Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

5 General Conclusions
Pages 217-220

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 217...
... As we stated at the outset, the fundamental motivation for this study was to assess whether and how currently available and foreseeable technologies and processes for transparency and monitoring could support the urgent and interrelated goals of reducing the dangers from existing nuclear arsenals, minimizing the spread of nuclear weaponry to additional states, and preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by terrorists. The transparency and monitoring technologies and processes we examined could be applied in connection with a variety of approaches to reducing these dangers, including limitations on quantities of nuclear weapons and NEM, limitations on stocks and production of NEM and disposal of excess material, and programs of national protection, control, and accounting for weapons, weapon components, and NEM.
From page 218...
... The second is that any attempt to address the difficulty of significantly increasing transparency about nuclear weapons and NEM would necessarily collide with critical national security needs to protect nuclear weapon secrets. We have attempted in this study to understand and clarify the extent to which these suppositions are in fact valid.
From page 219...
... 4. The biggest challenge to the kinds of cooperation-based verification discussed here would arise if countries tried to give the appearance of cooperation while covertly retaining undeclared stockpiles of nuclear weapons or NEM and/or undertaking clandestine production programs.
From page 220...
... 220 MONITORING NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND NUCLEAR-EXPLOSIVE MATERIALS tries with much smaller programs, absolute uncertainties would be much less, leading to the possibility that these countries could conceal undeclared stocks equivalent to one or two dozen weapons in the case of China, and at most one or two weapons in the cases of Israel, India, and Pakistan. Confidence that declarations were accurate and complete, and that covert stockpiles or production facilities did not exist, would be increased by the successful operation of a monitoring program over a period of years in an environ ment of increased transparency and cooperation.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.