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Opening Pandora’s Box ? Nuclear Powered Submarines and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons, The Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament, Aurora Papers 8, 1988

March 1988

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Tariq Rauf

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Ending the Production of Highly Enriched Uranium for Naval Reactors

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Mar 2001

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Arms control: moral, political and historical lesson

Thompson

Many of the world's most influential policy-makers and analysts view arms control as a scientific and technological problem. They measure a nation's nuclear power exclusively by megatonnage and throw-weights leaving the intangible elements of military and political power to philosophers and historians. They tend to ignore the human and qualitative aspects of power. This is a book that shift the ... [Show full abstract] emphasis to aspects of the nuclear problem which are sometimes overlooked. Basically, these elements are bound up in the moral, political, and historical lessons of the nuclear age. Nonquantitative factors have been central to studies of national defense and military power since the rise of the modern nation state system. However, most students of present-day nuclear weapons tend to stress their revolutionary character. Because they are considered wholly unique, analysts tend to write about them in a historical and apolitical terms. One purpose of the collection of papers in this little volume is to redirect attention to the moral, political, and historical lessons that the nuclear age presents. What most distinguishes the writings of contributors to this volume is their use of certain well-established principles and concepts long acknowledged in military and foreign policy analysis. Thus Father Hehir asks many of the same questions that students of ethics and foreign policy have asked for four hundred years.

Opening Pandora's Box? Nuclear-Powered Submarines and the. Spread of Nuclear Weapon

June 1988

Aurora Papers 8 was the first detailed study of the implications of a State exercising the provision in the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (INFCIRC/153/Corr.) for non-nuclear-weapon States in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons (NPT). Paragraph 14 of INFCIRC/153/Corr., The Structure and Content of Agreements Between the Agency and States Required in ... [Show full abstract] Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, provides for the “Non-Application of Safeguards to Nuclear Material to be used in Non-Peaceful Activities”, such as naval nuclear propulsion that is considered as a non-proscribed nuclear activity. This study assessed the 1987 Canadian Defence White Paper’s plan for Canada to acquire a fleet of 10-12 nuclear-powered (conventionally armed) attack submarines and the requirement to exempt their nuclear fuel and naval nuclear reactor from IAEA safeguards. The authors examined the negotiating history of the NPT in the context of the Treaty’s requirement for safeguards only on peaceful nuclear activities and not on all nuclear activities in a non-nuclear-weapon State party. The study then examined the meaning, possible interpretations and potential consequences of Canada invoking paragraph 14 of its NPT safeguards agreement (INFCIRC/164) to exempt its nuclear naval propulsion activities from IAEA safeguards. The Conclusion is that the acquisition of nuclear material free of IAEA safeguards, for use in non-proscribed (non-explosive) military activities, by any NPT-signatory State would inevitably result in the IAEA losing track of the material and consequently would diminish the Agency’s ability to verify a State’s compliance with its safeguards agreement and with the NPT. Thus, a Pandora's Box would be opened, immeasurably increasing the risk of diversion of fissionable material to weapon or unknown uses, weakening IAEA safeguards and diminishing the credibility of the Agency that could serve to undermine the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.

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Nuclear Disarmament: Review of Article VI

January 1995

Tariq Rauf

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) deals with nuclear disarmament in preambular paragraphs 8–12 and Article VI. The Preamble expresses the aims of the Treaty (which are specified as obligations in subsequent Articles) and places them in historical perspective. The Treaty aims to ‘achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race … [and] ... [Show full abstract] effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament’. All states are urged to cooperate towards these aims (preambular paragraphs 8–9), which are expressed in Article VI of the NPT as an obligation. Preambular paragraph 10 seeks a negotiated, permanent end to all nuclear test explosions. The paragraphs which follow reaffirm two of the United Nations’ longstanding goals: ‘cessation of the. manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all … existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of delivery pursuant to a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control’. Ironically, even with the ending of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, these goals still remain far away on the political horizon.

Energía nuclear y no proliferación: el papel de la Organización Internacional de Energía Atómica

January 2008

El presente artículo analiza el papel de la Organización Internacional de la Energía Atómica (OIEA) en la prevención de la proliferación de armas nucleares. La OIEA verifica el cumplimiento por parte de los Estados de sus compromisos de no proliferación mediante la aplicación de salvaguardias en sus programas nucleares civiles para garantizar que se utilizan exclusivamente con fines ... [Show full abstract] pacíficos. Las salvaguardias de la OIEA han evolucionado a lo largo de cinco décadas y se han convertido en parte integrante del régimen internacional de no proliferación y del sistema mundial de seguridad. Para continuar con el servicio a la comunidad internacional es necesario que sigan manteniéndose al día, sobre todo a la luz del renovado interés por la energía nuclear.

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Towards Nuclear Disarmament

January 2000

Tariq Rauf

Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of states which insist that these weapons provide unique security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory and thus unstable; it cannot be sustained. The possession of nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them ... a central reality is that nuclear ... [Show full abstract] weapons diminish the security of all states. Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons B arring unexpected dramatic breakthroughs in the remaining few weeks of this century, the millennium will begin with a legacy of false promises and dashed expectations in the realm of nuclear arms control and disarmament. Following decades of a costly East-West arms race, the late 1980s witnessed the beginning of a hopeful new era in nuclear arms reductions with the negotiation of the 1987 Intermediate-and Shorter-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; START I in July 1991 and parallel unilateral cuts in American and Soviet sub-strategic nuclear weapons a few months later; moratoria on nuclear weapon testing initiated in October 1990 by the then-Soviet Union and followed by the United States in 1992; renunciation of inherited (Soviet stationed) nuclear weapons by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine; START II in January 1993; indefinite extension of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995; establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs) in South-East Asia in December 1995 and in Africa in April 1996; and conclusion of a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in September 1996. The ending of the Cold War and its associated winding down of the nuclear and conventional confrontation between East and West raised hopes internationally of finally moving towards prohibition of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. But in the aftermath of the Cold War several factors intervened to dampen hopes and bring into question the resolve to achieve further nuclear reductions and to implement fully a number of negotiated arms control agreements. The bilateral START process has been at a standstill, entry into force of the CTBT remains at best a remote possibility, testing and deployment of missile defence systems threaten the integrity of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and new rationales justifying the continuing retention or modernization of nuclear forces are ascendant in three out of the five NPT nuclear-weapon states (NWS).

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