Oleg Bukharin and Kenneth Luongo

PU/CEES Report No. 314

Oleg Bukharin is a member of the research staff at Princeton University'sCenter for Energy and Environmental Studies (CEES). Kenneth Luongo is thedirector of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council and avisiting research collaborator at Princeton University. Mailing address:CEES E-Quad, H-101, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; fax:609-258-3661; e-mail: bukharin@princeton.edu and kluongo@princeton.edu.

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions onearlier drafts from Frank von Hippel.


Table Of Contents

I. Introduction

II. History
The Safeguards, Transparency and Irreversibility Initiative
The Laboratory-to-Laboratory Program

III. Problems
Technology
Intrusiveness
Operational Impact
Asymmetry of the warhead complexes
Asymmetry of production capacities
Asymmetry of the size and composition of the stockpiles
Strategic versus tactical weapons
Funding
Mixed record of the past transparency efforts
Political constraints

IV. A Path Forward
Major policy issues
First steps

V. Conclusion

Appendix 1: Warhead Transparency Chronology

Appendix 2: U.S.-Russian Fissile MaterialTransparency Measures

Appendix 3: Dismantlement Transparency Technologiesand Procedures

Appendix 4: Conclusions From The Russian-U.S.Workshop On Warhead Transparency (Washington, D.C., November 9-10,1998)


I. Introduction

During the past 30 years of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control process,the focus of negotiations has been to limit the number and deployment ofnuclear-warhead delivery systems. The focus has not been on limiting oreliminating nuclear warheads. With the political transition of Russia fromCommunism, it now has become possible for the two countries to discussplacing limits on warheads and verifying their elimination. The U.S. andRussian governments have indicated their support for a warhead eliminationregime in official documents and government statements. However, thedifficulties of extending the arms control regime to cover warheads arenumerous.

Warhead design, production, and management operations are among the mostclosely guarded secrets of the nuclear-weapons states. Greater openness inthese areas will be required for a warhead regime. Also, the confirmationof warhead elimination will pose new verification challenges sincewarheads are too small to be monitored from space or by most otherstandard national technical means. In addition, there has been no exchangeof official information on warhead stockpiles, raising additionalverification questions. For example, the United States has only been ableto make very rough and indirect estimates of Russia's nuclear stockpile.The level of uncertainty quoted in published estimates is a staggering5,000 warheads. (1)

Given the array of challenges posed by a transparent warhead dismantlementregime, it is clear that new levels of trust and transparency in theU.S.-Russian nuclear security relationship will have to be achieved. Suchopenness would have been unthinkable during the Cold War but may beachievable in the coming years. There have already been many transparencybreakthroughs in the 1990s and the challenges involved no longer appearinsuperable, though they remain formidable.

Aside from addressing the technical aspects of verifying warheaddismantlement another major issue is the conflicting objectives the U.S.and Russian governments have for this regime. Moscow desires the verifiedelimination of the U.S. "hedge" stockpile of warheads. These warheadsremain in ready reserve and would allow the United States to upload itsmissiles and bombers with twice the number of warheads allowed by STARTII. Concerns about the U.S. capability to break out of START II in thismanner have been a major obstacle to ratification of the treaty by theRussian Duma. The United States, for its part, would like to be able toverify that Russia's stockpile of substrategic nuclear weapons is beingirreversibly eliminated. Russia's substrategic warhead holdings may be onthe order of 10,000-20,000 warheads or ten-twenty times more than the U.S.substrategic stockpile. Later on, if the U.S. and Russian nuclear-warheadstockpiles are reduced below about one thousand warheads each, it islikely that the United States and Russia would require other nuclearweapons states to join in these transparency arrangements.

Some steps have already been taken to structure a warhead dismantlementregime. Joint U.S.-Russia "lab-to-lab" research is being conducted ontechnical approaches to verification that would instill confidence thatwarhead dismantlement was being carried out but would not reveal weapondesign information considered sensitive. The two countries also haveimplemented unprecedented transparency measures as part of their contractto have Russia blend down and sell to the United States up to 500 metrictons of excess weapon-grade uranium from dismantled warheads.

These steps have helped create a good foundation for additional warheadtransparency activities. And, this new work could have corollary benefits.For example, if structured correctly, a warhead transparency initiativecould become an important source of funding to help Russia eliminate itsexcess nuclear warheads. It also could lead to opportunities to strengthensafeguards and security of nuclear materials and warheads in the warheadproduction infrastructure, which is the part of the Russian nuclearcomplex that has benefited least from U.S.-Russian cooperation.

However, despite positive first steps, it must be realized that creating ameaningful and effective warhead transparency regime will not be easy, andwill be affected by continuing Cold War suspicions within the securityestablishments, and a multitude of other political and technical problems.


II. HistoryThe history of proposals for transparent warhead dismantlement dates backat least a decade, to the days of Perestroika and Glasnost in the SovietUnion (see Appendix 1). In 1989 the Russian government allowed a U.S.group of non-governmental scientists to conduct measurements of neutronand gamma radiation of a nuclear warhead aboard the Russian ship "Slava."The U.S. Congress then raised the issue of warhead dismantlementperiodically in the early 1990s in relation to the ratification debate ofSTART I. The U.S. Executive Branch, however, did not become interested inthe subject until the coming to power of the Clinton administration.

Key developments toward the creation of a warhead transparency regimeduring this period occurred during 1994-95 and 1996-98. In the firstperiod the official government-to-government dialogue dominated thesubject. In the latter period, and up to today, thelaboratory-to-laboratory process has been the primary vehicle forprogress.

The Safeguards, Transparency and Irreversibility Initiative

The first U.S.-Russian nuclear warhead and materials transparency effortwas launched at the January 1994 Summit when the two presidents agreed ona goal of "ensuring the transparency and irreversibility of the process ofreduction of nuclear weapons." The initiative, dubbed the "Safeguards,Transparency, and Irreversibility (STI)" initiative, was largely designedto ensure that fissile materials from eliminated warheads would not berecycled into new weapons. In May 1994, an STI Joint Working Group wasestablished to work on the following five issues: Agreement forCooperation, stockpile data exchange agreement, spot checks to increaseconfidence in fissile material declarations, Mutual Reciprocal Inspections(MRI), and Limited Chain of Custody (LCC). (2)

The objective of the stockpile data exchange procedures was to create anexchange of information regarding stockpiles of fissile materials andnuclear warheads that could to some extent be confirmed through spotchecks. Such exchanges, it was thought, would replace stockpile estimateswith facts and serve as the basis for a future transparency regime.However, despite the creation of a detailed list of stockpile informationto be exchanged, the discussions on this issue were quickly stalled.

In the area of MRI, the proposed activity was to have U.S. and Russiantechnical experts develop non-intrusive techniques of confirming that, atthe end of the dismantlement process, a declared fissile materialcontainer contains a weapon-grade plutonium or highly-enriched uranium(HEU) object the shape and mass of which (in the case of a warhead pit)are consistent with those of a warhead component. (3)During 1994 and 1995, Russian and U.S. experts developed and demonstratedsome promising MRI techniques but no consensus was reached on the scope offissile material measurements or specific MRI procedures.

The limited Chain of Custody measures envisioned following specific excesswarheads or fissile materials recovered from dismantled warheads byplacing tags and seals on containers, and, possibly, by using additionalremote monitoring techniques such as TV surveillance. (4)The LCC discussions during the STI initiative did not advance tospecifics.

The Agreement for Cooperation was to be the legal instrument that wouldallow the United States and Russia to exchange sensitive and classifiedinformation. The agreement was required in the United States by the AtomicEnergy Act. It was believed that such an agreement was critical for dataexchange or plutonium MRI. The two countries generally agreed on the levelof protection of sensitive and classified information that might beexchanged under an Agreement for Cooperation. (5) Howeverthe difficult negotiation of this centerpiece document soon became anobstacle to progress of the STI initiative.

As a result, the entire STI initiative collapsed in the fall of 1995 when,following an internal interagency policy review, the Russian governmentstopped all STI discussions. Participants in the negotiations and outsideobservers attribute this failure to a combination of the followingfactors: distractions and uncertainties created by Russia's presidentialelections; inadequacy of the Russian interagency process; lack of intereston the part of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom); resistancefrom the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB); and a lack of aconsistent high-level political attention in the United States.

Still, official, high-level support for verified warhead dismantlement didnot entirely collapse after 1995. The issue was resurrected at the March1997 Presidential Summit in Helsinki when Presidents Yeltsin and Clintonagreed that the proposed START III agreement would include "measuresrelating to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories andthe destruction of strategic nuclear warheads and any other jointly agreedtechnical and organizational measures, to promote the irreversibility ofdeep reductions including prevention of a rapid increase in the number ofwarheads." However, this statement was met with some confusion as to itsactual meaning in the U.S. bureaucracy and resistance to warheadtransparency in some portions of Russia's bureaucracy remained despite thestatement.

In the meantime, the U.S. and Russian governments have been quietlynegotiating and implementing some elements of a fissile materialtransparency regime under the HEU purchase agreement, the agreement tostop the production of plutonium for weapons, and theU.S.-Russian-International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) trilateralinitiative to monitor fissile materials that have been declared an excessto national defense requirements (see Appendix 2). Bilateral work onverified and irreversible dismantlement of nuclear warheads, however, hasshifted away from the government-to-government channels and into moretechnical exchanges between the national nuclear laboratories.

The Laboratory-to-Laboratory Program

After the collapse of the official STI negotiations, the Department ofEnergy provided approval for a quiet process of U.S.-Russian nationallaboratory cooperation on the technical aspects of verified warheaddismantlement. This lab-to-lab work built on the relationships and mutualtrust that had been created in the U.S. Department of Energy fundedcooperative lab-to-lab fissile material protection, control and accounting(MPC&A) program. The Russian and U.S. national nuclear labs have therequisite technical expertise in this area and the U.S. labs had alreadyconducted internal studies of various aspects of the problem. For example,DOE's warhead dismantlement study group prepared a report, Transparencyand Verification Options: An Initial Analysis of Approaches for MonitoringWarhead Dismantlement, (May 1997). This report, which has never been madepublic officially but has been widely distributed to interested experts,has become a roadmap for both the U.S. domestic- and U.S.-Russianlab-to-lab analyses of warhead-transparency issues. While it is assumedthat Russian institutes have also conducted internal assessments of thisissue, there does not seem to be a comparable, comprehensive study similarto that done by the U.S. laboratory study group.

Once the decision to initiate lab-to-lab cooperation had been made, thefirst discussions on transparency were started in late 1995 at anarms-control workshop in Chelyabinsk-70. This workshop paved the way for a1996 contract between Chelyabinsk-70 and the Sandia National Laboratoriesto conduct a cooperative study on warhead dismantlement transparency. Thisinitial effort was funded at about $400,000 and was intended to sustain atechnical dialogue on warhead dismantlement with Russian specialists;create knowledgeable advocates for dismantlement transparency in Russia'snuclear weapons design community; and develop a bilateral understanding ofthe technical foundations for transparency.

The success of the first lab-to-lab warhead transparency project helped toovercome an initial skepticism that existed in Minatom's headquarters and,in 1996 - 1998, new contracts were negotiated, additional meetings tookplace, and participation in the program expanded. November 1997 meeting inChelyabinsk-70, for example, was attended on the Russian side byrepresentatives from Arzamas-16, Chelyabinsk-70, the Institute ofAutomatics, the Institute of Impulse Technologies, the four warheaddismantlement plants, and Minatom. On the U.S. side, the meeting wasattended by representatives from the Sandia National Laboratories,Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory,Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Y-12 plant, Pantex plant,and U.S. Department of Energy.

Because of the continuing sensitivity of the subject, lab-to-lab workfocuses only on hypothetical dismantlement scenarios, technicaltransparency measures, and table-top (a scaled-down mock-up) and computermodels of the dismantlement process. The overall plan envisages fourphases of work: 1) preliminary studies, 2) advanced studies, 3)laboratory-scale technology demonstration, and 4) technology demonstrationat a dismantlement facility. Ideally, the process will yield a jointapproach to warhead dismantlement transparency that could be presented topolicy-makers in the two countries and incorporated into future armscontrol treaties.

