Nuclear Disarmament Task Force

"The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used--accidentally or by decision--defies credibility."

--From a 1996 report of an Australian government study commission which included Gen. (Ret.) George Lee Butler, former Commander of U.S. Strategic Forces, and Field Marshall (Ret.) Lord Michael Carver, former chief of the British Defense Staff.

The All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force supports educational and citizen action initiatives aimed at the control, reduction and ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Programs presented at All Souls over the last two years have addressed issues of nuclear proliferation, national missile defense, and safeguarding nuclear materials against theft by terrorists.

The Task Force meets about about once a month during the church year. For more information, contact Guy Quinlan at guy.quinlan@cliffordchance.com.

NECESSARY ACTION:

Members of Congress from both parties should be urged to make the securing of vulnerable material a major national priority. The time to address the danger of a nuclear terror attack is now, not in the report of a future commission investigating how it was allowed to happen.

CONSIDER:

The consequences of a nuclear terror attack would dwarf the horror of September 11. The detonation of even a small nuclear device in midtown Manhattan would kill half a million people immediately, and a similar number would die later of injuries received from the blast, fire and radiation.

Al Queda and other terrorist groups have made no secret of their desire to acquire nuclear weapons. They have repeatedly proclaimed their goal of staging a "Hiroshima on American soil." Osama bin Laden has said that four million Americans should be killed in reprisal for alleged U.S. crimes against the Muslim world.

Al Queda probably has the know-how to construct a nuclear device if they could obtain the necessary material. We know that members of Al Queda have met with scientists from the Khan network, which sold Pakistani nuclear technology on the black market. We also know that the Khan group had given the now-dismantled Libyan nuclear program a workable design for a ten-kiloton atomic bomb.

Large quantities of weapons-usable nuclear material are currently vulnerable to theft or diversion:

-ABC News recently reported that six U.S. university research centers are currently using weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU), guarded only by campus security.

-Former Senator Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative reports that over 100 civilian research sites around the world are currently using HEU, often protected only by "an underpaid guard and a chain-link fence."

-Vast quantities of surplus weapons-usable material, relics of the Cold War, are stored at poorly-protected sites in the former Soviet Union. The U.S. currently has a program (commonly known as Nunn-Lugar) to assist in destroying this material, but on the current schedule it will take more than a decade to complete.

-The recently passed Energy Bill contains a provision which actually weakens export controls on HEU intended for use in medical isotopes.

The best single source is Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (Times Books, 2004. Reissued 2005 in paperback with an updated afterword).

The use of weapons-grade enriched uranium at U.S. universities, recently covered on ABC News, was first reported by the New York Times on August 14, 2004.

Useful websites include:

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University: bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu.

The Arms Control Association: armscontrol.org.

Council for a Livable World: clw.org.

Friends Committee on National Legislation: fcnl.org.