COUNTERPLAN/NUCLEAR ABOLITION

ANSWERS TO THE COUNTERPLAN

INSPECTION & MONITORING IS DIFFICULT

INSPECTION AND MONITORING ARE DIFFICULT AND ESSENTIAL PARTS OF DENUCLEARIZATION

HOWARD BREMBECK Fourth Freedom Foundation, 2000, IN SEARCH OF THE FOURTH FREEDOM // VT2002 acs p. 63

Every step of the dismantling procedure must be monitored by independent inspectors and every particle of nuclear fuel must be accounted for on a permanent basis. Today's technology for verifying and monitoring denuclearization provides a greater level of safety than ever before. In addition, progress has been achieved through U.S.-Russian arms reduction agreements which succeeded in including extensive arrangements for bilateral on-site inspections. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has given valuable assistance to Russia for the dismantlement and secure storage of decommissioned nuclear weapons. But despite these thoughtfully developed efforts, denuclearization still involves an element of risk. By tempting the nuclear want-to-be's, the dismantling of warheads could, at least temporarily, spread rather than contain the nuclear virus.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS NEED TO BE DISMANTLED AND NEUTRALIZED, A VERY DIFFICULT PROCESS

HOWARD BREMBECK, Fourth Freedom Foundation, 2000; IN

SEARCH OF THE FOURTH FREEDOM // VT2002 acs p. 63

The threat is greater for several reasons. To begin with, the elimination of existing warheads involves procedures that are neither simple nor safe. A warhead cannot be abandoned, buried, shipped to a junkyard or put up on concrete blocks in your backyard. It must be dismantled by competent technicians using proven, precise techniques. In this process, uranium and plutonium must be removed. Then these extremely valuable and potentially dangerous materials must be stored for unknown years in a highly secure facility, reused in a nuclear reactor or, and here is the problem, recycled into other nuclear weapons. To prevent the metamorphosis of an obsolete weapon into an up-to-date one, to keep thousands of identified nuclear weapons from becoming tens of thousands of unidentified threats to humanity, the most rigorous verification process must be in place.

VERIFICATION REGIME IS ESSENTIAL TO NUCLEAR ELIMINATION EFFORTS

Effective verification is critical to the achievement and maintenance of a nuclear weapon free world. Before states agree to eliminate nuclear weapons they will require a high level of confidence that verification arrangements would detect promptly any attempt to cheat the disarmament process whether through retention or acquisition of clandestine weapons, weapons components, means of weapons production or undeclared stocks of fissile material. Formal legal undertakings should be accompanied by corresponding legal arrangements for verification. To maintain security in a post-nuclear weapon world the verification system must provide a high level of assurance as to the continued peaceful, non-explosive use of a state's nuclear activity. A political judgement will be needed on whether the levels of assurance possible from the verification regime are sufficient. All existing arms control and disarmament agreements have required political judgements of this nature because no verification system provides absolute certainty.

NUCLEAR ABOLITION SYSTEM WILL REQUIRE SURVEILLANCE AND ENFORCEMENT CAPABILITIES

The exact circumstances and conditions that will make it possible to proceed, finally, to abolition cannot now be foreseen or prescribed. One obvious prerequisite would be a worldwide program or surveillance and inspection, including measures to account for and and control inventories of nuclear weapons materials. This will ensure that no rogues or terrorists could undertake a surreptitious effort to acquire nuclear capacities without detection at an early stage. An agreed procedure for forcible international intervention and interruption of covert efforts in a certain and timely fashion is essential.