As of 1998, the process has reached the third phase and DOE's annualbudget has increased to $10 million. At April and May 1998 workshops inChelyabinsk-70 and Arzamas-16, Russian experts demonstrated proposedtechnologies for fissile-component radiation measurements, detection anddisposition of high explosives, and elimination of warhead casings. Atable-top model of the dismantlement process also was completed. It washoped that deployment of a prototype transparency system would occur in1999.

The Clinton-Yeltsin agreement at the Helsinki summit has changed thedynamic of the laboratory-to laboratory effort, however, by bringing thisfairly obscure cooperative R&D effort to the attention of politicalleaders and security specialists. In November 1998, the Russian securityservices first interrupted and then slowed down the implementation of thelab-to-lab warhead transparency contracts pending an interagency review ofthe program. As of early 1999, the review has not been completed.


Problems

Aside from the difficulties that the warhead dismantlement regime hasfaced to date, there are a number of detailed and interrelated technical,operational, and political problems that must be resolved in coming yearsif a regime is to move beyond conceptual studies into practicalimplementation. Specifically, the parties must confront questions oftechnology readiness, dangers of revealing sensitive warhead-designinformation, the operational impact of warhead-dismantlement inspectionson co-located stockpile maintenance activities, asymmetries of the warheadcomplexes and arsenals, interchangeablility of certain strategic andtactical warheads, Russia's potential inability to finance verifiedwarhead-dismantlement activities, the mixed record of past transparencyefforts, and political resistance that often stems from seeminglyunrelated U.S.-Russian difficulties.

Technology

As of the summer of 1998, many U.S. and Russian experts were reportedlyfavoring warhead transparency approaches based on the use ofchain-of-custody- and radiation-template technologies (see Appendix 3).The leaderships of the lab-to-lab transparency program believed at thattime that there were no major technical obstacles to this approach, andshould a policy decision be made, the technology could be ready fordeployment within 12 months.

A primary technology that would be used in the chain-of-custody proceduresis tamper-indicating devices (tags and seals). These have been employedextensively for domestic safeguards and international verificationpurposes for many years, and the U.S. and Russian national laboratorieshave a considerable expertise in developing and evaluating these devices.There is a wide range of tags and seals that have been developedspecifically for arms control applications or that are availablecommercially.

However, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of tags andseals in a warhead dismantlement transparency scenario. According to LosAlamos experts, "most tags and seals are highly vulnerable to tamperingwhen they are not being monitored. In one study, every seal tested wasdefeated within five minutes (if the seal was not under some form ofmonitoring). This study demonstrated that without careful considerationsas to selection of which tags and seals to use, the establishment ofprocedures for their application, removal, and autopsy, and monitoring ofseals between application and removal, tags and seals may be of limitedvalue in maintaining the chain-of-custody of an item." (7)

It is believed that no radiation template measurements are used at theRussian dismantlement plants on a routine basis. According to a U.S. armscontrol expert, "Russians will resist any unproven [verification]technology, and will stress low-cost and low-tech approaches." (8) This assessment has been borne out as some Russianexperts have already expressed reservations regarding the templateapproach and raised questions about its ability to protect sensitiveinformation.

In the proposed transparency regime, radiation-template technologies wouldbe used to satisfy inspectors concerning the identities of warheads andtheir fissile components without allowing them to derive sensitivewarhead-design information. (9) However, according toU.S. national laboratory experts, "Analyses of the efficacy of these[template] measurements both in protecting design information andauthenticating warheads are still preliminary." (10)Further development and validation of information barrier technologies isneeded before radiation template methods could be used to verify warheadelimination.

Additional joint laboratory experiments will likely be required to satisfycautious security officials and production managers. A final judgement onwhether the technology is ready for deployment and whether the parties arecomfortable with a particular technical solution will likely requiredemonstration and extensive testing (initially with unclassified,well-characterized objects) at the actual dismantlement facilities wherethe transparency measures are to be implemented.

Intrusiveness

The requirement of the U.S. and Russian governments that warheaddismantlement transparency technologies not allow very sensitive warheaddesign information to be revealed poses a significant challenge to thedevelopment of this new regime. The use of radiation measurements andtheir comparison with templates and threshold values for quantities offissile material and other variables, using computers which give only a"yes" or "no" answer, will make it possible to conduct inspections atmostly unclassified level. (11) Restrictions on directaccess to the dismantlement process while classified components areexposed and masking of any specialized dismantlement equipment whichreflects design information could allow the parties to avoid disclosure ofany weapon design information that is considered classified by theirnational laws.

However, classified-level inspections would greatly enhance confidence inthe transparency measures and would possibly be simpler and cheaper toorganize. Because of the high level of weapon design expertise in bothcountries, there should be little concern about exchanging currentlyclassified information related to general nuclear physics and warheaddesign principles. Still, exchanges of even trivial classified informationwould require an Agreement for Cooperation, which the U.S. and Russia havethus far failed to negotiate.

And certain information could not be shared even on a classified levelbecause of fears of revealing advanced warhead design features orvulnerabilities. (12) Even small snippets of informationcould be of concern when collated with intelligence data received fromother sources and analyzed using computer models for reverse-engineering.There are reports, for example, that the Russian security apparatus wasunhappy about the 1989 Black Sea experiment in which U.S. NGOorganizations were able to measure the complete gamma-ray spectrum from aRussian cruise missile warhead. (13)

An additional complication arises when the proposed bilateral transparencyregime is extended to international monitoring, as is contemplated underthe trilateral initiative, because it is absolutely essential thatinternational inspectors do not derive any classified weapons-designinformation.

Operational impact

The presence of foreign inspectors at national dismantlement plants wouldhave a significant impact on facility operations such as warheadevaluation, modernization and re-furbishing, which support the remainingnuclear stockpile. It is currently a requirement at the Pantex plant, forexample, that all operations stop during a visit by foreigners. Thisproblem might be particularly serious for the Russian weapons productioncomplex, which is believed to maintain a relatively higher warheadre-manufacturing rate because of much shorter life-times of Russianwarheads. (14)

Proper timing of stewardship activities, and masking and segregatingtransparent warhead dismantlement activities within isolated areas wouldmoderate this impact. Segregation could even be carried to the point wherethe dismantlement of treaty-limited warheads was isolated in dedicatedfacilities. The Russian government, for example, has decided to shut downthe warhead assembly plants in Penza-19 and Arzamas-16. One or both couldbe dedicated to verified warhead dismantlement. In the United States,treaty-limited dismantlement operations could be carried out at the DeviceAssembly Facility (DAF) on Nevada Test Site, which is no longer needed forits original purpose of assembling nuclear warheads for testing. Thisoption is already being evaluated by the U.S. DOE, but preliminaryanalysis has indicated that the DAF would require significant additionalinvestment to be made ready for this activity.

Asymmetry of the warhead complexes

One of the most difficult problems for negotiating and implementing awarhead transparency regime is likely to be the significant asymmetrybetween the warhead production complexes and dismantlement operations inthe United States and Russia (see Figures 1 and 2). In the United States,the dismantlement of intact warheads and storage of plutonium pits takeplace at only one plant, the Pantex facility outside of Amarillo, TX.Another facility, the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, TN manages and disassemblesHEU secondaries, which were removed from the warheads at Pantex, as wellas HEU-only gun-type warheads.

Russia has four "serial production" (assembly-disassembly) facilitieslocated at Arzamas-16, Sverdlovsk-45, Zlatoust-36, and Penza-19. (However,according to the Nuclear Complex Reconfiguration Program, adopted by theRussian Government in 1998, warhead dismantlement work will cease atArzamas-16 and Penza-19 by 2003. (15)) In addition,management and storage of HEU and plutonium components takes place inChelyabinsk-65 and Tomsk-7. The difficulties arising from the differencein the number of Russian and American facilities involved in warheaddismantlement are further complicated by the fact that each of the Russianserial production plants may have its own area of specialization. It hasbeen reported, for example, that the Sverdlovsk-45 plant makes physicspackages for most strategic missile systems (in addition to producingtactical weapons of certain types) that are subsequently sent toZlatoust-36 which builds them into ICBM/SLBM reentry vehicles. (16)

These questions about the process of warhead dismantlement in Russia havea direct impact on the ability to reach a rapid agreement on the inclusionof warhead dismantlement transparency as part of a START agreement. If, infact, treaty-limited strategic warheads are dismantled in more than onelocation, it will be difficult, without major modifications and re-toolingof the Russian complex, to designate any single facility for the verifieddismantlement of warheads. As a consequence, transparency monitoring mightrequire access to a larger number of facilities in Russia than in theUnited States. On the other hand, if a larger number of Russian facilitiesare required to be monitored because consolidation is infeasible, aRussian insistence on reciprocity may require that the U.S. compensateRussia with greater access in other areas.

Another difference between U.S. and Russian procedures is in the greaterrole that the military plays in the Russian warhead management anddismantlement process. In the United States, the Department of Defense's(DOD) involvement in warhead management operations ends after DOE'ssafe-secure trailer picks up a weapon at a military base to deliver it toPantex for dismantlement. In Russia, prior to dismantlement, warheads arekept in staging areas that are located near the dismantlement plants butare controlled by the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense(MOD). Representatives of the 12th Directorate also reportedly observe theprocess of dismantlement. U.S. inspectors therefore would have to dealwith both Minatom and the Ministry of Defense. The Russian interagencyprocess has been a problem in the past and is likely to remain acomplication in the future. This raises questions about the ability tosmoothly implement the new regime.

Asymmetry of production capacities

In addition to the asymmetries in the number of facilities where warheaddismantlement occurs, there are also differences between the United Statesand Russia in nuclear warhead production. The U.S. industrialinfrastructure for mass-production of nuclear warheads has shrunkconsiderably since the late 1980s. Many warhead production and managementactivities have been consolidated and a number of manufacturing facilitieshave been shut down.

Most notably, there has been no industrial-scale production of plutoniumpits since 1989, when the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado was shut downbecause of environmental and safety concerns. The Los Alamos NationalLaboratory, the only U.S. facility with complete plutonium handlingcapabilities, is expected by 2007 to reach a manufacturing capacity of 20pits per year. Eventually, it would be able to produce 50 pits per year.(This capability is generally viewed as sufficient to maintain the U.S.stockpile.) There also has been no production of completely new warheadsat Pantex since 1992. (17) (But the capability forlarge-scale production has been preserved. Such large-scale productionwould have to use stored pits.) New production is scheduled to resume in1999 but at a limited level.

Recently, the production of new warheads in Russia has also dropped toless than ten percent of its 1990 level. (18) TheRussian complex, however, remains capable of producing thousands of newwarheads per year. (19)

Russia has to maintain a relatively high production capacity, in part,because of manufacturing and technology problems that limit the life-timeof the current-generation warheads to 10-15 years. (20)By comparison, U.S. warheads have a service life of 30 years. Russiatherefore has to re-manufacture two-to-three times as many warheads tomaintain a nuclear arsenal of the same size. (Russia, however, hasreportedly launched a program to improve its warhead manufacturingtechniques to extend warhead lifetimes to 25 years.)

