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Current Projects

NRDC's nuclear program staff is currently working on five related and mutually reinforcing nuclear policy research and advocacy projects.

1. U.S. and Russian Nuclear War Plans Project. This project models the consequences of nuclear attacks in the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), the classified U.S. plan for attacking Russia with nuclear weapons. We are currently completing development of computer software that calculates and displays the blast, thermal and fallout effects of nuclear explosions. We are using this unprecedented new software tool to simulate, for the first time in the unclassified literature, the cumulative effects of the large scale nuclear "counterforce" attacks that are part of US and Russian nuclear war planning. The computer simulations will be used as analytical tools to better evaluate arms control alternatives and force reductions.
   
   
2. A Comprehensive Test Ban, and the Future of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile and Production Complex. NRDC played a pivotal role in the past demonstrating test ban verification measures and in educating Congress, and the Executive Branch, on the need for a "zero yield" CTB. NRDC will continue to support U.S. and foreign government ratification of a CTB and its eventual entry into force. Complementary work seeks to restrain the future scale, cost, proliferation consequences, and environmental impacts of the U.S. DOE's 15-year $67 billion "Stockpile Stewardship Program," designed to offset the restrictive impact of the CTB on U.S. nuclear weapon design capabilities;
   
   
3. The Future of Russia and the Transition to a Nuclear Weapon Free World. This project involves research and analysis, domestic and international advocacy, and dialogue with military establishments regarding the political and technical steps required for transition to a nuclear-weapons-free world.
   
   
4. Alternatives to Spent Fuel Reprocessing for "Waste Management" and the Future of the Civil Nuclear Fuel Cycle. This project supports work on nuclear facility safety, fissile material security and accounting, adequacy of international safeguards, nuclear fuel-cycle policy, and alternative energy options in former East Bloc nations, Europe, and Asia.
   
   
5. NRDC Nuclear Weapons Data Collection, Analysis and Dissemination. This project includes collection, analysis, and dissemination of information on world nuclear arsenals and production complexes. The data supports the other projects, and is communicated to a wide audience through the Nuclear Weapons Databook series, the "NRDC Nuclear Notebook" feature in every issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The SIPRI Yearbook and NRDC's website.

Major achievements of the NRDC Nuclear Program over the past 25 years:

• compelling the U.S. government to prepare a broad "programmatic" analysis of the environmental and proliferation impacts of large-scale civil plutonium use, leading to Carter Administration's rejection of plutonium recycle as a civil energy technology (1977);
  
  
• cancellation of Congressional funding for the plutonium fueled Liquid Metal Breeder Reactor (1983);
  
  
• production of the authoritative and unprecedented Nuclear Weapons Data Book series (five volumes) on world nuclear arsenals (1984-94) and the "NRDC Nuclear Notebook" column, a regular feature of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, providing basic information to the public about nuclear weaponry;
  
  
• successful landmark litigation to compel nuclear weapons production facilities in South Carolina and Tennessee to comply with environmental laws;
  
  
• installation of the first foreign seismic stations in the former Soviet Union to monitor President Gorbachev's nuclear test moratorium, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of verifying a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (1986-87);
  
  
• first cooperative technical demonstration using portable radiation detectors of Soviet nuclear cruise missile warheads on board a Soviet cruiser of the Black Sea Fleet (1989);
  
  
• first visit by westerners to secret Soviet facilities involved in weapon plutonium production and laser weapon research (1989);
  
  
• co-sponsor of six international workshops with Soviet/Russian officials to discuss nuclear weapons elimination, fissile material control, and nuclear testing issues (1989-93), including the Washington workshop in October 1991 in which NRDC introduced Russian Energy Minister Mikhailov to Senators Nunn and Lugar, leading to the establishment of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program;
  
  
• compelled DOE, under threat of litigation, to prepare broad environmental analyses of its programs to "reconfigure" the nuclear weapons complex (1989-96);
  
  
• frequent consultant to House and Senate offices involved in the successful Congressional campaign to end US nuclear test explosions (1991-93);
  
  
• vigorous and ultimately successful advocacy of a "zero-yield" Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- NRDC's comprehensive understanding of the technical issues and players involved in formulating test ban policy allowed the public interest community as a whole to stay ahead of the CTB's opponents within the Administration, and to expose and discredit hostile policy recommendations before they reached the President's desk (1993-96);
  
  
• disclosed technical errors in the "significant quantity" standard for IAEA safeguards (1994) and issued a report demanding a drastic tightening of the standard -- proposed revision is still under formal review within the agency and U.S. government;
  
  
• successfully advocated establishment of a direct "lab-to-lab" program for improving nuclear material security and accounting in Russia (1994);
  
  
• met privately with leaders of the French and Chinese nuclear weapons programs to discuss test ban issues and advocate acceptance of a CTBT (1993-95);
  
  
• at a press conference during the NPT Review and Extension Conference in New York, disclosed text of Russian nuclear energy ministry's secret protocol offering to build a uranium centrifuge plant in Iran (1995);
  
  
• met with Fidel Castro and other Cuban ministers to discuss sustainable energy alternatives to the proposed completion of Soviet era reactors in Cuba (1996);
  
  
• organized International Experts Task Force and drafted report and policy recommendations for G-7 leaders at Moscow Nuclear Safety Summit (1996);
  
  
• acted as technical consultant and member of the Carnegie Endowment's U.S.-Japan Study Group on the Future of Arms Control and Nonproliferation after the Cold War (1994-95) and as expert consultants to the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (1995-96), authoring six of the Commission's 24 "Background Papers" on nuclear weapons elimination issues;
  
  
• filed a massive lawsuit, on behalf of 38 co-plaintiffs nationwide, to compel consideration of reasonable alternatives to, and full disclosure of, DOE's massive Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain and increase U.S. nuclear weapons design expertise under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and analyzed the potential proliferation impacts of this program (1997-98);
  
  
• disclosed, on the front page of the New York Times, the existence of a secret DOE strategy to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile by developing a comprehensive nuclear explosives simulation capability to "end run" the limitations of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

last revised 4/19/2000