Abstract
This opening chapter considers the basic concepts of arms control verification, and how it works with international agreements. It shows how verification differs from, but can contribute to, general confidence-building. Later, the text elaborates on the role of technology and technological expertise in a verification enterprise, touching on the current status of technologies employed in arms control and exploring the principles on which they have been designed. The chapter highlights, in particular, the need to protect sensitive data, the need for equipment to be jointly trusted, and the requirement that equipment is designed, specified and built taking host facility considerations into mind. The text exemplifies equipment development by looking at so-called information barriers—gear intended to detect a nuclear warhead’s attributes or to match a warhead against a template while protecting classified and proliferative information. Finally, the chapter points out the continuing importance of progress in arms control verification research and development, as well as in basic verification methodology.
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Notes
- 1.
We tend to undergo several acts of verification on a day-to-day basis, mostly proving our identity to someone. This happens when you enter your password into your computer, onto websites, or your smartphone, or when you enter your Personal Identification Number into an Automated Teller Machine.
- 2.
For a particularly cogent explanation of verification theory, see [4], especially on pp. 104.
- 3.
The powers of the Council derives from articles 24 and 25 of the UN Charter. Security Council decisions will prevail over member states obligations under international agreements, and this follows from article 103 of the Charter. If this provision had not been there, UN member states could technically opt out of Council jurisdiction by means of international treaty.
- 4.
Much has been written about how verification requirements change over time, and how verification requirements are likely to be stricter in a regime focusing on nuclear explosive devices. For a reasonably recent overview of the debate, see [6].
- 5.
The multilateral practice in the 1990s was to give effect to verification procedures in specially designated Verification Protocols. This practice was kept in the negotiation of the New START arms reduction agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States.
- 6.
If, for instance, a state has 260 explosive devices and promises to have no more than 200, it only need to declare that it in fact has 230 devices and submit 30 to verified dismantlement. After dismantlement, the country has 200 devices ‘on the books’ but 230 in reality. The country would be non-compliant, but this cannot be verified by simply counting the number of dismantled devices.
- 7.
Or, of course, sometimes parties will have agreed to refrain from specified actions—as in the case of the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
- 8.
In the safeguards context, for instance, the treaty accountable item is often a specified mass of a metal (specifically plutonium or uranium) and various source, or precursor, materials (such as uranium yellowcake).
- 9.
Establishing, beyond all reasonable doubt that the first item used to set up the template really is the treaty accountable item—and that this can be relied on as the ‘gold standard’ measurement is not easy. this has become known as the ‘initiation problem’.
- 10.
There are subtler arguments to be made about the value of taking template measurements when large numbers of declared identical warheads or components are being dismantled and yielding significant amounts of product (fissile material leaving the military inventory). These are based on the philosophical discussion of confidence and likelihood of falsification of many target objects at enormous cost. One thing is clear however: If measurements (template or attribute-type) are not taken of declared warheads prior to the dismantlement process, there is no going back to take them later when the value of doing so becomes clearer.
- 11.
We note that there are a number of non-destructive assay technologies which can be referred to collectively as ‘active interrogation’, which could potentially be the answer to the poor inherent radiation signatures emanating from low-radiation level objects. Lack of space prevents us from exploring these in the current chapter.
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Keir, D., Persbo, A. (2020). History, Status and Challenges for Non-proliferation and Arms Control Verification. In: Niemeyer, I., Dreicer, M., Stein, G. (eds) Nuclear Non-proliferation and Arms Control Verification. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29537-0_2
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