{"id":526402,"date":"2010-04-13T13:49:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T17:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.armscontrolwonk.com,2010-04-07:57f256023a9af1385990be02cc9db91e\/9ef0b28acec8cbf328c30f3cb659b9af"},"modified":"2010-04-13T13:49:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T17:49:10","slug":"grading-the-npr-transparency-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/526402","title":{"rendered":"Grading the NPR: Transparency [5]"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I have already argued<\/a>, I believe the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review is a significant achievement — in a way that critics and some surprising advocates don’t quite grasp yet. Because everyone is focusing on the details — this caveat, that compromise — the broader shift in how we talk about the role of nuclear weapons is going unremarked.<\/p>\n

With that ritual disclaimer, I am planning a series of posts on the details. After all, this is Arms Control Wonk<\/em>. I am ending each post with an arbitrary grade, since I’ve been doing a little of that lately for real. It is a conceit, I admit; but a harmless one, I would argue.<\/p>\n

Transparency<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following President Obama’s commitment to the most open and transparent<\/a> Administration in history, the Nuclear Posture Review process was largely just that — open and transparent. I can’t recall all the meetings I attended with senior government officials, including those infamous DOD<\/span> round tables<\/a>. (No, the tables were not round. One was, in fact, an odd V-shape.)<\/p>\n

As a result, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review is, as expected, an entirely unclassified document. That is a major accomplishment — the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review was really just a set of slides<\/a> and the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review leaked<\/a> in the worst possible way<\/a>. (The sanitized version in the 2002 ADR<\/span><\/a> drew little or no comment.)<\/p>\n

So, kudos to the Obama Administration for writing an entirely unclassified Nuclear Posture Review. Whether there is a classified appendix or classified follow-on studies doesn’t really matter, the document stands alone as an unclassified statement. As Cheryl Rofer noted<\/a>, “It is a message that this administration thinks that accountability is important and intends to stand by its words.” That’s a good thing.<\/p>\n

So, the Obama Administration was heading toward an A+ for transparency — until the last minute.<\/p>\n

Admiral Dennis Blair — the presumably soon to be former<\/a> Director of National Intelligence — succeeded in killing a very sensible proposal to declassify aggregate stockpile numbers on the grounds that nuclear aspirants might learn something. This is a long-standing Arms Control Wonk pet rock<\/a>. There is no reason this information should remain classified.<\/p>\n

The argument, however, was the would-be nuclear nations might divide the amount of plutonium by the size of the stockpile and discover that, shock!, the IAEA<\/span> significant quantity of plutonium (8 kilograms) is too high.<\/p>\n

No kidding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That 4 kilograms of plutonium is enough to make a nuclear weapon is an unclassified fact<\/a>. For some strange reason, the average mass of plutonium per warhead for the stockpile as a whole<\/em> remains classified.<\/p>\n

So, as a result, when then-Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman in 2007 announced that he was declaring excess another 9 metric tons of plutonium (from the 46.8 metric tons<\/a>
\n declared in the mid-1990s), the Administration divided by 8 to claim it was enough for more than 1,100 nuclear weapons<\/a>. It was a lot more than that. (The Administration had cut the size of the stockpile in half, though not all the material was declared excess).<\/p>\n

This is an odd sort of secrecy. We already know that the START<\/span> negotiations put the United States on a glide path to 11,100 warheads<\/a> about the same time that the United States declared a corresponding plutonium stockpile of 46.8 metric tons (excluding weapons to be dismantled). In other words, about 4.2 kilograms per warhead.<\/p>\n

Now, my guess is that nuclear scientists in North Korea are probably going to want to do their own calculation. Oh, wait, the North Koreans already<\/em> claimed their first nuclear test used 2 kilograms of plutonium. Hmmm, what information are we protecting again? <\/p>\n

I understand the intelligence community is now doing a red-team analysis to see what harm might come of declassifying the stockpile number.<\/p>\n

I think Denny Blair, should chillax. I gather virtually everyone else, including Tom D’Agostino, were in fact committed to declassifying basic data about the stockpile.<\/p>\n

In any event, the stockpile data does not need to be in the NPR<\/span> document — it could easily be done in subsequent release prior to, say, May. Yes, May<\/a> would be good.<\/p>\n

Final Grade: Incomplete<\/strong><\/p>\n

Update | 3:46 pm<\/strong> James Acton notes that the State Department just released a fact sheet in which they divide by 4, not 8:<\/p>\n

\n

– By updating the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA<\/span>), each country will proceed to complete and operate facilities that will dispose of at least 34 metric tons of this plutonium by using it as fuel in civil power reactors to produce electricity.<\/p>\n

– Combined, this represents enough material for approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

34,000 \u00d7 2 \u00f7 17,000 = 4. Of course, that 4 kilograms is enough for a bomb is unclassified. Whether we do or not, shhh!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have already argued, I believe the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review is a significant achievement — in a way that critics and some surprising advocates don’t quite grasp yet. Because everyone is focusing on the details — this caveat, that compromise — the broader shift in how we talk about the role of nuclear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}