The United States and Russia also have different stockpile maintenanceapproaches. The U.S. stockpile stewardship plan emphasizes science-basedsurveillance and evaluation of warheads to detect potential defects due toaging. In contrast, "the Russians ensured stockpile reliability throughconservative warhead designs that included lavish use of fissile materialand high-explosives and by remanufacturing nuclear weapons beforeage-related problems appeared." (21)

Technical factors alone, however, do not justify the Cold-War size of theRussian weapons complex and Minatom is currently seeking ways to downsizethe production complex. In January 1999, Minatom's Deputy Minister LevRyabev announced Russia's plans to consolidate warhead assembly work inSverdlovsk-45 and Zlatoust-36 by 2000, to end production of HEU andplutonium components at one out of two sites, and to cut the number ofdefense program personnel in the closed cities from 75,000 to 40,000 by2005. (22) The Russian government is also downsizingMinatom's non-nuclear weapon component manufacturing facilities. (23) To date, the downsizing process has been largelystalled because of the difficulties of redirecting excess personnel toproductive non-weapons work. The creation of economic opportunities forformer weapons production workers is the objective of the U.S.-RussianNuclear City Initiative. (24)

The asymmetries in the U.S. and Russian warhead production capabilitieshave raised significant concerns, particularly in the United States. SomeU.S. critics of the proposed warhead transparency regime could beanticipated to use the production capacity asymmetry to construct thefollowing two arguments: First, Russia could use its excess productioncapacity to secretly produce new warheads to compensate for verifiablydismantled warheads. Such secret production would be facilitated andmasked by legitimate stockpile-maintenance activities. Senator Helms,chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already put thisargument forth, stating that, "Russia could be expected simply to replacedismantled older warheads with newer models, while the United States footsthe bill for destruction." (25)

The second argument of critics is that Russia could quickly reconstituteits warhead arsenal in a break-out scenario during a period of increasedinternational tension. This surge-production argument, while technicallyaccurate, may not have the serious implications for toppling the strategybalance that there might seem at first reading. The United States isplanning to retain large stockpiles of hedge and reserve warheads, andfissile material components, which number in the thousands. Also, secretor break-out production of new strategic warheads would make little senseif Russia had already eliminated the associated delivery vehicles. (26) In any case, both the clandestine- and surgeproduction scenarios are certainly questionable given the current state ofRussia's economy. In fact, without near-term economic improvements, arapid deterioration of the technical infrastructure and workforceattrition (due to the lack of replacement of retired personnel and youngerworkers finding jobs outside of the weapons complex) will further erodeRussia's warhead production capability.

The production asymmetry concerns also could be reduced by cooperativetransparency measures. Initially, such transparency measures could includewarhead stockpiles and manufacturing declarations, and monitoring of theproduction facilities that no longer manufacture new warheads. Eventually,transparency arrangements could be implemented at the remaining activewarhead production facilities as well.

Asymmetry of dismantlement schedules and in sizes and compositions ofthe stockpiles

Related to the issue of warhead production asymmetries is the problemposed by the differences in the dismantlement schedules and the sizes ofthe stockpiles in the United States and Russia. In 1999-2000, the UnitedStates expects to complete the dismantlement of warheads that have becomeexcess under the START I treaty.

However, the United States plans not to dismantle a significant number ofthe warheads removed from deployment under the START II treaty. Instead,in 1994, a policy decision was made to configure its START II forces in amanner that would make possible a rapid deployment of twice thetreaty-permitted number of strategic warheads (this known as the "up-loadhedge") on Minuteman III and Trident II missiles and B-1 strategic bombersin case of a resumption of the Cold War nuclear confrontation. Accordingto current U.S. plans, the START II hedge stockpile would containapproximately 2,500 fully operational warheads. A separate inactivereserve would contain an additional 3,000 warheads without tritiumsupplies - up from 2,000 as of the end of September 1998. (27) It is, in fact, this large hedge stockpile that isdriving Russian interest in a warhead dismantlement regime. Russianleaders would like to see a substantial irreversible reduction in thisstockpile as deployed warheads are limited in the future.

With START III reductions the number of warheads outside of theoperational stockpile will grow even larger. Assuming a START IIIstockpile of 2,000 warheads and a combined hedge and inactive stockpile of2,500 warheads, then approximately 4,000 warheads could become excess andavailable for dismantlement in the United States. (28)If no steps are taken to verifiably dismantle these warheads, it mayincrease Russian concern about giving strategic nuclear advantage to theUnited States and raise further potential difficulty for the strugglingstrategic arms control process.

On the other hand, because Russia maintained a larger nuclear stockpileduring the 1980s, it may still have to dismantle several thousandadditional strategic warheads and many thousand tactical warheads to catchup with the United States (see Tables 1 and 2). Assuming that START IIIwill enter into force around the year 2000 and dismantlement rates of1,500 warheads per year in both countries, Russia would be several yearsbehind the United States in completing the dismantlement. This lag couldraise potential concerns in the United States about Russia's intentions.And, if a warhead dismantlement regime is instituted during this period ofinequity, it could result in much more U.S. inspection of Russian warheaddismantlement than vice versa.

Strategic versus tactical weapons

Another complication for the creation of a warhead dismantlement regime isthe uncertainty surrounding the number of strategic and tactical warheadsin the U.S. and Russian arsenals. This issue is of particular concern tothe United States. In part, the U.S. interest in a warhead dismantlementregime is driven by a desire to get accurate information on the number ofRussian tactical weapons and to see them eliminated. But, from theperspective of creating a strategic warhead elimination regime, asanticipated in START III, further problems arise. For certain weaponsystems, such as gravity bombs and cruise-missile warheads, there islittle difference between tactical and strategic warheads. In the UnitedStates, for example, variants of the B-61 bomb are assigned tactical andstrategic roles and one is assigned both roles. (29)

Extending the limited chain of custody to military sites in order toassociate warheads with their delivery vehicles could help. However, as aresult of the 1991 reciprocal, unilateral Bush-Gorbachev initiatives, mosttactical nuclear weapons have been removed from front-line units and arepresently stored inside containers at central locations. In some cases,strategic and non-strategic warheads are kept side by side, in the samebunker. (30) Telling treaty-limited strategic warheadsfrom tactical ones under these circumstances could be a challenging task.

Funding

The deteriorated economic condition of the Russian nuclear weapons complexis well known and the cost of the creation of a warhead dismantlementregime is of concern to Russian and U.S. officials. The United States hasbeen effectively paying for warhead-transparency technology development inboth countries through its lab-to-lab contracts. It has also beenindirectly supporting the dismantlement work by purchasing uranium derivedfrom HEU from dismantled weapons. However, implementation of transparencymeasures would require additional funding if dismantlement activities areto be rearranged to separate monitored from unmonitored activities, and toshield sensitive information from the view of inspectors.

DOE estimates that hosting an initial inspection at Pantex could cost $6million, and subsequent hosting costs would amount to $2.5 million peryear (under the inspection scenario outlined in Appendix 3). (31) These initial costs would include the cost of buildingfences and portals around a segregated disassembly area, masking sensitiveactivities, and security personnel. In addition, the On-Site InspectionAgency would spend an estimated $200,000 per year to provide escorts andlogistical support to inspectors. Hosting Russian inspectors at the Y-12plant in Oak Ridge would likely double the cost.

The cost of facility preparations and inspections could be higher inRussia because of the greater number and larger size of its facilities andlarger numbers of warheads being dismantled. (32) Suchexpenses might be a serious disincentive to implement transparency atRussia's dismantlement facilities.

If Russia's economic situation continues to deteriorate, it may even havetrouble maintaining its dismantlement rates. According to Minister ofAtomic Energy Adamov, as of September 1998, the Ministry of Defense has"not [been] allocating a ruble to the nuclear industry over the past twomonths." (33) Funding shortfalls might have alreadyreduced Russia's dismantlement rates and caused a slippage indismantlement schedules. (34) The prospects of fundingfor the dismantlement program are likely to remain bleak for some time.To keep both warhead dismantlement and transparency on track, the UnitedStates and perhaps other countries may have to share some of Russia'sdismantlement costs.

Mixed record for the past transparency efforts

The activities related to warhead dismantlement transparency are just thelatest in a string of efforts to implement transparency in U.S.-Russiannuclear security cooperation activities. Others include: the HEUblend-down and purchase agreement; the Mayak high-securityfissile-material storage facility; the Trilateral Initiative, which wouldplace excess U.S. and Russian fissile materials under IAEA safeguards; theplutonium-production reactor conversion agreement; and plutoniumdisposition. These initiatives have met with varying degrees of successand could hold lessons for the successful implementation of a verifiedwarhead dismantlement regime.

• The HEU transparency regime, the most successful transparency effortso far, focuses on verifying the weapons-origin of the blended-down HEUbeing purchased by the United States. The regime began with limitedtransparency but has developed over time. The United States is now able toverify that the material originated as HEU metal, but does not havecomplete confidence that the metal was derived from dismantled warheads asrequired by the agreement. The addition of the key transparencyarrangements in 1995 was undoubtedly helped by linkage to $100-millioncash advances when the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy found itself inan acute cash crisis, raising the question of whether similar linkagescould pay transparency dividends in the future.

• Construction of the Mayak storage facility has been largely funded bythe United States but, despite years of negotiation, the United States hasnot thus far succeeded in getting Russian agreement to a verificationregime that would provide confidence that the fissile material to bestored there was derived from dismantled weapons. In part, the problem isin Russia's insistence on reciprocal transparency from the United States.(35) In 1998, to facilitate long-term storage ofplutonium, Minatom initiated a program to recast pits into 2-kg solidplutonium spheres. Without transparency measures at the point of thisconversion at the chemical and metallurgical plant in Chelyabinsk-65, thepit destruction process will further complicate efforts to establish theweapons origin of plutonium. (36)

• The Trilateral Initiative would place stored U.S. as well as excessRussian fissile materials stored at the Mayak facility under IAEAsafeguards. In this case, the requirement is not to verify the weaponsorigin of HEU and plutonium but to assure that the material is not used inthe production of new weapons. However, progress on these transparencymeasures has been slow, both because they overlap with the U.S.-Russiannegotiations on Mayak transparency and because there is concern aboutprotecting sensitive information from international inspections.

• Transparency negotiations in connection with the U.S. deal to assistin converting Russia's plutonium production reactors to a new fuel havebeen completed. The objective of the agreement is to end the production ofweapon-grade plutonium in Russia soon after the turn of the century. Thetransparency provisions focus on ensuring that the weapon-grade plutoniumproduced in the interim is not used in weapons. Regular inspections areexpected to begin in 1999.

• Negotiations on plutonium disposition are just beginning. Here again,the United States is offering assistance - initially to convert theplutonium in excess Russian "pits" into unclassified forms.

In the past, U.S. negotiators have found their Russian counterparts to begenerally quite reluctant to engage in transparency negotiations (even ona reciprocal basis) unless the financial incentives for progress are real.The Russian government agrees that their resources are too limited to bespent on transparency and verification activities. A warhead transparencyregime could be even a greater challenge because the Russian governmentreportedly has made a decision to keep the serial production plantsoutside of the sphere of U.S.-Russian cooperative activities. Whether thisdecision can be reversed by offering Russia reciprocity, as well assubstantial financial and arms control incentives remains to be seen.

Political constraints

It is clear that the technical obstacles to the creation of a warheaddismantlement regime are formidable, but the political considerationsregarding this regime will determine whether or not any substantialprogress is made. The first problem is the stalled START II ratificationprocess in Russia. And the challenges here are great. Under Clintonadministration policy there is a limit on how much further the lab-to-labprocess can go without START II entering into force. Also, Russianofficials have indicated that for security reasons further lab-to-labcooperation on warhead transparency should be governed by a formalagreement between the two countries. Russian military and the securityestablishment are very uneasy about this cooperation.

It has been stated that the official STI negotiations were cut shortbecause of fear of security breaches and lack of sufficient incentives.The initiation of the lab-to-lab effort effectively dealt with theincentive issue for the Russian weapons design institutes. Financing wasprovided to support the participation of Russian specialists in thisprocess. The security fears, however, still remain and are now leading tosecurity-service imposed delays on the progress of the lab-to-lab program.Managing these security fears has been difficult, in part, due to the lackof coordination between various parts of the Russian Government andoutdated security and classification guidelines. Addressing those issuesis another major challenge

Russia's principal interest in warhead transparency appears to be averified elimination of the U.S. hedge stockpile. Any such proposal,however, is likely to be resisted by the U.S. Executive Branch, which hasunanimously supported the decision to establish and maintain the hedgestockpile.

A negotiated agreement on verified warhead dismantlement would probablytake the form of a treaty - perhaps a portion of the START III Treaty. Inthis case, it would have to be endorsed by the national legislativebodies. Getting such an endorsement could be an uphill battle.

There are mixed signals from the U.S. Congress. On the one hand, SenatorJoseph Biden sponsored a condition on the U.S. Senate's START Iratification resolution which calls for warhead and fissile materialsdeclarations and elimination in future arms control agreements (seeAppendix 1). On the other hand, Senator Jesse Helms has made clear hisskepticism about verified warhead elimination by writing to thethen-Secretary of Energy Federico Pena that he does "not favor[dismantlement of all U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to be withdrawnfrom deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles pursuant to a START IIITreaty] … because … (1) Such a measure would be completely unverifiable. …(2) The Russian Federation's track record of arms control violationsprovides scant assurance that they would act in good faith." (37) More generally, since the 1994 change of control ofthe Congress from the Democrats to the Republicans, there is much lessCongressional support for this agenda.

