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Fissile Materials Working Group

Fissile Materials Working Group

The Fissile Materials Working Group (FMWG) brings together the experience of leading nonproliferation experts and nongovernmental organizations to support President Barack Obama's vision of "securing all nuclear weapon materials at vulnerable sites within four years." Specifically, working group members collaborate in a series of meetings to create consensus around fissile material control priorities, develop actionable policy proposals, and package recommendations for implementation by Obama administration officials. FMWG members who will contribute to this column include Irma Arguello, David Culp, Ingrid Drake, Rob Golan-Vilella, Li Hong, Kenneth Luongo, Michelle Cann, Rajiv Nayan, Miles Pomper, William Potter, Kingston Reif, Jennifer Smyser, Elena Sokova, Peter Stockton, Alexandra Toma, Paul Walker, Peter Wilk, and Sarah Williams.

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Articles by Fissile Materials Working Group

Columnists
10 September 2013
Nuclear Weapons
AmericasEurope/Russia

An HEU milestone means a new challenge ahead

Fissile Materials Working Group

How will we track progress on nuclear security once removals are done?

Columnists
8 August 2013
Nuclear Weapons
Americas

When meetings aren't enough

Fissile Materials Working Group

Holding another Nuclear Security Summit is a good idea, but leaders must go further.

Columnists
24 June 2013
Nuclear Weapons

The future of nuclear security

Fissile Materials Working Group

What the next Nuclear Security Summit must accomplish.

Columnists
28 May 2013

US budget cuts threaten nuclear safety

Fissile Materials Working Group

Nonproliferation projects are getting squeezed by sequestration and fiscal battles.

Columnists
6 May 2013
Nuclear Weapons

How do you solve a problem like plutonium?

Fissile Materials Working Group

A five-point plan for making the world safer.

Columnists
12 March 2013
Nuclear Weapons

Nonproliferation in a time of austerity

Fissile Materials Working Group

Since the early 1990s, the nonproliferation community has obsessed over the annual appropriations to programs at the US defense, state, and energy departments that are designed to keep weapons of mass destruction (WMD) out of the wrong hands. While the budgets of individual programs have fluctuated, the unmistakable trend in US nonproliferation spending was upward. Program managers could generally count on this year's budget being higher than last year's, and next year's being higher still.

Columnists
19 February 2013
Nuclear Weapons

How to safeguard loose nukes

Fissile Materials Working Group

Four years ago, President Barack Obama called preventing nuclear terrorism a top security priority. But even though he said in his State of the Union speech last week that Washington "would continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands," the United States is only marginally safer from that threat today than it was at the beginning of his first term.

Columnists
9 January 2013
Nuclear Weapons

A threat that demands action

Fissile Materials Working Group

For years, American politicians on both sides of the aisle have agreed that nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious national security threats the United States faces. In 2013, President Obama must capitalize on this rare consensus point and on his own power as a second-term president. After all, despite ongoing polarization in Washington, bipartisan cooperation has been the norm for nuclear security since the launch of the Nunn-Lugar program more than two decades ago, making the issue a unique outlier in Washington -- and for good reason.

Columnists
7 December 2012
Nuclear Weapons

Uncooperative threat reduction

Fissile Materials Working Group

For more than two decades, the United States and Russia have worked together to secure Soviet stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and materials, but now the future of this unprecedented partnership, the Cooperative Threat Reduction agreement, is in jeopardy. After several months of negotiations, Russian officials have publicly stated that they will not renew the current agreement, which forms the legal basis for cooperation between the two countries and is set to expire in July 2013.

Columnists
2 November 2012
Nuclear Weapons

Revisiting radioactive source security

Fissile Materials Working Group

The possibility of radioactive material falling into the hands of criminal organizations or terrorists remains a real and persistent security threat. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that, since 1993, there have been more than 2,000 confirmed incidents of lost regulatory control over potentially dangerous material, including nearly 150 incidents last year.

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