Nuclear Reset - Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)

244<strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Reset</strong>: Arms Reduction and Nonproliferation• identify the technical measures required for transparencyduring the storage of plutonium and highly-enricheduranium.Due to this topic’s extreme sensitivity, laboratory studies focusedexclusively on hypothetical dismantlement scenarios, identificationof the potential technical means for ensuring transparency, and developmentof computer models for the munitions dismantlementprocess. The program consisted of four stages, the last of which assumedthat a joint approach could be found to ensure transparencyin dismantling nuclear munitions, and that the technical means thusdeveloped could be demonstrated at the Russian nuclear munitionsproduction/dismantlement facilities. Following development andtesting, the various technical approaches to implementing the transparencyregime could then be recommended to the governmentsof the two countries and included in future agreements on nucleararms reduction.By 1998, research under the next-to-last (third) stage of the programwas approaching completion. At joint U.S.-Russian seminarsin Snezhinsk and Sarov in April through May 1998, Russian expertsdemonstrated the methods they had developed for radiation monitoringof the isotope composition and mass of the fissile material andfor diagnosis and destruction of the explosives in the munitions, aswell as verifiable destruction of warhead casings. The experts hadlargely worked out a framework for monitoring the process of dismantlementof nuclear munitions and had considered and proposedpossible technical and organizational measures to increase confidencein the fact that the dismantled items actually were nuclear munitions.These achievements offered the hope that a system of transparencywould be developed and tested in prototype by 1999.However, the Lab-to-Lab program never made it to its fourthand final stage. According to U.S. participants, this was dueto the Helsinki Agreement of 1997, which drew the attention of theRussian Federal Security Service (FSB) to the project. In November1998, at the insistence of the FSB, work under this program washalted, and its goals and content were submitted for interdepartmentalreview. 12 After that, it was never resumed.