In Russia, the Communist-dominated Duma has also been consistently hostileto the notion of transparency, considering it a cover for U.S.intelligence-gathering.


IV. A Path Forward(38)

At present there are no formal or informal on-going warhead-transparencynegotiations between the United States and Russia. Virtually all of thework that is occurring is under contracts between the U.S. and Russiannuclear laboratories. Almost all of these contracts focus on generaltechnical and conceptual aspects of a possible regime because of extremesecurity and classification concerns surrounding the issue.

In order for warhead transparency to become a reality, the United Statesand Russia will have to make linked advances on both the technology andpolicy fronts. The two countries have to address major policy issuesrelated to arms control, financial assistance for Russian warheaddismantlement, and warhead complex and stockpile asymmetries. While it isdifficult in the near-term to resolve completely these fundamental policyissues, the United States and Russia could take a number of first stepswith regard to technology and operational aspects of verifiable warheaddismantlement and expand gradually the scope of the existing transparencymeasures.

Major policy issues

There is no immediate answer to the policy issues discussed below but theyneed to be analyzed and resolved before any meaningful warheaddismantlement transparency regime can be completed.

ARMS-CONTROL OBJECTIVES
The Russian government has a strong motive in seeing that the warheadsdownloaded from strategic missiles under START II and III are eliminatedunder a dismantlement regime. This elimination of the U.S. uploadcapability, its hedge stockpile, appears to be Russia's principal interestin warhead dismantlement transparency. As outlined previously, a decisionto include the hedge stockpile in a warhead dismantlement regime wouldconstitute a major policy change for the U.S. and could requiresubstantial debate and analysis.

For its part, the United States would like to see verifiable reductions ofRussia's remaining stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons down to a levelcomparable to that of the United States (about 1000 warheads). Accordingto former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Habiger

"It is time to get serious about the number of tactical nuclear weapons.Following a series of unilateral declarations by President Bush, theUnited States withdrew and dismantled the majority of its non-strategicnuclear stockpile. The Russians have not reciprocated. There is currentlya huge disparity between the number of tactical weapons in Russia and thenumber we hold. As we reduce the number of strategic weapons in parallelwith the Russians, their huge stockpile of tactical weapons becomesdestabilizing. We must ensure we parlay this issue into START IIInegotiations, and I have every expectation that we will." (39)

Some Russian analysts suggest, however, that Russia will be interested inwarhead transparency for tactical nuclear weapons only if NATO makes abinding agreement not to deploy nuclear weapons in new member countriesand the United States withdraws its nuclear weapons from Europe, adecision that NATO has indicated that it is unlikely to take.

Russia, however, may be forced by the currently relatively short servicelife of Russian warheads (10-12 years) to drastically reduce the size ofits tactical stockpile in any case. Since Russia has not beenmanufacturing new warheads on a significant scale since the late 1980s,its current substrategic stockpile, estimated at approximately 5,700warheads, (40) may be reduced to as little as severalhundred warheads after the year 2000.

RECIPROCAL TRANSPARENCY AND FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR RUSSIAN WARHEADDISMANTLEMENT
The economic crisis in Russia has raised questions about its ability tomaintain warhead dismantlement rates and implement a transparency regime.The funding requirements of Russia's dismantlement program do not seemexorbitant in comparison to the scale of funding that the United Stateshas been already providing for weapons reduction activities in Russia (seebelow). According to DOD's Franklin Miller:

"The Russians have in the past confirmed that they face warheaddismantlement costs comparable to a U.S. figure of approximately $100,000per warhead. Separately, they have said that they are dismantling about2,000 warheads a year. Together, this would suggest that warheaddismantlement has been costing the Russians about $200 million USannually." (41)

The actual costs may be less. The budget for all Minatom defense programsin 1998 was about $400 million. (42) Even at $100,000per warhead, however, the total cost for the irreversible dismantlement of10,000 Russian warheads over five years would be only $1 billion. Thiswould be extraordinary value in comparison to the costs of other U.S.defense programs and in comparison to U.S. costs if Russia's nuclearcomplex collapsed and weapons, components, and fissile materials leaked tothe black market.

The simplest mechanism for U.S. financial support of Russian warheaddismantlement would be to pay a fee for every irreversibly eliminatedwarhead. The Russian-U.S. HEU deal is, in part, already helping Russiafinance the dismantlement of its excess nuclear warheads, because Russiais being paid for the uranium that is removed from the warheads. Assumingan average HEU content of 20 kg per warhead, Russia receives approximately$500,000 gross for recovering and downblending HEU from each dismantledwarhead. (43) However, information concerning how muchof the HEU money is allocated to the dismantlement activities is notpublicly available.

There are two additional options for using the HEU purchase agreement tofacilitate verifiable dismantlement. In exchange for reciprocal warheaddismantlement transparency arrangements, the United States could provideto Russia a partial pre-payment (e.g. 20 percent) of its expected totalpayment for each year's delivery of blended HEU. The United States alsocould provide an additional payment at the end of each year if the warheaddismantlement and HEU blend-down rate is higher than required by the HEUdeal. (44)

In the context of reciprocal warhead transparency, support for warheaddismantlement could also be provided through the U.S. Department ofDefense's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program or from DOE funds.The original objective of the CTR program, when it was launched in 1991,was to expedite the elimination of Russia's nuclear warheads. Indeed, theprogram's initial name was the Safe and Secure Dismantlement Program. TheCTR program has since been funded at a level of approximately $400 millionper year. However, most of the funding has been dedicated to theelimination of missile silos, submarines and missiles. Only a smallfraction has related to the destruction of warheads themselves - and thatonly for increasing the security of the transport and storage activitiestaking place before and after actual warhead dismantlement, not for actualwarhead dismantlement activities. (45)

Direct support for Russian warhead dismantlement has not been possiblebecause of the combination of Russian secrecy requirements and U.S.accountability requirements for the expenditure of CTR funds. A warheadtransparency regime could help resolve this impasse. These transparencyarrangements would, however, need to differ from other CTR auditarrangements because Russian inspectors would have reciprocal access tothe U.S. dismantlement process, and it is unlikely that U.S. auditorswould have unlimited access to warhead dismantlement plants.

The United States also could support the separation of Russian warheaddismantlement and maintenance/remanufacturing activities by financing there-tooling of one or more of the dismantlement plants to be a dedicatedfacility whose sole mission would be the verifiable and irreversibledismantlement of treaty-limited warheads. The United States could thenshare the cost of dismantlement at this facility on a per-warheadcost-reimbursement basis and help re-direct excess workers to new civilianmissions.

In the meantime, the U.S. DOE should maintain a strong and diversecooperative warhead-transparency R&D program involving personnel from thenuclear-weapon laboratories and military establishments of both countries.This program would help to sustain core expert groups in both the UnitedStates and Russia. Otherwise, because of the lack of funding and theimminent downsizing of the Russian nuclear infrastructure its expertgroups involved in the warhead-transparency effort may not survive.

RELEVANCE OF ASYMMETRIES IN THE WEAPONS PRODUCTION AND MAINTENANCECOMPLEXES, AND IN SECRECY REQUIREMENTS
In order to fully achieve the security objectives of both sides inpursuing a warhead transparency regime, a number of asymmetries betweenthe two warhead complexes and their contexts must be dealt with. TheUnited States is concerned about differences in nuclear-weapons-productioncapacities, and warhead and weapons-usable material stockpiles. Russia isconcerned about differences in financial resources, upload capacities, anddangers to the security of its nuclear facilities. Additionally, thedevelopment of a transparency regime could be impeded by differences inthe sizes of nuclear-weapon-production infrastructures, weaponremanufacturing rates, and dismantlement operations and schedules. As afirst step, each country should list the asymmetries which concern it,along with an explanation of why they are of concern. Then considerationshould be given to how to apply transparency and other measures (such asU.S. assistance to Russia in downsizing its nuclear complex) in a way thatcan mitigate political and perception problems, minimize operationalimpacts, and reduce worries about possible breakouts.

First steps

In the near term, the United States and Russia could undertake a number ofactivities that would expand the scope of the existing lab-to-labtechnical projects and government-to-government transparency measures.These practical steps would help to jump-start the currently stalledwarhead transparency discussions and facilitate the development of aworkable transparency regime.

FACILITY-SPECIFIC STUDIES
The immediate task for U.S. and Russian technical experts is to completethe technology development stage and to think through how transparencymeasures could be applied to specific stages of the warhead dismantlementprocess and at specific facilities.

The United States has carried out a detailed study on how to protectsensitive information and how activities related to transparent warheaddismantlement might be segregated from activities relating to maintenanceof the enduring nuclear stockpile. Russia should do the same. Tofacilitate this work, the United States may have to fund Russian analyseswhose results cannot be entirely shared with the United States - forexample a study of possible implementation arrangements at specificRussian facilities, development of information protection techniques, andred team evaluation. (46) In such cases, the Russianexperts could provide the United States with unclassified summaries of theclassified reports. If necessary for accounting purposes, additionalevidence of work could be requested. (This type of auditing has alreadybeen used for the implementation of material-security upgrades atsensitive facilities to which U.S. access is currently not allowed. (47))

COOPERATIVE RESEARCH WITH THE RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE AND U.S.DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ON POSSIBLE CHAIN-OF CUSTODY ARRANGEMENTS FORWARHEADS
Another opportunity for the technical experts is to extend their analysis"upstream" to the nuclear-warhead storage sites of the U.S. Department ofDefense and the 12th Directorate of Russia's Ministry of Defense whereexcess warheads are stored before being transported to the respectivefacilities of the Department of Energy and Ministry of Atomic Energy fordismantlement. This work would complement the lab-to-lab process and getthe military establishments more involved in the cooperation. This couldultimately decrease security concern about the implementation of theregime.

An ideal starting point for this cooperation would be research on apossible transparent chain-of-custody arrangement for warheads as theymove from active field deployment to dismantlement. This could involvetagging warheads or their containers at military storage sites or, in somecases, even at deployment sites when the warheads are downloaded frommissiles.

This will require cooperation from both the Russian Ministry of Defenseand the U.S. Department of Defense. A possible partner for the UnitedStates in the development of this dimension of transparency could be the12th Directorate's Central Technical-Physical Institute in Sergiev Posad(formerly Zagorsk).

CLASSIFICATION REQUIREMENTS
U.S. and Russian technical and security specialists should compare therelevant classification requirements of the two countries to arrive at amutual understanding of the types of information that can and cannot beshared. Discussions regarding a contract to evaluate differences inclassification requirements have already been initiated between the SandiaNational Laboratories and Chelyabinsk-70.

AN EXCHANGE OF DIAGRAMS SHOWING LAYOUTS AND WARHEAD FLOWS THROUGHDISMANTLEMENT FACILITIES
The United States has proposed an unclassified exchange of visits to aRussian dismantlement plant and the U.S. Pantex plant in order tofamiliarize each side with the flow of the dismantlement process.(Journalists have already been offered such tours of the Pantex plant.)The United States offered to host the first visit at Pantex if the Russiangovernment could reciprocate by inviting U.S. experts to a functionallyequivalent facility of Zlatoust-36 or Sverdlovsk-45. (48) However, this idea has not been accepted by theRussian government.

A possible first step in this direction would be for each country tounilaterally draw up, on paper, an unclassified description of activitiesat its dismantlement plants and a schematic diagram of how warheads flowthough the dismantlement processes. It could constitute a confidencebuilding first step toward the reciprocal "walk-throughs" that the U.S.has been seeking, and lead to demonstration of warhead transparencymeasures and procedures at the dismantlement facilities in both countriesfirst on unclassified objects, and, ultimately, on actual warheads.

TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT CENTERS
The United States and Russia also could establish technology developmentand demonstration centers at actual dismantlement facilities that are (orwill be) not operational. The planned phase-out of weapons work at theAvangard plant in Arzamas-16 may present the best chance for ademonstration in Russia. Avangard is in the same closed city, Arzamas-16,as the Institute of Experimental Physics, one of Russia's two leadingnuclear-weapons-design institutes, which plays a major role in thelab-to-lab warhead transparency program. Alternatively, technologydevelopment and testing could be carried out at one of the pilot weaponsproduction plants associated with the weapons design institutes inChelyabinsk-70 or Arzamas-16. In the United States, a similar center couldbe established at the recently built state-of-the-art Device AssemblyFacility at the Nevada Test Site.

MONITORING THE SHUT-DOWN OR CONVERTED STATUS OF EXCESS WARHEAD PRODUCTIONCAPACITY, AND NON-PRODUCTION OF NEW WARHEADS
Warhead production and refurbishing activities in Russia will be phasedout at two (or, possibly, three) out of four existing facilities.Monitoring the shut-down or converted status of these facilities wouldhelp to address the U.S. concern regarding the asymmetry in productioncapacities. (Russia could verify non-production at the DAF complex at theNevada Test Site.) A first step could be a lab-lab study on possiblenon-production transparency methods at a former warhead assembly plant.

A TRANSPARENCY AGREEMENT ON PIT-CONVERSION
Russia has already begun recasting plutonium pits to solid metal spheresat Chelyabinsk-65 and might start similar activities at Tomsk-7 in thefuture. The United States plans to convert its excess plutonium pits toplutonium oxide powder at a new Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility(PDCF) to be built at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. (49) The two countries should negotiate reciprocaltransparency arrangements at the point in the process where the plutoniumpits are being changed from their classified shapes, after the weaponshave been disassembled.

DECLARATION OF WARHEADS ELIMINATED AND REMAINING TO BE ELIMINATED UNDERTHE 1991 BUSH-GORBACHEV INITIATIVES
In 1991, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev each unilaterally committed theircountries to eliminate certain classes of nuclear weapons. These are theonly warheads both countries have officially agreed to eliminate. As aresult, the obstacles to increased transparency could be lowest whendealing with these weapons. The two countries could start by declaring howmany of these warheads have been dismantled and how many remain to bedisassembled. A follow-on initiative could include declarations of theplutonium pits recovered from these warheads, as well as bilateralmonitoring of pits and any plutonium recovered from them.

DECLARATION OF TOTAL STRATEGIC WARHEAD AND FISSILE MATERIALS STOCKSPILES
Declarations of warhead and fissile material stockpiles is an importantconfidence-building measure. They also are an essential element ofbuilding a comprehensive transparency regime and irreversible reductionsprocess.

The United States has already released current and historical dataregarding its warhead stockpile, production and dismantlement (but not thenumber of currently operational warheads). (50) TheUnited States has also made public data related to its total stocks,production, acquisition and use of plutonium. A similar effort iscurrently underway to prepare and release information on its HEU stocks.Russia has not released stockpile information.

In January 1995, the United States proposed an exchange of detailedinformation regarding the warhead and fissile material stockpiles, thenumber of warheads dismantled each year since 1980, and the quantity offissile materials produced each year since 1970 (by material type, amount,enrichment level or grade, and production location). The proposal wasrejected by Russia apparently because of the amount of detail requested. Adeclaration of aggregate strategic warhead stocks could be a moreacceptable first step.

In part, Russia has not been able to declare its fissile-material holdingsdue to the lack of funds to undertake such a project. A lab-to-labcontract to support this effort in Russia would be a useful step towardsirreversible stockpile reductions.


Conclusion

The United States and Russia are closer to initiating warhead transparencythan ever before. But there remain substantial technical and politicalchallenges that could keep the regime from becoming a reality and possiblyeven roll back the progress that has been made to date. In order tostrengthen the chances for successful implementation of a warheadtransparency regime, the United States and Russia must in the short termaddress five key questions:

1) Will there be sufficient arms control and financial incentivesprovided to Russia to overcome the political resistance of its militaryand security agencies?

2) If cooperation is maintained at the lab-to-lab level, will theUnited States and Russia agree to move beyond cooperation on genericconcepts to demonstrations in actual warhead dismantlement facilities?

3) Will the two countries be able to put in place the legal frameworkfor a warhead dismantlement regime (including Russian ratification ofSTART II and agreements required to maintain cooperation at the lab-to-lablevel and for the exchange of classified information)?

4) Will greater public and political attention to this issue increase ordecrease the barriers to progress?

5) Finally, in the longer term, can the focus of the dismantlement regimeextend beyond warheads declared excess and be expanded to include thosewarheads that the Russian government (U.S. hedge stockpile) and the U.S.government (Russia tactical stockpile) see as the rationale for becominginvolved in the creation of this regime? If not, progress will almostsurely grind to a halt as concerns increase about possible imbalances ofthe residual stocks.


Table 1: Warhead stockpile estimates

U.S strategic/tactical (total)		Russia strategic/tactical (total), end 1997
active and reserve	9,000/1,000 (10,000) (51)	8,295/5,700 (13,995) (52)
waiting for dismantlement	(1,500(53))	2,300/4,000 (6,300) (54)
eliminated	10,512(55) (FY1990-97)	2,000/9,000 (11,000) (from early 1990s)

Table 2: Projected dismantlement requirements

RUSSIA			UNITED STATES
Stockpile (s/t)		To be dismantled (cumulatively)	Stockpile (s/t)	To be dismantled (cumulatively)
Early 1998	8,295/5,700 (A+R)	6,300	9,668/1913 (A) 350 (I)	1,179
START II (2000+)	4,000/1,000 (A)** 1,000 (R)	8,000+6,300-2x1,500=11,300*	3.488/892 (A) 5,096 (H+I)	none
START III (2,000+)	2,000/1,000 (A) 1,000 (R)	13,300	2,000/950 (A) 2,500 (H+I)**	4,026

s/t - strategic/ tactical warheads
A - active stockpile
R - reserve stockpile
H - hedge stockpile
I - inactive stockpile
* - It is assumed that the Russian active tactical stockpile will bereduced by natural attrition around the year 2000 and that thedismantlement rate will be maintained at 1,500 warheads per year.
** - It is assumed that under START III the U.S. hedge and inactivestockpile will be cut in half, proportionally to the operationalstockpile.


Table 3: U.S. START II and III notional force structures and hedgestockpiles

Weapons system	START II				START III
	Launchers	Depl/upload Ws per launcher	Total depl Ws	Total hedge	Launchers	Depl/upload Ws per launcher	Total depl Ws	Total hedge
Minuteman III	500	1/2	500	1000	300	1/2	300	600
Trident II	336	5/3	1680	1008	240	4/4	960	960
B-2	20	16/0	320	0	20	16/0	320	0
B-52H*	53 18	12/0 20/0	636 360	206 0	35	12/8	420	280
B-1	95	0/16	0	430**	95	0/16	0	430
Total deployed and hedge stockpiles			3496	2644			2000	2270

* - B-52H is the only bomber capable of carrying ALCms and ACMs. The totalnumber of ALCM/ACM warheads (W80-1) is 1000.

** - There are total 750 B61-7/11 strategic bombs that could be carried byB-2 and B-1 bombers.


Appendix 1: Warhead Transparency Chronology

1987. During the debate on the ratification of the INF Treaty,Reagan administration officials stated that the elimination of warheadscould not be verified without unacceptable sharing of warhead designinformation. (56) A joint technical study onverification of nuclear warhead elimination was launched by the U.S.Federation of American Scientists and the Committee of Soviet Scientistsfor Peace and Against the Nuclear Threat which first developed many of theapproaches later incorporated into the lab-to-lab proposals. (57)

1989. Russian Academician Velikhov arranged with the U.S.non-governmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, for aU.S.-Soviet demonstration of measurements of gamma and neutron radiationemitted by a Soviet warhead on the ship "Slava" in the Black Sea. (58)

1991. Under the START I treaty, the United States and Russiaagreed to monitor the maximum number of reentry vehicles on strategicmissiles (RV On-Site Inspections, RVOSI). RVOSI inspections include avisual counting of shrouded reentry vehicle shapes from above the openmissile launcher after the missile nose cone has been removed or afterescorted removal of the warhead section of the missile to an inspectionfacility. Inspectors also conduct radiation measurements to confirm thatno nuclear-armed cruise missiles are present at bomber bases that havebeen declared non-nuclear.

1992. The Russian Federation and Ukraine signed an Agreement onthe Procedure for Movement of Nuclear Munitions from the Territory ofUkraine to Central Pre-Factory Bases … for the Purpose of Dismantling andDestroying Them, which gave Ukraine the right to send three-man observerteams to each of the serial production facilities in Russia to monitor theprocess of dismantlement of warheads removed from Ukraine. Under theagreement, Ukrainian observers are to be provided by MOD's 12 MainDirectorate with records on nuclear warheads to be dismantled. Observers"control step by step the dismantling of nuclear munitions into theircomponent parts and their destruction, the extraction and dismantling ofthe charge [physics package]." (59)

February 1992. Russian Foreign Minister Kozyrev, in a speech tothe Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, agreed to open the door to aU.S.-Russian exchange of nuclear stockpile information. Kozyrev, who readYeltsin's message to the U.N. Disarmament Conference, "proposed that thefive acknowledged nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and theUnited States - exchange data on the number and type of their warheads,the amount of fissionable material they have and installations wherenuclear weapons are produced, stored and destroyed". (60)

October 1992. The U.S. Senate adopted the Biden condition to theratification of START I which calls for "(A) the exchange of detailedinformation on aggregate stockpiles of nuclear warheads, on stocks offissile materials, and on their safety and security; (B) the maintenanceat distinct and secure storage facilities, on a reciprocal basis, offissile materials removed from nuclear warheads and declared to be excessto national security requirements for the purpose of confirming theirreversibility of the process of nuclear weapons reduction; and (C) theadoption of other cooperative measures to enhance confidence in thereciprocal declarations on fissile material stockpiles." (61)

January 1994. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agreed "to establisha joint working group to consider: steps to ensure the transparency andirreversibility of the progress of reduction of nuclear weapons,including the possibility of putting a portion of fissionable materialunder IAEA safeguards. Particular attention would be given to materialsreleased in the process of nuclear disarmament, and to steps to ensurethat these materials would not be used again for nuclear weapons." (62)

May 1995. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin issued a Safeguards,Transparency and Irreversibility statement calling for "concreteagreements on transparency and irreversibility [of] the process ofreduction of nuclear weapons. The presidents "confirmed that both sidesseek to strengthen mutual confidence and regularly exchange detailedinformation about the overall stock of nuclear warheads and fissilematerials, their security and safety." (63)

Fall 1995. The U.S. Department of Energy initiated a low-profilelaboratory-to-laboratory R&D collaboration on the means of assuringtransparent warhead dismantlement in line with the Clinton-Yeltsin Maystatement.

March 1997. In their Helsinki Summit statement, Presidents Clintonand Yeltsin called for "measures relating to the transparency of strategicnuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclearwarheads... to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions includingprevention of a rapid increase in the number of warheads" to be includedin a START III agreement. (64)


Appendix 2: U.S.-Russian Fissile MaterialTransparency Measures

Under the U.S.-Russian highly-enriched uranium purchase agreement, theparties have established a system of permanent and special monitoring ofthe HEU down-blending process at the Russian facilities. U.S. monitorshave a right to see all relevant material accounting data, observe thetechnological processes after the HEU metal has been chopped up, andrequest and observe HEU isotopic measurements.

Under the Reactor Shutdown Agreement, U.S. inspectors are to verify thatplutonium newly-produced at the three Russian plutonium-productionreactors that are still in operation to produce heat and electricity fornearby populations, is placed in storage and is not used for weaponspurposes. (65)

The United States and Russia also have begun working on transparencymeasures for the high-security storage facility for excess fissilematerials from dismantled weapons that is being constructed with U.S.assistance in Chelyabinsk-65. For its part, the United States has placed10 t of HEU and 2 t of plutonium under IAEA safeguards and invited theIAEA to monitor the blending down of its excess HEU.


