Rebecca Johnson is an independent analyst on disarmament issues based in London and Geneva. She has published several reports on the NPT Review and Extension Conference and on negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament. She represented the ACRONYM Consortium at the NPT Conference as a nongovernmental representative. The relationship between comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) negotiations a...

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many scholars, journalists, and public officials expressed fear about the security of nuclear facilities in the United States. Terrorists could attack military bases, weapons in transit, or nuclear weapons production and dismantlement plants in order to steal a weapon or its components. Terrorists might a...

"cannot be disinvented." Yet the present policy of the declared nuclear weapon states of trying to impose nuclear apartheid by force provokes the spread of nuclear weapons, rather than supporting the stated goal of non-proliferation. The only way out of this lethal spiral is to accept global nuclear disarmament by consistent use of the law -as the world is already doing with chemical and biolog...

As competition between the United States and Russia intensifies, importance of nuclear weapons is rising innovation with regard to associated technologies gaining momentum in both countries. The other regional nuclear-armed states, such as India, Pakistan, Democratic People’s Republic Korea (North Korea), also have impetus implement their own modernization plans. Asia–Pacific region seems be on...

Negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) were agreed to in 1998 at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva after several years’ delay caused by debates over its scope and linkage to nuclear disarmament measures. However, the negotiations have yet to get underway, as they have not been reauthorized by the CD in subsequent years. Should the negotiations move forward, it is ex...

Nationalist populists as leaders of states that possess nuclear weapons undermine the order and increase dangers in novel, significant, persistent ways. Such talk differently about weapons; they can put policy making crisis management disarray; weaken international alliances multilateral institutions. The rise nationalist nuclear-armed states, including some five nuclear-weapon recognized under...

Porous Co3O4 nanonetworks (NNWs), converted from precursor CoOOH nanosheets, have been synthesized via a controllable chemical reaction route followed by calcination at 400 °C in air. The morphologies and microstructures of the precursor nanosheets and the final products were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, respectively. The growth mechan...

by Wade Huntley The May 1998 nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan, accompanied by the expressed intentions of both countries to become fullfledged nuclear weapon states, present the prospect of a new nuclear arms race in South Asia. Perhaps even more ominous is the potential for these events to promote degradation of security relations and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction beyond...

Future arms-control and disarmament treaties could place numerical limits on all categories of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of weapon states, including tactical weapons, non-deployed weapons, and weapons awaiting dismantlement. Verification of such agreements is likely to require new types of inspection equipment — but also new verification protocols. This paper offers a set of definitions a...