending would look like. We don't know, with all that has passed, whether we can build a world that matches Bohr's vision. But we do know the general direction we need to head: þ We want a world in which there are fewer nuclear weapons held by fewer countries, and that they matter less in determining national power and stature. Thus we want deep, transparent, and irreversible nuclear arms reductions. þ And we want a world in which all nations can benefit from the many peaceful applications of the atom, under strong safeguards to prevent any diversion for military purposes. So as we reflect on our long-term nuclear future, it is incumbent upon us to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work needed to keep heading in the right direction -- forestalling the dangers, and seizing the opportunities, that we face today. We're better off focusing on the here-and-now challenges of nuclear dismantlement and nonproliferation than locking horns over exactly what nuclear force we are going to need twenty years from now. And I can tell you, over the past 30 months, this President and this Administration have had their sleeves rolled up, and we have some remarkable successes to report: þ Just a few short years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, all of the non-Russian successor states have agreed to join the Nonproliferation Treaty and ship all the nuclear weapons on their soil back to Russia. þ The START I treaty, which will eliminate delivery systems that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads, has entered into force. Already, thanks in part to the Nunn-Lugar assistance program, hundreds of missiles and launchers once pointed at the United States have been eliminated, and thousands of nuclear warheads have been shipped to dismantlement plants. þ We are working to ratify START II, which will remove another 5,000 warheads from the deployed arsenals of the United States and Russia. þ President Clinton and President Yeltsin pledged at their summit last September to begin considering additional reductions and limitations as soon as START II is ratified. As Vice President Gore has said, the improved international security climate will permit -- and indeed require -- additional progress in reducing the size and structure of our nuclear forces. þ We are working to reach agreement on clarifying the ABM Treaty's distinction between strategic defenses and permitted theater defenses, in order to maintain the arms reduction momentum while responding to the threat of missile proliferation. þ To meet the new challenge of possible erosion of nuclear controls, we have launched a major new effort focused on controlling nuclear weapons themselves and the fissile materials needed to make them, rather than only the missiles and launchers which are limited by START. This includes U.S. and Russian pursuit of four activities: -- cooperation to ensure that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials are secure and accounted for; -- data exchanges and reciprocal visits to build confidence that nuclear weapons are being irreversibly dismantled and that nuclear stockpiles are safe and secure; -- new agreements to stop further production of fissile materials for weapons; and -- cooperation to ensure safe and secure disposition of all the hundreds of tons of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium no longer needed for military purposes. þ Just this spring, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was extended indefinitely, with overwhelming support from every corner of the globe, making this centerpiece of the nuclear nonproliferation regime a permanent fixture of the international landscape. þ President Clinton's strong stand in going all-out to achieve a Comprehensive Test Ban was an essential factor in the overwhelming support the NPT received. He has made clear that we seek a test ban agreement which is truly comprehensive, which includes all the nuclear states and as many other states as possible, and that will allow us to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile. Making the needed investment in the Department of Energy's innovative Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship program will be critical in achieving that goal. The CTB -- a goal of Republican and Democratic Presidents from Eisenhower to Carter -- is a good idea whose time has finally come. We are prepared for the possibility that the United States has already conducted its last nuclear test. þ Through determined diplomacy, we have also stopped the North Korean nuclear threat in its tracks, with an agreement that will freeze and dismantle their nuclear program. This agreement is not built on trust, but on international monitoring. The recent agreement on the type of reactors to be provided represents another milestone in the long hard road of implementation ahead. Here too, we have focused investment and hard work on heading off a major threat to international security before it arose -- rather than having to face far higher costs and risks later. þ We have proposed a permanent global ban on the production of fissile materials for weapons -- ending mankind's production of the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons forever. þ The International Atomic Energy Agency is greatly strengthening the nuclear safeguards system, focusing needed attention on detecting secret nuclear programs that inspectors aren't asked to visit. This year, we increased our voluntary contribution by $10 million. Again: investment in prevention. þ As part of the fissile material control effort I just mentioned, we are making every effort to combat the most frightening nuclear proliferation threat now facing us -- nuclear theft and nuclear smuggling. Nothing could be more central to our security than ensuring that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons do not fall into the wrong hands. U.S. and Russian experts, for example, are now working closely together to install modernized security