Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is one of the most dangerous materials in the world, thanks to the ease with which it can be utilized in a nuclear explosive device. Unlike plutonium, highly enriched uranium is suitable for use in the ... simplest kind of nuclear weapon, a so-called gun-type bomb. In addition, HEU’s weak radioactivity makes it relatively easy to handle and hard to detect. Terrorists who acquire a sufficient quantity of HEU would not need to be backed by the scientific and financial resources of a state to construct a nuclear device. Massive amounts of HEU continue to be set aside for nuclear weapons and for powering nuclear vessels such as submarines and aircraft carriers. The primary civilian use of HEU has been in research reactors and other test facilities. It has also been used in the process of producing medical isotopes and in civilian propulsion reactors. A half century ago, the Soviet Union and the United States started shipping HEU abroad as part of their peaceful nuclear cooperation programs, but by the late 1970s, India’s “peaceful nuclear explosion” and the rise of international terrorism had convinced the two superpowers to launch efforts to phase out research reactor use of HEU (particularly overseas) and replace it with LEU. These efforts were accelerated following the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and have made significant gains. Fortunately, an international consensus has emerged in recent years that, given the security risks, the use of HEU outside military technologies should be minimized to the extent that it is technically and economically feasible. The 2010 Nuclear Security Summit also endorsed this consensus and several countries took individual steps to minimize or eliminate civil HEU. Nonetheless, the world still lacks a common and comprehensive strategy to minimize and ultimately eliminate this danger. As a result, the United States, France, South Korea and industry leaders have sought to use the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit to accelerate efforts to minimize HEU in the civilian sector. Miles Pomper (James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies) examines what the status of HEU minimization efforts and offers strategies to continue these efforts. Miles A. Pomper is a Senior Research Associate in the Washington DC office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. His work focuses on nuclear energy, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear arms control. Before joining CNS he served as Editor-in-Chief of Arms Control Today from 2003-2009. Previously, he was the lead foreign policy reporter for CQ Weekly and Legi-Slate News Service, where he covered the full range of national security issues before Congress, and a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency. His career has also included the publication of book chapters, analytical articles, and reports for publications, such as Foreign Service Journal, Survival, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, World Politics Review, Nuclear Engineering International, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. For other papers in this series, visit our NSS Working Paper Series page. For more resources on the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and the NSS process, visit our NSS Program page. View »

ABSTRACT South Korea has experienced a ‘compressed capitalist development’ over the last five decades, characterized by unprecedented levels of industrialization and democratization with other distinctive features. The country’s unique experience with development has attracted the attention of many scholars who ... view the country as a site for new modernity, following after the Western prototype. However, controversy surrounds these claims about South Korea’s emerging modernity. Although some scholars argue that South Korea is now experiencing a Western type of modernity, others reject this assertion and argue that the country has not modernized at all. This paper attempts to investigate the dynamics and contradictions of capitalist development in Korea from a perspective of vertical modernization. It will consider the origin, process and outcomes of modernization, mainly in terms of democracy, economic growth and welfare. It argues that there are different sites and forms of modernity in the world, and that South Korea would be a good candidate to examine a non-Western modernity. It contends that the country’s modernity has been distorted and unbalanced in the development of society, culture, politics and economy. Historically, South Korea has gone through traditional unmodernity, colonial undermodernity and Western modernity. A clear examination of the country’s development experience reveals the complex nature of modernity in that tradition, as well as how modernity and postmodernity coexist with one another in the present time. It concludes that South Korean modernity is an incomplete project. View »

