Technical Challenges Associated With the New U.S. Nuclear Agenda

As President Obama leads the campaign to work toward a world without nuclear weapons, ongoing activities in Iran and North Korea suggest that the world may be headed in the opposite direction. On November 3, 2009, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted a workshop to explore the technical challenges and opportunities associated with three competing visions of global nuclear weapons futures: a world free of nuclear weapons; a proliferated world; and a multilateral, integrated nuclear security framework.

The goal of the workshop was to identify an actionable set of options and prospective technological initiatives associated with those futures in three principal areas:  1) the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise; 2) cooperative threat and risk reduction; 3) verification and monitoring. The purpose of this report is to summarize what transpired at the workshop and highlight key judgments.