and accounting systems at facilities such as Kurchatov and Obninsk. We are ramping this effort up just as fast as we can, as we build the basis of mutual confidence and transparency. As of one year ago, we had only spent about $1 million on security and accounting for nuclear materials in Russia; over the last year, we've spent over $10 million, and over the next 15 months, we expect to spend roughly $100 million more. . Since the Gulf War revealed how Iraq had taken advantage of weak links in international export controls, we have been working hard to strengthen those controls. And we have succeeded: the intelligence community tells us that, apart from nuclear smuggling, it is harder today than ever before for proliferators to buy the technologies they need to build weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. Yet at the same time, we have lifted out-dated restrictions on technologies critical to developing economies -- such as high-speed computers and communication systems -- and freed over $30 billion in exports from unnecessary controls. þ We are working to establish a new, post-COCOM regime to constrain dangerous exports and limit arms sales to unstable regions or states that threaten international peace and security. And we have proposed new steps to curb the terrible civilian toll of anti- personnel landmines. þ Simultaneously, we are working hard to get the Chemical Weapons Convention ratified, and to negotiate new compliance measures to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. This is a record of solid achievement. We are moving as fast as we can to undo the daunting legacies of the Cold War arms competition. Our vision is of the United States and Russia running our nuclear weapons complexes in reverse -- dismantling thousands of nuclear weapons rather than building more, getting rid of nuclear weapons materials rather than producing ever larger stockpiles, cleaning up rather than further fouling our nuclear sites, fostering openness and trust rather than secrecy and suspicion. This administration is committed to making that vision a reality. What better gift could we leave our children as a legacy? This is tough, difficult, day-to-day work: it requires leadership, and a willingness to invest in preventing problems before they become expensive crises. Just two weeks ago in Moscow, at the fifth meeting of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission -- an excellent example of the kind of nuts-and-bolts cooperative work now underway -- we made progress on a broad front: þ We quietly resolved a number of issues related to arms and missile technology sales, allowing us to announce that Russia would join the Missile Technology Control Regime and would be a founding member of the post-COCOM Forum. þ We put the purchase of 500 tons of Russian highly-enriched uranium on a sound footing, by offering to modify a trade agreement to allow the uranium to be sold for reactor fuel more easily in the United States -- so that we could pay Russia for it when it is delivered -- and by offering an additional $100 million pre-payment to help finance Russia's shipment of reactor fuel to Ukraine in compensation for warheads Ukraine is shipping back to Russia for dismantlement. That deal will provide an incentive for weapons dismantlement, ensure that Ukrainian disarmament takes place and that Ukraine has a reliable nuclear fuel supply, provide $12 billion in badly needed hard-currency income for the Russian economy, and secure a valuable commercial product for the United States. þ We reached agreement on a number of steps to accelerate our ongoing cooperation in security and accounting for nuclear materials, including a new agreement under which the Department of Energy will help the Russian nuclear regulatory agency establish an accurate national inventory of all the plutonium and HEU Russia has. þ We established a Civilian R&D Foundation, with $10 million in initial funding, which will provide a new lifeline for supporting Russia's outstanding scientific community. þ We witnessed the space link-up of the U.S. Shuttle and the Russian Mir space station -- a critical step on the path to building Space Station Alpha, the world's largest international technology collaboration, first agreed to in the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission. What next? Fifty years after Trinity, we in the science and technology community have a responsibility to look ahead and try to envision what the next 50 years may hold. For example, with a burgeoning world population coupled with economic growth, we will face daunting resource challenges. Food demands will drastically increase, energy demands will likely double (and electricity demands will triple). Climate-driven changes in weather and crop production patterns could create bounty for some and poverty and pestilence for others. We will have to cope with improved stewardship of the globe's environmental resources under unprecedented pressures. All of these challenges, if not successfully addressed, hold the potential for provoking conflict. Only if we can replicate the Manhattan Project experience, by harnessing the best of the world's scientific and technical minds, and committing a significant investment of resources can we hope to build a future of peace and plenty. There was a time when science and technology's contribution to national security was primarily building new and better weapons. Trinity heralded the most earth-shattering achievement of that era. But our security imperatives have changed. The dangers we face today are far more diverse than Fascist or Communist expansionism. The post-Cold War reality includes a contagion of violence that is spreading, in the face of economic, social, and environmental pressures that prevent governments from meeting their citizens' most basic needs. In Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and even Europe, we find that endemic poverty, ethnic and religious tensions, overpopulation, environmental