Appendix 3: Dismantlement Transparency TechnologiesAnd Procedures

The general approach to warhead dismantlement transparency being exploredby U.S. and Russian laboratory experts would involve warhead andfissile-component monitoring in storage before and after the dismantlementprocess, plus a "chain-of-custody" approach to associate the fissilecomponents that emerge from the dismantlement process with the warheadsthat went in (see Table A2.1 and Fig. A2.1). (66)

Transparency and monitoring measures under this approach would start at amilitary deployment site or upon receipt of a warhead at thewarhead-storage area at the dismantlement site. Wherever the firstinspection took place, a treaty-limited warhead in a container would beidentified by the characteristic energy spectrum of spontaneous gammaradiation from the fissile material it contains or by its pattern of gammaor neutron emissions stimulated by irradiation by a small neutron source.(67) The warhead container would then be tagged andsealed. Subsequent checks of these tags and seals, along with randomrechecks of the canister radiation signatures, would then be able toverify that the warhead had not been tampered with prior to its deliveryto a specific area in the dismantlement facility.

Prior to dismantlement, inspectors would sweep this disassembly area withradiation detectors to ensure that it did not contain undeclared warheadsor fissile materials. The use of these detectors would allow the facilityoperators to shroud any equipment whose design might reveal warhead-designinformation. The inspectors would not stay to observe the disassemblyprocess. However, they would be permitted to carry out radiationmeasurements on all containers entering and leaving the disassembly areato confirm that no fissile materials are secretly introduced to or removedfrom the disassembly area. After the disassembly process was completed,they would once again sweep the area to verify that all the fissilematerial had been removed. This would associate the materials in thefissile material containers leaving the disassembly area with the originalwarhead. This process would be repeated more than once as the warhead andits components went through successive stages of dismantlement. Thecontainers holding the stripped down fissile components would then wouldbe tagged, sealed and sent to a monitored storage facility pending finaldisposal of fissile materials. To increase confidence, the inspectorscould audit the facility's records and track to destruction non-nuclearcomponents such as warhead casings and high-explosive components.

Verifying the dismantlement of every excess warhead might require acontinuous presence of inspectors at a dismantlement facility. This wouldnot be unprecedented. Under the verification arrangements of the INFTreaty the United States and Russia each maintain full-timeportal-perimeter surveillance at the facilities at which each formerlyproduced intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Also, under the HEUPurchase agreement the U.S. and Russia have established permanentmonitoring offices in the blend-down sites at Sverdlovsk-44 andPortsmouth, OH.

Radiation measurements are at the heart of the proposed technicaltransparency measures. As already noted, radiation signatures wouldidentify the warhead type and identify the fissile material componentscoming out of the dismantlement process. As of summer 1998, the list ofpromising candidate technologies included passive gamma-radiationfingerprinting (the RIS and CIVET systems), and the active interrogationnuclear material identification system (NMIS).

A gamma-radiation fingerprint involves a full-spectrum analysis ofgamma-ray spectra (possibly with degraded spatial and spectralresolution). It has been demonstrated that the method can be used toconfirm that two objects are of the same design. In a practicalapplication, a library of "templates" would be established fortreaty-limited assembled warheads and their fissile material components.Warhead and component signatures would then be checked against theexisting set of templates. Because the templates are highly sensitive,both radiation measurements and signature comparison would be doneautomatically, with inspectors receiving only the answer Yes or No.

The RIS system, which is currently used on plutonium pits at Pantex forthe domestic safeguards purposes, is based on low-resolution measurementsand statistical analysis. The CIVET system is based on high-resolutiongamma measurements the results of which are processed by a specialcomputer without permanent memory to prevent disclosure of classifiedinformation. The CIVET computer could also be used with any other systemto protect classified information.

The Nuclear Materials Identification System is routinely used at the Y-12plant for verifying and tracking HEU warhead components. This is anactive interrogation technique in which an object is irradiated by aneutron source (californium-252). (With plutonium, which has a relativelyhigh spontaneous neutron background, the system is capable of working in apassive mode.) The induced fission neutrons and gamma-rays are thendetected and correlated with each other and with the incident neutronsfrom Cf-252. This produces a characteristic signature for a warhead orHEU- or plutonium-containing component.


Table A2.1: Warhead dismantlement and fissile material monitoring

Check with radiation detectors of incoming and outgoing packagesdeclared not to contain fissile materials

Dismantlement steps	Monitoring activities
Warhead shipment from a deployment site or warhead receipt at adismantlement site staging area	Warhead identification at a deployment site or storage area andinitiation of LCC Tagging and sealing of warhead container Measurement of warhead radiation and comparison with template
Prior to disassembly	Sweep of disassembly area to confirm that no fissile material ispresent
Warhead transfer to the disassembly area	Measurement of radiation signature (possibly) Check of container tag and seal
Warhead dismantlement
After disassembly	Measurement of radiation signatures of packages declared to containfissile warhead components and template analysis Application of tags and seals to fissile material containers Sweep of dismantlement area to confirm that all fissile material hasbeen removed Tracking of key non-nuclear components such as outer casings, re-entryshields, and high-explosives to destruction (possibly)
Fissile material components storage and disposition	Fissile material transparency measures

Appendix 4

December 12, 1998

Conclusions from the Russian-U.S. Workshop On Warhead Transparency hostedby the Federation of American Scientists,
Washington D.C., November 9-10, 1998

The purpose of the workshop was to explore the current state of theRussian-U.S. discussion of a possible warhead transparency regime and toidentify actions that could facilitate progress. The workshopparticipants consisted of Russian and American non-governmental experts,and governmental experts participating in a non-official capacity (seelist at end). In the view of a core group of non-governmentalparticipants (Bukharin, Bunn, Diakov, Luongo and von Hippel), the meetingidentified possible activities in two areas:

a) Clarifying major policy issues; and

b) Possible first steps forward.

A. Major Policy Issues

These are issues for which there is no immediate answer, but which need tobe analyzed and resolved before any meaningful warhead dismantlementtransparency regime can be completed.

1. The U.S. Up-Load Hedge and Russian and U.S. Tactical Nuclear Warheads

In 1994, the U.S. made a policy decision to configure its START II forcesin a manner that would make possible an increase in the number of U.S.deployed strategic warheads back to roughly twice the treaty-permittednumber. (This is known as the "up-load hedge.") This upload capabilityis of concern to the Russian Government and addressing it appears to bethe principal motive for Russian Government's interest in the transparentelimination of warheads. Russia therefore has a strong interest in seeingthat the warheads downloaded from strategic missiles under START II andIII are eliminated under a dismantlement regime.

The U.S. Government, for its part, is very concerned about the possibilityof a large number of remaining Russian tactical nuclear warheads. Itwould like to have transparency in tactical nuclear-warhead stocks and, ifRussia's stock is much larger than that of the U.S., to see substantialreductions.

The Russian Government objects to including tactical nuclear warheads inthe START III negotiations and the United States has been reluctant toagree to dismantle its up-load hedge warheads. During the workshop, someAmerican participants suggested that an obvious compromise would includetransparent reductions in the U.S. upload hedge in return for transparentreductions in excess Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Russianparticipants, however, took the view that Russia will be interested inwarhead transparency for tactical nuclear weapons only if NATO makes abinding agreement not to deploy nuclear weapons in new member countriesand the U.S. withdraws its nuclear weapons from Europe.

2. Reciprocal Transparency And Financial Assistance For Russian WarheadDismantlement.

The economic crisis in Russia has raised questions about the maintenanceof warhead dismantlement rates. The Russian-U.S. Highly Enriched Uranium(HEU) deal is, in part, already helping Russia finance the dismantlementof its excess nuclear warheads, because Russia is able to sell the uraniumthat is removed from the warheads.

Four options to provide additional funds to facilitate the financing ofwarhead dismantlement in a context of reciprocal warhead transparency wereraised at and after the workshop: 1) the U.S. could provide to Russia apartial pre-payment (e.g. 20 percent) of its expected total payment foreach year's delivery of blended HEU; 2) the U.S. could provide anadditional payment at the end of each year if the HEU blend-down rateexceeds that required by the HEU deal; 3) Cooperative Threat Reduction[CTR] program funds could be used to modernize and re-tool one of Russia'sdismantlement plants to create a facility dedicated solely to the missionof transparently and irreversibly dismantling warheads that are declaredexcess, either unilaterally or pursuant to an international agreement; and4) CTR or similar funds could be used to pay part of the costs of Russianwarhead dismantlement in return for transparency to confirm that thisdismantlement is taking place. Transparency would be implemented on areciprocal basis at U.S. dismantlement facilities as well.

3. Relevance of Asymmetries in the Weapons Production and MaintenanceComplexes, and in Secrecy Requirements

In order to fully achieve the security objectives of both sides inpursuing a warhead transparency regime, a number of asymmetries betweenthe two warhead complexes and their contexts must be dealt with. The U.S.is concerned about differences in nuclear-weapons-production capacities,and warhead and weapons-usable material stockpiles. Russia is concernedabout differences in financial resources, upload capacities, and aboutpossible security dangers arising from the compromise of secretinformation about its facilities. Additionally, the development of atransparency regime could be impeded by differences in the sizes ofnuclear-weapon-production infrastructures, weapon re-manufacturing rates,and dismantlement operations and schedules. As a first step, each countryshould list the asymmetries which concern it, along with an explanation ofwhy they are of concern. Then consideration should be given to how toapply transparency measures in a way that can mitigate political andperception problems, minimize operational impacts, and reduce worriesabout possible breakouts.

B. Possible First Steps Toward a New Regime

At present there are no formal or informal on-going negotiations betweenthe U.S. and Russia on the issue of a warhead-transparency regime.Virtually all of the work that is occurring is under contracts between theU.S. and Russian nuclear laboratories. Almost all of these contractsfocus on technical and conceptual aspects of a possible regime because ofthe extreme security and classification concerns surrounding the issue.Listed below are some suggestions put forth at the workshop for firststeps that could be taken to facilitate the movement toward acomprehensive warhead transparency regime.

1. A Transparency Agreement on Pit-Conversion.

Moving directly into the monitoring of warhead dismantlement activities ata warhead assembly/disassembly plant is a highly unlikely first step.However, an early agreement might be possible on reciprocal transparencyat the point in the warhead-elimination process where plutonium pits arechanged to unclassified shapes. These activities are scheduled to beundertaken by both countries and are likely to occur at the Mayak plant inRussia and at either Savannah River or Pantex sites in the U.S.

At present the U.S., Russia, and IAEA, under the Trilateral Initiative,are negotiating arrangements to monitor that excess weapon material sentto the Mayak storage facility (where re-cast plutonium from Russian pitswill be stored) is not returned to weapon programs. The U.S. and Russiaare engaged in separate bilateral negotiations on monitoring arrangements.However, these discussions continue to be at an impasse because ofdifferences over how to provide assurance that the plutonium to be storedin the storage facility is of weapons-origin.

The U.S. proposes limited chain of custody arrangements, starting withthreshold measurements (plutonium isotopics, mass, symmetry and size) onRussian pits in theircanisters before they are converted to unclassified forms. A U.S. offerto implement identical transparency measures on a reciprocal basis at itsplanned pit-conversion facilities might help resolve this difference andbuild confidence to support the creation of a broader regime. CTR fundscould be used to help ease operational bottlenecks in the Russianpit-conversion process if this proposal were adopted.

2. A Declaration Of Warheads Eliminated And Remaining To Be EliminatedUnder The 1991 Bush-Gorbachev Initiatives

In 1991, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev each unilaterally agreed toeliminate certain classes of nuclear weapons. These are still the onlywarheads both countries have officially agreed to eliminate. As a result,the obstacles to increased transparency could be lowest when dealing withthese weapons. Both countries could declare how many of these warheadshave been dismantled and how many remain to be disassembled. A follow-oninitiative could include declarations of the plutonium pits recoveredfrom these warheads and bilateral monitoring of them, and any plutoniumrecovered from them.

3. Facility-Specific Studies

The U.S. has carried out a detailed study on the costs and impacts ofspecific approaches to activities related to transparent warheaddismantlement if implemented at specific U.S. facilities. This studyincludes an analysis of how activities related to transparent warheaddismantlement might be segregated from activities relating to maintenanceof the enduring nuclear stockpile -- perhaps even in entirely separatededicated facilities. Russia should carry out a similar detailed study --perhaps with support from the lab-lab program.