For most of human existence, people were unaware of the powerful nuclear forces deep inside atoms, although they were exposed to natural background radiation derived from these forces. Not until the end of the 19th century did the first "nuclear scientists," ... notably Henri Becquerel and Marie and Pierre Curie, discover energetic rays emanating from certain types of atoms due to these forces. Coining the term radioactivity to describe these energetic rays, the husband and wife team of the Curies were soon discovering new radioactive elements, in particular, polonium, named after Marie's native Poland, and radium, named after radioactivity. By painstakingly sifting through hundreds of tons of uranium ore, the Curies isolated grams' worth of radium and analyzed radium's radiation. Not until the development of nuclear reactors in the 1950s to make radioactive materials for research and commercial purposes was naturally occurring radium eclipsed by artificially produced radioactive materials. In the early decades of nuclear science, radium seemed like a miraculous material, and many commercial applications were sought and found. For example, paint laced with radium was applied to watches to make glow-in-the-dark watch dials. But this usage also demonstrated radium's dark side when numerous young women who had painted on the radium by wetting the tip of the brush with their tongues eventually developed cancers. The lessons learned from the earliest decades of nuclear science have led to the development of increasingly high standards for the safe and secure use of these materials that have provided benefits to billions of people worldwide. In this paper, Charles Ferguson (Federation of American Scientists) examines the national and international efforts to control and secure radioactive materials. He discusses the science of radiation and radioactive materials while assessing the potential security threats they pose, and offers suggestions for how to reduce the risk of radiological terrorism both for inclusion in the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and beyond. Charles D. Ferguson has been the president of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) since January 1, 2010. Ten years prior to this appointment, he worked for FAS on nuclear proliferation and arms control issues as a senior research analyst and director of the nuclear policy project. He previously worked at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as the project director of the Independent Task Force on US Nuclear Weapons Policy, chaired by William J. Perry and Brent Scowcroft, and as an adjunct professor in the security studies program at Georgetown University until January 2012. From 2002 to 2004, Dr. Ferguson was with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) as a scientist-in-residence, and has also consulted with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. From 2000 to 2002, he served as a physical scientist in the Office of the Senior Coordinator for Nuclear Safety at the US Department of State, where he helped develop US government policies on nuclear safety and security issues. His most recent book, Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know, was published in May 2011 by Oxford University Press. After graduating with distinction from the United States Naval Academy, he served as an officer on a fleet ballistic missile submarine and studied nuclear engineering at the Naval Nuclear Power School. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, also in physics, from Boston University in Massachusetts. Explore the full Nuclear Security Summit Working Paper Series. Find related papers and materials on our Nuclear Security Summit pages. View »

The upcoming Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Seoul, South Korea, will raise the international profile of the threat of nuclear terrorism and focus attention on the need to better secure weapons-usable nuclear materials in all corners of the globe. It ... follows the first NSS held in March 2010 in Washington, DC. Another summit will be held in the Netherlands in 2014. This sequencing of biennial, high-level international political summits has underscored the global importance of addressing the threat of nuclear terrorism. As a result, the NSS has the potential to become the preeminent international forum where the state of global nuclear material security is evaluated and where new commitments are made to improve the world’s defenses against nuclear terrorism. But, to fully realize its potential, the NSS process will need to evolve and participating countries must be willing to accept changes that will strengthen the nuclear material security regime. The NSS process has had the foresight to address the clear and dramatic danger posed by nuclear terrorism in advance of any such shocking event. But this strategy of focusing attention on the prevention of nuclear terrorism requires policies and requirements to be stronger than those that the Washington Summit, and likely the Seoul Summit, will require. It requires the development of an international nuclear security regime that emphasizes transparency of action, shared standards, and confirmed performance and accountability by nations. In this paper, Kenneth Luongo (Partnership for Global Security) outlines the various elements of the current nuclear security regime, and suggests a new and comprehensive architecture that emphasizes demonstrated performance and accountability with clear but flexible standards. Kenneth N. Luongo is the President of the Partnership for Global Security (PGS). Prior to this position, Mr. Luongo served as the Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy for Nonproliferation Policy and the Director of the Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation at the US Department of Energy. In addition, Mr. Luongo served as the Director of the Department of Energy’s North Korea Task Force and as Director of the Russia and Newly Independent States Nuclear Material Security Task Force. For other papers in this series, visit our NSS Working Paper Series page. For additional resources on the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and the NSS process, visit our NSS Program page. View »