degradation, and mass migration are producing a tangled skein of conflicts. No weapon, no matter how powerful, can meet these diverse challenges. There is no silver bullet, but a central part of the answer lies in a strategy of prevention using the tools of science and technology. President Clinton recognizes that reality. And that is why he has called for the development of a comprehensive National Security Science and Technology Strategy--the first this country has ever had. At a Forum held here at the National Academy of Sciences last March, the President charged his administration and the scientific community with drawing up such a strategy. And the President's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) was tasked with building a government-wide consensus for the essential investments in R&D and S&T cooperation we will need to meet the future's national security challenges. The resulting National Security Science and Technology Strategy will be forwarded to the President later this month. It will call for a systematic government-wide effort to harness science and technology to meet our nation's broad national security aims. And as the President has made clear, those security aims include not only maintenance of ready and capable military forces, but engagement with other nations to ensure sustainable development, to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and to build strong and vibrant economies around the world. Unfortunately, there are those on Capitol Hill who apparently don't understand the importance of these long-term investments. Even compelling investments like the Nunn- Lugar arms reduction assistance program are under attack. As Senator Nunn asked: if some one offered you a weapon that could eliminate hundreds of missiles and thousands of nuclear weapons, what would you be willing to pay for it? We are going to have to work hard to ensure that our Congress does not take the penny-wise and pound-foolish path of cutting the heart out of our science and technology enterprise -- particularly in areas central to our future security. That enterprise is the seed corn we must plant and tend for our future needs; nothing could be more foolish than to consume it. A peril and a hope. The challenges before us are great, but so are the opportunities. Getting to the "happy ending" that we all seek will be a big job. We are going to need help from the science and technology community -- bringing new insights and perspectives, and weighing in on the importance of a long-term strategy for harnessing science and technology to our national security needs. We will do well if we can muster the kind of talent, vision, dedication, and wise perspectives that many of the people in this room brought to the Manhattan Project -- and if we invest those resources in the science and technology needed to meet the challenges we face. That will truly be a fitting legacy of Trinity. Thank you very much. TESTIMONY OF JOHN H. GIBBONS ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE AND PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS August 23, 1995 Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to testify before you today on what I believe is one of the most important security challenges facing our nation. This President and this Administration have made countering the threat of theft and smuggling of weapons-usable nuclear materials an absolutely top priority. The President has established a comprehensive effort to meet this challenge. As President Clinton has said: "reducing the size of nuclear stockpiles and enhancing the security of nuclear materials is of vital importance to our national security." Why is this so critical? You've heard the reasons already today: Obtaining plutonium or HEU is the hardest part of building a bomb. In some cases, it only takes a few kilograms. And seizures of kilograms of these materials are already taking place. The Cold War arms race is over. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are now being dismantled. Unfortunately, this historic turn away from the nuclear brink will leave both the United States and Russia with the daunting legacy of decades of U.S.-Soviet competition: hundreds of tons of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium that must be secured and accounted for. This challenge will be demanding for the United States. But Russia must grapple with it in the midst of an extraordinarily difficult economic transition -- and with a budget crisis that makes our own difficult budget choices seem simple. The scope of this problem is awesome: we are talking about hundreds of tons of fissile materials spread over scores of sites, military, civilian, and dual-use, throughout the former Soviet Union. This problem cannot be solved by any one country alone: working together is the only answer. And this Administration has focused intensely on doing precisely that, with Russia, the other states of the former Soviet Union, and other countries as well. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have discussed this issue in detail at their recent summits, as have Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin at their semiannual meetings. As the world's largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia bear a special responsibility to work together in solving this global problem. Whatever bumps on the road our relationship may go through, over issues ranging from Chechnya to nuclear cooperation with Iran, we cannot let cooperation in managing these materials become a casualty. The security stakes for both countries are simply too high. A Comprehensive Plan This Administration has established a comprehensive approach to the problem of managing nuclear materials in the post-Cold War era, based on cooperation with our former adversaries. Working closely with the states of the former Soviet Union, we've accomplished a lot -- though much more remains to be done. As we continue to do our utmost to ensure that nuclear arms reduction pledges