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Aldermaston and Nuclear
Disarmament It's a new era--Britain's weapons lab should take a leading role in arms control and verification research. BRITAIN'S Labour government, elected in 1997, presented its Strategic Defense Review to parliament in July. The review has important implications for the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, where Britain's nuclear warheads are designed and manufactured. The review concluded that Britain needs a stockpile of less than 200 operationally available warheads, a reduction of one-third from the maximum number announced by the previous government. Production of the Trident warhead at Aldermaston, the only warhead in the British arsenal, has been under way for a number of years and will soon be completed. For the first decade of the next century, at least, Aldermaston's main task will be stewardship of the warhead, which is expected to remain in service beyond 2020. If a decision is made to replace it, development would have to start 10 to 15 years before deployment. Under the last government, Aldermaston was required to maintain a capability to design a new warhead. But the defense review says that although "it would be premature to abandon a minimum capability to design and produce a successor to Trident," it is "the government's aim to take forward the process of nuclear disarmament to ensure that our security can in future be secured without nuclear weapons." Taken at face value, this suggests a sharp departure from policies of the previous Tory government. If the Labour government is serious about working for nuclear disarmament, which it is committed to do under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, then it should direct some of Britain's scientific resources to solving the technical requirements of disarmament. Every country that participates in the disarmament process will have to decide, for instance, whether the associated verification techniques meet its needs. Meanwhile, acute problems relating to nuclear proliferation abound. In particular, Britain could do more to address the possibility that fissile materials could be diverted from stockpiles in the former Soviet Union. In a British Pugwash Group study soon to be released, we propose that Britain set up a major program of research on verification and other aspects of nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament at Aldermaston. That would greatly broaden Aldermaston's mission--making working toward a nuclear-weapon-free world one of the establishment's formal objectives. Verification work at Aldermaston could be attractive even to those who are skeptical of nuclear disarmament. Systematic work on verification problems would be an important contribution to maintaining high standards at the laboratory, a matter of concern as long as Aldermaston has responsibility for keeping Britain's weapons safe and reliable. The stewardship program planned at Aldermaston is far less extensive than the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program. By itself, it probably will not attract sufficient funding to maintain the laboratory with the requisite skills and resources. Beyond that, nuclear weapons are generally seen to be of declining relevance to Britain's defense, which means that Aldermaston has become a less prestigious place to work. It is also isolated from Britain's academic community, and its salaries are not competitive with the private sector. It follows that if Aldermaston does not evolve and find challenging new work, it will become increasingly difficult to recruit and retain the scientists and engineers it needs. Nuclear arms control and disarmament research could provide part of the needed new work. And in a sense, a strong arms control and disarmament program would be a natural continuation from weapons development, in terms of working for national security in the postCold War world. Aldermaston expertise--existing and yet to be developed--could be brought to bear on issues related to the verification of the dismantlement of warheads, nonproliferation, test monitoring, a fissile material cut-off treaty, and the disposition of plutonium. And, of course, much needs to be done to help Russia safeguard nuclear weapons material. Poorly secured weapons materials are a global threat, and Britain and other European nations must do more to enhance physical security measures and other safeguards--coordinated, of course, with the extensive U.S. programs already in place. Collaboration with the United States could be particularly useful for both countries. For example, there is a need for extensive "red teaming" of candidate technologies for warhead dismantlement, in which one party plays inspector and the other the inspected, to test whether any techniques or measurements--radiation-signature technologies for example--reveal classified information. The British-American "Agreement for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes" of 1958 allows trial experiments between the United States and Britain that are not possible between any of the other nuclear weapon states. The many opportunities for collaboration outlined in the British Pugwash study suggest that if Aldermaston were to take an active role in arms control and disarmament, then there would be reason to establish one or more joint working groups. A further possibility would be for Britain to take the lead in establishing a European center for verification research, probably associated with Aldermaston but formally independent of it. It would carry out entirely unclassified work. Collaboration with the United States and perhaps other countries on verification research would not stop Britain from developing independent expertise and making a distinctive contribution to the field. While the U.S nuclear verification program is many times bigger than Britain's is ever likely to become, it is not only the quantity of resources applied to a problem that is important. The amount of chemical and biological disarmament research undertaken in the United States is, for example, several times greater than that carried out in Britain. Yet Britain has made significant contributions to these fields. The same has been true for the application of forensic seismology to the monitoring of nuclear test explosions. By starting a program of nuclear verification at Aldermaston, and by collaborating with the United States, Britain would be buying into a disarmament process, as distinct from a refusal even to discuss dismantling its nuclear weapons, typical of the former government. The United States and Russia have already agreed that their stockpiles will be reduced to 2,0002,500 warheads under START III, should START III negotiations ever be concluded. Although Britain has only a small fraction of these numbers, it is likely that the United States and Russia will not entertain further reductions unless the other nuclear weapon states agree to join the negotiations. While that day is still far off, the recent Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests serve only to emphasize the need to get multilateral disarmament negotiations--and multilateral verification--started. In fact, the defense review announced some first steps on verifying warhead reductions and on material transparency. A small program will be set up to "to ensure that when the time comes for inclusion of British nuclear weapons in multilateral negotiations, [Britain] will have a significant national capability to contribute to the verification process." Britain will also "begin a process of declassification and historical accounting with the aim of producing by spring 2000 an initial report of defense fissile material production since the start of Britain's defense nuclear program in the 1940s." These modest verification and fissile-materials accounting programs are a start. But the amounts of money likely to be committed to the work will be very small. A more wholehearted commitment to nuclear disarmament research in Britain, such as we propose, is desirable. Britain, which took a leading role in developing nuclear weapons in the early 1940s can--and should--take a leading role in promoting nuclear disarmament early in the next millennium.
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