4. An Exchange Of Diagrams Showing Layouts And Warhead Flows Through TheDismantlement Facilities

The U.S. has proposed an exchange of unclassified tours of the U.S. Pantexplant of and a Russian dismantlement plant in order to familiarize eachcountry with the flow of the dismantlement process in the other country.(Journalists have already been offered such tours of the Pantex plant.)The U.S. has offered to host the first visit at Pantex if the Russiangovernment could reciprocate. However, this idea has not yet beenaccepted by the Russian government. The benefits of implementing thisidea, and the means to do so without compromising secrets on either side,were discussed at some length at the workshop.

A possible first step in this direction put forth at the workshopenvisions that each country would unilaterally draw up, on paper, anunclassified description of activities at its dismantlement plants and aschematic diagram of how warheads flow though the dismantlement processes.This could constitute a confidence-building first step toward reciprocal"walk-throughs" and then unclassified demonstrations of warheadtransparency measures and procedures at the dismantlement facilities inboth countries.

5. Arrangements For Verifying The Shut-Down Or Converted Status Of ExcessWarhead-Production Capacity, And Non-Production Of New Warheads

A particular interest of the U.S. will be to gain assurance that shut-downor converted warhead dismantlement plants in Russia are not covertlyproducing new nuclear warheads. There are also questions about how there-manufacturing of weapons could be distinguished from new warheadproduction. A first step should be a lab-lab study on possibletransparency measures to address these issues.

6. Cooperative Research With The Russian Ministry Of Defense And U.S.Department Of Defense On Possible Chain-Of Custody Arrangements ForWarheads

The Russian Ministry of Defense plays a greater role in the Russianwarhead dismantlement process than the Department of Defense does in theU.S. For example, warhead storage at Russian dismantlement sites is underthe control of the MoD's 12th Directorate. To date, however, nocooperation under the lab-to-lab program has been initiated with the MOD.

An ideal starting point for this cooperation would be research on apossible transparent chain-of-custody arrangement for warheads as theymove from active field deployment to dismantlement. This could involvetagging warheads or their containers at military storage sites or, in somecases, even at deployment sites when the warheads are downloaded frommissiles. Such approaches could turn out to be the only reliable means todistinguish strategic from tactical warheads, should the two sides agreeon limitations that apply differently to the two types of warheads, assuggested in the Helsinki Summit statement.

This will require cooperation from both the Russian Ministry of Defenseand the U.S. Department of Defense. A possible partner for the U.S. in thedevelopment of this dimension of transparency could be the 12thDirectorate's Central Technical-Physical Institute in Sergiev Posad(formerly Zagorsk).

7. Declarations Of Total Warhead Stocks

In September 1994, President Clinton and President Yeltsin agreed to anexchange of data on each country's stockpiles of nuclear warheads,plutonium, and highly-enriched uranium. In January 1995 the United Statesput forward a specific proposal for stockpile declarations by bothnations. This proposal was rejected by Russia -- apparently because ofthe amount of detail proposed in the information exchange. A simplerdeclaration of aggregate warhead stocks -- perhaps divided into strategicand tactical weapon categories -- could be a more acceptable first step.If the United States declassified its aggregate stockpile information, asit has done for plutonium, then implementation of such an exchange wouldnot require an Agreement for Cooperation under the U.S. Atomic Energy Act.

8. Declarations Of Total Plutonium And Heu Stocks.

The U.S. has already made public its total stockpile of plutonium byisotopic grade and site (with Pantex and all warhead sites lumped into asingle warhead/pit "site"), along with the history of U.S. production,acquisition and disposition of separated plutonium. The United States isexpected soon to release similar information on its HEU stockpile.

Russia has not released information on either of its fissile-materialstockpiles. Russian officials and laboratory experts have indicated thatRussia does not currently have funds available to pull together theinformation in a form comparable to what the United States has released onits plutonium stockpile. A useful step would be to undertake a lab-to-labcontract in which the United States would pay the cost of preparing aninventory of Russia's plutonium stockpiles in return for receivinginformation at the same level of detail as the United States has alreadyreleased. If this worked well for plutonium, a similar approach could betaken for Russia's HEU stockpiles once the United States has released itsdata. These further declarations would support agreements for deep cutsin the warhead stockpiles.

Workshop Attendees

Russia

Anatoli Diakov (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology)
Gennady Kruglov (Chelyabinsk-70/Princeton)
Igor Markov (Chelyabinsk-70/Princeton)
Petr Romashkin (Staff, Defense Committe, Russian State Duma)
Vladimir Rybachenkov (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

United States

Oleg Bukharin (Princeton University)
Matthew Bunn (Harvard University)
Charles Ferguson (FAS)
Steve Fetter (University of Maryland/CISAC)
Ambassador James Goodby
Joshua Handler (Princeton University)
Bill Hoehn (RANSAC)
Ken Luongo (RANSAC)
Frank von Hippel (Princeton University)

Andrew Bieniawski (DOE)
Geoffrey Forden (CBO)
Robert Gromoll (ACDA)
T.R.Koncher (DOD/ LLNL)
Denny Jones (DOS)

Col. Guy Lunsford (DOD)
David Mosher (CBO)
Michael Newman (DOE)
Michael Olmsted (JCS)
Kurt Sieman (DOE)
Michael Stafford (DOS)


1. In May 1992, for example, CIA's Lawrence Gershwin statedthat Russia had 30,000 warheads and that "the uncertainty [of thisestimate] is plus or minus 5,000." (Lawrence Gershwin, NIO for StrategicPrograms, CIA, Testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, "DODAppropriations for 1993, Part 5," May 6, 1992, GPO, p. 499.) Morerecently, General Habiger stated that "the gross numbers of tacticalnuclear weapons that are in Russia today … - depending on who you talk towithin the Intelligence community - [are] from 17,000 to 22,000 nuclearweapons." (Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United StatesSenate, 105th Congress, Second Session on S.2057. Part 7, StrategicForces, US GPO, Washington, DC, 1998, p. 492.)

2. A.Czajkowski, A.Bieniawski, C.M.Persival "Status of theUnited States - Russian Federation Safeguards, Transparency andIrreversibility (STI) Initiative for Nuclear Arms Reductions," paperpresented at the 37th Annual Institute of Nuclear Materials Conference,July 28 - August 1, 1996, Naples, FL.

3. For example, at the 14-23 November 1994 meeting at theLawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U.S. and Russian expertsdemonstrated an inspection technique based on the use of a narrow region(630-670 keV of the plutonium gamma-ray spectrum taken with a high-puritygermanium detector. The measurement was to determine the grade ofplutonium (based on a Pu-240/Pu-239 ratio) as well as to estimate theminimum mass of plutonium necessary to produce the observed gamma-rayintensity. (Zachary Koenig et al, "Plutonium Gamma-Ray Measurements forMutual Reciprocal Inspections of Dismantled Nuclear Weapons," paperpresented at the 36th Annual Institute of Nuclear Materials Conference,July 1995.) According to U.S-Russian technical discussions in 1995,plutonium MRI procedures would involve a) radiation measurements todetermine the presence and isotopics of plutonium, b) neutron measurementsto determine its approximate mass, and c) gamma-ray scanning to determinethe shape and size of plutonium in a sealed container. For HEUsecondaries, MRIs would be based on the use of chain-of custody (includingapplication of tags and seals) procedures, weight measurements, andradiation measurements to confirm HEU presence. HEU MRI procedures can beimplemented on an unclassified level. In 1996, HEU MRI techniques weredemonstrated during reciprocal familiarization visits to the Oak RidgeY-12 plant and Tomsk-7.

4. A full chain of custody implies monitoring of a warheadfrom the moment of its separation from the delivery vehicle, throughdismantlement, and through the disposition of the resulting fissilematerials. A limited chain of custody focuses on excess warheads enteringand fissile materials exiting the dismantlement process and it excludesthe monitoring of the disassembly process. (G.Kiernan, M.Percival,L.Bratcher "Transparency in Nuclear Warhead Dismantlement - Limited Chainof Custody and Warhead Signatures," paper presented at the 37th AnnualInstitute of Nuclear Materials Conference, July 28 - August 1, 1996,Naples, FL.)

5. Progress and problems of the STI negotiations are reviewed,for example, in J.Goodby "START III: A Transitional Phase in ArmsControl." (In Nuclear Turning Point, ed. by Harold Feiveson and Frank vonHippel, Brookings Institute, 1999.)

6. Chad Olinger et al "Technical Challenges for DismantlementVerification," paper presented at the 38th Annual Institute of NuclearMaterials Conference, July 20-24, 1997, Phoenix, AZ.

7. The RIS, NMIS, and CIVET systems are most maturetechnically and at present are considered leading candidates for warheadtransparency applications. There is a number of other promising radiationdetection methods, such as the LANL-developed Thermal Neutron MultiplicityCounter or Neutron/Gamma-Ray Fingerprint System, that could potentially beused to authenticate nuclear warheads and components. Additional analysisand development, however, would be required before these techniques willbecome available for warhead transparency applications. (WarheadIdentification Measurements, Briefing materials, Los Alamos NationalLaboratory, December 15, 1998)

8. Sandia National Laboratories expert, remarks at Instituteof Nuclear Materials Management's workshop, April 1994, Washington, DC.

9. Under most verification scenarios, radiation measurementtechnologies would require some sort of an "information barrier". Each ofthe leading candidates offers some level of information protection. TheRIS system, although used for domestic safeguards applications, isdesigned to give a Yes or No answer without displaying template orsignature information. The CIVET system has been designed specifically forarms control verification purposes. The NMIS system, which utilizes a timeand frequency analysis of induced or passive radiation from nuclearcomponents, is considered to be relatively less intrusive because ofdifficulties associated with extracting warhead design information fromtime and frequency analysis data.

10. Chad Olinger et al "Technical Challenges forDismantlement Verification," paper presented at the 38th Annual Instituteof Nuclear Materials Conference, July 20-24, 1997, Phoenix, AZ.

11. In the United States, activities including monitoring ofmovements of weapons and components cannot be completely implemented onthe unclassified level because dates and times of such movements areclassified as confidential national security information (C/NSI). (JamesMorgan "Transparency and Verification Options," paper presented at the37th Annual Institute of Nuclear Materials Conference, July 28 - August 1,1996, Naples, FL.)

12. Advanced design information might relate to the featuresthat have enabled the United States to achieve yield-to-weight ratios inits warheads which are believed to be somewhat higher than those ofRussia. Vulnerabilities could relate to security features that have beendesigned into modern U.S. warheads or their sensitivity to nearby nuclearexplosions.

13. Bukharin's interviews with Minatom officials, 1991.

14. Assuming an average warhead lifetime of 10-15 years forcurrent-generation Russian warheads, and a START III stockpile of 4,000deployed and reserve strategic and tactical warheads, the remanufacturingrequirements would be 270-400 warheads per year. In contrast, the lifetimeof U.S. warheads is approximately 30 years. For a stockpile of the samesize, approximately 130 warheads might therefore be remanufactured eachyear in the United States.

15. Remarks by Minatom's Deputy Minister Lev Ryabev at the7th Carnegie Endowment Nonproliferation Conference, January 11-13, 1999,Washington, DC.

16. Some have suggested that Arzamas-16 specializes ontactical as well as certain types of strategic weapons and Penza-19manufactures only electronic and automatic components and subassemblies.This latter assumption, however, might be incorrect and the Penza-19facility might be involved in "true" warhead dismantlement. For example,declassified U.S. Corona Satellite Imagery of Penza-19 (probable; mission1116-2, 6 May 72; photo courtesy of C.Vick, FAS) reveals high-explosivesstorage magazines and bermed structures that could be associated withoperations with nuclear warheads and/or their high-explosive components.

17. At present, approximately 60 warheads are disassembledand re-assembled annually for modification and evaluation purposes atPantex. (The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1998, p. 71.)

18. Remarks by Minatom's Deputy Minister Lev Ryabev at the7th Carnegie Endowment Nonproliferation Conference, January 11-13, 1999,Washington, DC.