are carried out and nuclear weapons dismantled, we are working hard to ensure that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials are safely and securely managed. Our plan is based on four fundamental pillars: -- ensuring that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials are secure and accounted for; -- building confidence through openness, with data exchanges and reciprocal visits to build confidence that nuclear weapons are being irreversibly dismantled and that nuclear stockpiles are safe and secure; -- halting further production of materials that are already excess to security needs; and -- carrying out safe and secure disposition of the hundreds of tons of fissile materials we no longer need, transforming them into forms that pose drastically lower security risks. The most urgent part of this plan, and the one in which we are making the largest investments, is the first item: ensuring that the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons do not fall into the wrong hands. Our cooperation with the former Soviet states to meet this challenge is real, vibrant, and growing. -- Already, U.S. and Russian experts have developed and installed accounting and control systems for nuclear materials so impressive that both Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov and the Russian nuclear regulatory agency have said they should be installed throughout Russia. -- U.S. assistance in improving security for nuclear weapons has already, in the words of the man in charge of Russian nuclear weapons, Gen. Yevgeny Maslin, "really improved nuclear warhead protection during transportation." -- In the fight against nuclear smuggling, border guards have already seized radioactive materials detected with U.S.-supplied equipment. During the coming year, we will be cooperating with the former Soviet states to upgrade key facilities, establish effective national systems and regulatory programs, and facilitate indigenous capabilities in ensuring security and accounting for nuclear materials. Key Facilities. 1994 was a breakthrough year, marking the first time that U.S. and Russian experts collaborated to secure directly weapons-usable nuclear material, and opening the door for much broader cooperation at a wide variety of nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union. Now, we are moving from protecting kilograms of material to protecting tons of material. During the rest of 1995 and 1996, we will be cooperating with Russia to upgrade security and accounting at the largest of the civilian sites in open cities handling weapons- usable material in Russia -- which we and the Russian government have agreed should be the top priority for our government-to-government cooperation. We have also targeted funds for upgrades at all the former Soviet research institutes outside Russia that handle weapons- usable materials. We expect to make substantial progress at a broad range of additional sites, including a long-awaited breakthrough in collaboration with the Russian nuclear weapons complex. National Systems. One of the most essential elements of cooperation in this area is the development of national accounting and tracking systems for nuclear material, and national regulatory programs including standardized methods for protecting and accounting for nuclear material. During the coming year, we will be working with the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, GOSATOMNADZOR, providing equipment and personnel training to help standardize safeguards systems and modernize Russia's national system of protection, accounting, control, and regulation for nuclear materials. Indigenous Programs. A key principle underlying U.S. cooperation with the former Soviet states in this area is to facilitate these nations' own indigenous efforts to ensure effective security and accounting for nuclear materials. Already, indigenous Russian equipment has been developed and deployed to protect nuclear materials in the Russian nuclear complex. Classes will soon be underway at Russia's national training center for nuclear material security and accounting at Obninsk, and we are working hard to facilitate mass production of state-of-the-art security and accounting equipment in Russia. I want to particularly commend the Secretary and Undersecretary of Energy and the participating national laboratories for the signal service they have done for the national security in establishing and implementing DOE's lab-to-lab program. Working directly with the technical experts at individual facilities who know what needs to be done, offering them funding, respect, and interesting and important work to do, seeking out new opportunities for cooperation and flexibly responding to them as they arise, this program has been a remarkable success. Almost every week, another group is trained, another piece of equipment installed -- another proliferation risk measurably reduced. I have personally reviewed the remarkable work done at the Kurchatov Institute, where in just two months last year, for less than $1 million, a radically improved security and accounting system was installed at a building housing several bombs' worth of HEU -- using almost entirely Russian equipment. Of course, much more remains to be done at Kurchatov, as elsewhere, but the beginnings that have been made have built the base for further progress. I urge you to take the opportunity to hear this story directly from DOE and its lab-to-lab team as this series of hearings continues. The PCAST Report Because of the extraordinary importance of this problem, and the scope and complexity of the programs we had established to address it, this Administration asked the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology to conduct an urgent independent review of our efforts and make recommendations for improvement. You have just heard John Holdren outline their conclusions. The PCAST report has proven exceptionally useful in further strengthening these programs, helping to