That al Qaeda or another group bent on inflicting the maximum possible carnage might attain a nuclear capability is the greatest threat to international security today. A 1986 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that a small number of groups may have ... been capable of high-level nuclear terrorism, if they had access to a weapon or sufficient fissile material, but were inhibited by the political consequences. Since then, the march of scientific and technological progress has pushed farther and farther past the frontier that was once marked by nuclear weapons. Once at the edge of scientific knowledge, nuclear weapons technology is now largely an engineering problem. There is more computing power in an iPhone than existed on the mesas of Los Alamos in 1945, and advances in computer aided design and manufacturing have spread high precision engineering around the world. In short, betting anything consequential on the notion that terrorists would be incapable of setting off a nuclear device, were they able to obtain fissile material, would be foolish. Access to fissile material is key—both for terrorists trying to attain a nuclear capability, and those racing to stop them. And global stocks of fissile material—highly enriched uranium and plutonium separated from spent fuel—are roughly 2,000 metric tons and growing. Moreover, this material is spread across dozens of sites, with hundreds of buildings, in 30 some countries, under varying security conditions. Consequently, the security of fissile material is not merely a theoretical concern. Over the past two decades the IAEA has recorded some 20 cases in which weapons-grade material has been seized outside of authorized control. In this paper, William Tobey (Belfer Center, Harvard University) illustrates the very real threat of nuclear terrorism that looms today, which has been the impetus for the Nuclear Security Summit process, and suggests what measures the international community should be taking to ensure a higher standard of security for all nuclear material. William Tobey is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Prior to joining the Belfer Center, Mr. Tobey was most recently the Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration. There, he managed the US government’s largest program to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism by detecting, securing, and disposing of dangerous nuclear material. Mr. Tobey also served on the National Security Council Staff in three administrations, in defense policy, arms control, and counter-proliferation positions. He has participated in international negotiations ranging from the START talks with the Soviet Union, to the Six Party Talks with North Korea. He also has extensive experience in investment banking and venture capital. For other papers in this series, visit our NSS Working Paper Series page. For more resources on the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and the NSS process, visit our NSS Program page. View »

As Seoul prepares to host the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit, the meeting will probably resemble its predecessor in many ways. Three years after President Obama's Prague speech, nuclear security still offers some of the “lowest hanging fruit” in terms of ... progress on the nuclear agenda. The context for the 2012 summit, however, is quite different. There is less optimism about progress toward nuclear disarmament, no resolution in sight for the challenges posed by the North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs, and less optimism about peaceful nuclear energy following the devastating accident in March 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Since the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, leading to the meltdown of three of the six nuclear power plants at Fukushima Daiichi, nuclear safety has captured the public’s imagination in ways that nuclear security has not. What’s more, public views on nuclear security span a range of issues, particularly in South Korea, that have little to do with the objectives of the summit. Therefore, it could be useful to harness public attention to nuclear safety in a way that can galvanize action on nuclear security. In this paper, Sharon Squassoni explores the intersections of nuclear safety and nuclear security and how this discussion will likely be addressed at the upcoming 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit. Sharon Squassoni directs the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) where she is a senior fellow. She joined CSIS from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2002-2007, she advised Congress as a senior specialist in weapons of mass destruction at the Congressional Research Service. Ms. Squassoni also served in the executive branch of government from 1992 to 2001 in the State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. She is the recipient of various service awards and has published widely. She is a frequent commentator for US and international media outlets. She holds a B.A. in political science from the State University of New York at Albany, a Masters in Public Management from the University of Maryland, and a Masters in National Security Strategy from the National War College. For other papers in this series, visit our NSS Working Paper Series page. For more resources on the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit and the NSS process, visit our NSS Program page. View »