19. Assuming an operational Soviet stockpile of 35,000warheads and a warhead life-time of 10 years, one can estimate that theSoviet complex was manufacturing and refurbishing 3,500 warheads per yearin the mid-1980s. It is unlikely that the Russian complex is capabletoday, however, of producing new warheads at the Cold-War levels. Theworkforce at the warhead production complex has declined and themanufacturing infrastructure has deteriorated. Over 80 percent of theworkforce of the pit-production plants in Chelyabinsk-65 and Tomsk-7 areinvolved in processing HEU under the U.S.-Russian HEU agreement. AndMinatom has announced plans to shut down two of its four serial productionplants.

20. Reportedly, some problems of aging for Russian warheadsrelate to instabilities of high-explosive components and corrosion andswelling of (presumably, fissile material) components. (See, for example,Stenographic Records of the Parliamentary Hearings "Safety and SecurityProblems at Radiation-Hazardous Facilities," November 25, 1996, Moscow.)

21. Harold Smith, Jr. and Richard Soll "Challenges of NuclearStockpile Stewardship under a Comprehensive Test Ban," Arms Control Today,March 1998, pp. 3-6.

22. Remarks by Minatom's Deputy Minister Lev Ryabev at the7th Carnegie Endowment Nonproliferation Conference, January 11-13, 1999,Washington, DC. (According to Mr.Ryabev, the total number of workers inthe ten closed cities is approximately 150,000.)

23. For example, defense production has been virtuallystopped at the Molnia plant in Moscow, which in the past was producingbomb casings, and it has been reduced at other facilities of the warheadproduction complex. (Remarks by Lev Ryabev, deputy minister of Minatom,Russian-American Nuclear Security Council Workshop, Moscow, May 24, 1997.)

24. As of 1998, Arzamas-16 was the only city targeted by theNuclear City Initiative that contains a warhead assembly/disassembly plant(as well as a warhead design center VNIIEF). The other two targets -Chelyabinsk-70 and Krasnoyarsk-26 - are homes to a warhead designinstitute (VNIITF) and a plutonium production facility (the Mining andChemical Combine) respectively.

25. Senator Helms' letter to the Secretary of Energy FedericoPena, September 16, 1997

26. Some of strategic air-launched warheads probably could bedeployed with medium-range bombers for sub-strategic missions.

27. Thomas B. Cochran, "Disposition of Fissile Material fromNuclear Weapons," paper presented at the Isodarco Conference, Shanghai,October 29-Nov. 1, 1998.

28. The actual number of U.S. excess warheads would bedetermined by a political decision and arms control negotiations and couldbe less. Only 2000 warheads or so would be available for dismantlement,for example, if the United States were to retain its inactive stockpileand to keep most of the gravity bombs and ALCM warheads, which could notbe deployed under START III, in the hedge stockpile (Table 3).

29. The B-61 is an intermediate yield thermonuclear weapon.The B-61 Mod 3, 4, and 10 bombs are tactical; the Mod 7 bomb is strategic;and the Mod 11 bomb is both tactical and strategic.

30. According to General Habiger, who visited the nationalnuclear weapons storage site Sierra 1050 (located near Saratov, 30 km fromthe Engels bomber base), "we went...to Saratov, to a national nuclearweapons storage site, where I saw not only strategic weapons, but tacticalweapons" (Gen. Habiger Press Briefing/ USIS Washington File, 24 June1998).

31. The annual cost estimates assume 12 routine inspectionsper year. It was assumed that inspections would be 5-days long and aninspection team would consist of 10 inspectors. Permanent presence ofinspectors at a dismantlement facility would be more expensive. The costestimates do not account for the cost of inspection equipment.

32. For example, the dismantlement area of the Pantex plant(Zone 12) is approximately 1 km wide; and the warhead and pit storage area(Zone 4) is located approximately 1 km north-west of the Zone 12(Mocrosoft TerraServer Image Page; terraserver.microsoft.com.) Incontrast, the Sverdlovsk-45 dismantlement facility is approximately 4 kmin size; its railterminal is located 3-4 km south-west of the industrialarea; and the military storage facility is located approximately 10 kmwest of the plant. (Declassified U.S.Corona Satellite Imagery; mission No.1111-1, 24 July 1970; photo courtesy J.Handler.)

33. Russian nuclear scientists picket ministry, (BBCMonitoring Newsfile; 09/08/98).

34. General Igor Valynkin, Stenographic Records of theParliamentary Hearings "Safety and Security Problems atRadiation-Hazardous Facilities," November 25, 1996, Moscow.

35. The United States has proposed to implement thresholdmeasurements (plutonium isotopics, mass, symmetry and size) on Russianpits to verify the weapons origin of the material. The Russian government,however, has been rejecting this proposal.

36. As of fall 1998, approximately 200-container worth ofplutonium was recast into solid spheres.

37. Senator Helms' letter to the Secretary of Energy FedericoPena, September 16, 1997

38. This discussion of possible future initiatives is based,in a significant part, on the Conclusions from a Workshop on WarheadTransparency (Washington, DC, November 9-10, 1998) (See Appendix 4).

39. Questions Submitted by Senator Jeff Bingaman, March 13,1998, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United StatesSenate, 105th Congress, Second Session on S.2057. Part 7, StrategicForces, US GPO, Washington, DC, 1998, p. 534.

40. Anatoli Diakov and Yevgeni Myasnikov "A Solution to theImpasse: Confidence Building Measures Could Accelerate the Nuclear WeaponsReduction Process," Moscow Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozrenie (in Russian),11-17 September 1998, pp. 1, 4.

41. Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, UnitedStates Senate, One hundred fifth session on S.936. Part 7, StrategicForces, February 27, March 5, 12, 19, April 16, 1997. USG Printing Office,Washington, 1998, pp. 98-99. For comparison, Pantex has 3400 employees andan annual operating budget of $265 million ($80,000 per employee). Thecost per warhead dismantled in a 1500-warhead year is therefore about$200,000.

42. The 1998 budget for Minatom's military programs was2,095M ruble, corresponding to approximately $400M (at the exchange rateof 5 rubles per dollar). ("On the 1998 Federal Budget," RossiyskayaGazeta, March 31, 1998 pp 3-6.

43. At the initially negotiated prices, Russia is projectedto receive $12 billion for LEU derived from 500 t 90-percent HEU. HEUrevenues, however, could be less because of decreased prices for naturaluranium and enrichment services and difficulties with selling the naturaluranium component of the HEU-derived low-enriched uranium.

44. The acceleration of the HEU purchase schedule wouldrequire an additional investment to expand Minatom's HEU down-blendinginfrastructure.

45. CTR projects in these categories include: warheadtransportation safety and security, warhead transportation containers,emergency response capabilities in case of a transportation accidentresulting in plutonium dispersal, fissile material containers, and thefissile material storage facility at Chelyabinsk-65.

46. Red team evaluation is intended to identify and eliminatesecurity vulnerabilities that could allow foreign inspector to acquire,intentionally or unintentionally, sensitive information. In the UnitedStates, the responsibility for red-team evaluation is assigned to moreskeptical experts in the DOE national laboratories. The results of theirevaluation are then sent for review to DOE and DOD security specialistswho might ask laboratory experts to provide additional clarifications.

47. At present, U.S. auditing methods at a sensitive facilitymay include a combination of: director-signed act that certain equipmentis accepted for operation; documents from the accounting office confirmingthat equipment is accepted "on facility's balance"; video/photo evidence;statistical information regarding equipment's operation; and auditing by aRussian institution.

48. A non-paper regarding unclassified reciprocal visita todismantlement facilities was handed by the former Secretary of Energy Penato former Minister Mikhailov in 1994. Such proposed visits would bedesigned to improve the understanding of the site layouts and operationalflowcharts and would involve a briefing on facility's activities, and awalk-through its storage areas and dismantlement bays and cells.

49. The PDCF could be brought into operation by 2005. (Statusof the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF), briefing materials,Los Alamos National Laboratory, November 12, 1998.)

50. For an analysis of the U.S. data see, for example,T.Cochran "Transparency Associated with the Process of Eliminating NuclearWarheads," presented at Pugwash meeting 241, London, November 6-8, 1998.

51. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1998,p. 71.

52. Anatoli Diakov and Yevgeni Myasnikov "A Solution to theImpasse: Confidence Building Measures Could Accelerate the Nuclear WeaponsReduction Process," Moscow Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozrenie (in Russian),11-17 September 1998, pp. 1, 4.

53. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 1998,p. 71.

54. Anatoly Diakov, presentation at the RANSAC workshop,April 1998.

55. DOE Albuquerque Operations Office, Response to a FOIArequest, March 8, 1998.

56. The INF Treaty, Hearings before the U.S. Senate Committeeon Foreign Relations; see, e.g.: Part I, January 25, 1988, Secretary ofState George Shultz, p. 59; January 26, 1988, U.S. INF Negotiator MaynardW.Glitman, pp. 121-122; Part II, February 1, 1989, secretary of DefenseCarlucci, p. 8; and Report of the Committee, April 14, 1988, pp. 58-59.

57. Reversing the Arms Race: How to Achieve and Verify DeepReductions in Nuclear Weapons, co-editor with Roald Z. Sagdeev, New York:Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1990, 432 pp.

58. S.Fetter et al "Measurements of Gamma Rays from a SovietCruise Missile"; Reversing the Arms Race, pp. 379-398.

59. Annex to the Protocol to the Agreement; translated by theU.S. Department of State's Office of Language Services. According to theAnnex, all observers are "designated from among the officer corps havingpractical work experience with nuclear munitions."

60. "Russia Urges End of Nuclear Arms Alerts", Los AngelesTimes, February 13, 1992.

61. Text of the Committee Recommended Resolution of Adviceand Consent, Executive Reports of Committees (Senate - December 15, 1995),Executive Report 104-10.

62. Joint statement by Clinton and Yeltsin onnonproliferation, ITAR-TASS news agency (World Service), Moscow, inRussian 1242 gmt 14 Jan 94, The British Broadcasting Corporation, January15, 1994, SECTION: Part 1 Former USSR; SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT; MOSCOW SUMMIT;SU/1896/S1.

63. YELTSIN-CLINTON SUMMIT; Joint statements issued aftersummit; ITAR-TASS news agency (World Service), Moscow, in English 1830 gmt10 May 95; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 12, 1995, Friday,SECTION: Part 1 Former USSR; RUSSIA; SU/2301/B.

64. Joint Statement on Parameters on Future Reductions inNuclear Forces, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, March 21,1997.

65. U.S. monitors are to visit the plutonium facilities twicea year and conduct NDA measurements on randomly selected containers tocompare the Pu-240/Pu-239 and Am-241/Pu-241 ratios to the agreed thresholdvalues. Such visits are expected to commence in 1999. A maximumPu-240/Pu-239 ratio of 0.1 is set to verify that reactor-grade plutoniumhas not been substituted for weapon-grade plutonium. The Am-241/Pu-241ratio makes it possible to verify when the plutonium was chemicallyseparated (Pu-241 decays into Am-241 with a 14.4-year half-life).Additionally, U.S. inspectors are to have access to the records for everyplutonium container (container ID and location, plutonium mass, and PuO2production date).

66. This description corresponds to Option 3 in the DOEWarhead Dismantlement Study. Option 1 involves "Monitoring of warheadsand components in the storage area … and chain-of-custody monitoring toand from the gate to the dismantlement area." Option 2 is "Option 1 plusportal [and perimeter] continuous monitoring [PPCM] of segregated portionof the dismantlement area … dedicated to dismantlement of treaty-relatedweapons." Option 3 is "Option 1 plus further chain-of-custody proceduresto monitor warheads and components within a segregated portion of thedismantlement area … and to and from the disassembly bays anddismantlement cells (without PPCM)." And Option 4 is "Option 3 plus directobservation or remote monitoring of the dismantlement process."

67. The passive gamma spectrum reflects the structure of thenuclear warhead due to the fact that gamma rays with different energiesare absorbed to different degrees in their passage through the fissilematerial and the structure that surrounds it. The radiation stimulated byneutron irradiation is mostly due to induced fissions. Each fissionreleases multiple neutrons and the time and angular correlation betweenthese neutrons reflect the distribution of the fissile material within thewarhead. Because of the design information that could potentially beinferred from these characteristic radiation signatures, inspectors wouldhave access only to information that had been sanitized through a jointlyprogrammed computer.