ensure that our efforts are as effective and comprehensive as possible. I can tell you, the President and the Vice President were intensely focused on this issue long before PCAST's report, and were deeply engaged by the PCAST briefing. The President is determined to ensure that we continue to meet this proliferation challenge head-on. I am pleased to announce that the Administration is taking action to respond to all nine of the recommendations for Presidential action made in the PCAST report. This effort is a top national security priority of the President. President Clinton has nominated Ambassador James Goodby as his personal representative for Nuclear Security and Dismantlement. We have established an improved mechanism for oversight of these programs by the NSC, and the Department of Energy has established a new Nuclear Materials Security Task Force to manage this growing endeavor. In addition, the President and the Vice President have made this subject a key focus of their recent meetings with their Russian counterparts. At the May summit in Moscow, President Yeltsin and President Clinton agreed to expand and accelerate our two countries' cooperation in this area, and directed the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission to prepare a report on next steps. At the Halifax G-7+1 summit, the leaders agreed to hold a summit in Moscow next spring to focus on issues of nuclear safety and security. And at the Gore- Chernomyrdin meeting in June, the Vice President and the Prime Minister discussed this cooperation at length, and agreed on a plan for preparing the report on next steps called for by the Presidents in time for their October summit. At that same meeting, the Department of Energy and MINATOM broke a logjam that had been slowing progress in government-to-government cooperation and scheduled visits to five key sites to assess what upgrades were needed; the U.S. teams have just returned from those visits, and a U.S.-Russian meeting to begin working out specific plans for those sites is expected to begin in just a few days. DOE also signed new agreements with the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, that will allow us to substantially expand our cooperation in both nuclear security and nuclear safety. In short, this Administration's programs to respond to this challenge are making progress on a broad front, and we are responding fully to the recommendations of the PCAST report. Now, I don't want to sound like Pollyanna. The work that remains before us is far more than the work that has been done, and will take years to complete. None of it will be easy. Cooperation between two nuclear complexes that were built to make bombs to target against each other will always be a fragile flower. The legacy of secrecy and mistrust lingers, and there will remain sites too sensitive to open to the other side -- in both the United States and Russia. We need to have the grit and the stamina to stay in this for the long haul, managing the disagreements that will inevitably arise without allowing them to rupture our cooperation with the former Soviet states. The Support of Congress We cannot do this job without your help. In particular, the job will only get done if Congress gives us the resources to do it -- and, just as importantly, the flexibility to use those resources most effectively. This job will take years of effort, and we will be coming to you again for several years with substantial requests to address these challenges. As the representatives of the people of the United States, Congress bears the responsibility for understanding the scope and urgency of this problem, and the need to invest resources to address it. I commend you for undertaking this series of hearings to build that understanding. I cannot think of a better investment in our nation's security. This year, the record is mixed. I want to compliment you on the Senate's action in providing the $70 million we requested in the DOE budget for efforts to ensure security and accounting for nuclear materials in the newly independent states. But I want to urge you strongly to take action to preserve the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program in the Senate's conference with the House. This Administration has successfully targeted the Nunn-Lugar effort -- ably managed by the Department of Defense -- to achieve a wide range of critical national security goals, from dismantling hundreds of missiles once pointed at the United States to contributing to the denuclearization decisions of Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine. Nunn-Lugar is a critical investment, not only in dismantling weapons, but in precisely what we have been talking about today -- securing nuclear weapons, building secure storage facilities for fissile material, and combatting the threat of nuclear smuggling. Every dollar of our Nunn-Lugar request that Congress does not provide will mean work that could have improved our security will not be done. Even more important, it is critical to remove the onerous certification provisions attached in the House, which could effectively end the program. To cut off our ability to help the former Soviet states comply with arms control agreements because they are not yet in compliance with those agreements makes no sense whatsoever -- it is a classic Catch-22. The State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund, which played an essential role in Project Sapphire and is slated to fund additional key efforts in this area in the coming year, is also critical. If I may close by quoting you, Mr. Chairman, in the summer of 1992 you and Senator Nunn wrote: "The United States has spent trillions of dollars defending against the military threat imposed by the former Soviet Union. We now have the unique opportunity to help ensure that our children and grandchildren will not be confronted with a comparable threat from that region of the world. This is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------