Miles A. Pomper

Pomper is a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies and the former editor of Arms Control Today. He is the author of The Russian Nuclear Industry: Status and Prospects, published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He has written on South Korea's nuclear industry for institutions, including the Korea Economic Institute and East Asia Forum.

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Articles by Miles A. Pomper

Analysis
25 September 2012
Nuclear Energy

How to unsnag US-South Korea nuclear negotiations

Miles A. Pomper

With time running out before the expiration of the US-South Korea nuclear cooperation agreement that has governed the two countries' nuclear trade since 1972, negotiators remain far apart on the terms of a new pact. Failure to reach a deal would threaten billions of dollars in nuclear commerce between the two countries.

Special Topics
22 March 2011
Nuclear WeaponsNuclear Energy

Japan’s nuclear crisis: The fine line between security and insecurity

Miles A. Pomper
Opinion
22 March 2011
Nuclear WeaponsNuclear Energy

Japan's nuclear crisis: The fine line between security and insecurity

Miles A. Pomper

On March 11, when the first foreshock struck, my colleague Jeffrey Lewis and I were having lunch with senior industry officials at Japan's controversial Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant. That facility both enriches uranium and reprocesses spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium, two processes that can also be used to make nuclear weapons. We were in the country to tour its nuclear facilities -- an arrangement designed to show how far Japan was prepared to go to convince the international community that its facilities were only for peaceful purposes.

Opinion
17 December 2010
Nuclear WeaponsNuclear Energy

Medical isotope production: The US must follow South Africa's lead

Miles A. PomperWilliam C. Potter

A major outcome of the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, was the commitment by 47 nations to collaborate in developing new technologies that require neither highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuels for reactor operation nor HEU targets for producing medical or other isotopes. This principle of HEU minimization also was included in the final document of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which was adopted by consensus.

Opinion
4 December 2009
Nuclear Weapons

Breaking the U.S.-Russian deadlock on nonstrategic nuclear weapons

Miles A. PomperNikolai SokovWilliam C. Potter

As U.S. and Russian negotiators hammer out a replacement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires tomorrow, some Republican senators have already criticized negotiators for not including nonstrategic nuclear weapons--a category of nuclear arms not subject to legally binding limits or verification and one in which there is a great disparity between U.S. and Russian holdings. The U.S.

Opinion
15 May 2009
Nuclear Energy

Eastern Europe's nuclear dilemma

Miles A. Pomper

In order to join the European Union (EU), several Eastern European states agreed to phase out their Soviet-era nuclear reactors, which other EU members--still haunted by the 1986 Chernobyl accident--thought were too dangerous to operate. But such closures have made these countries even more dependent on Russian natural gas supplies. This dependency caused a near-crisis last year when a pricing dispute led to the shutoff of Russian natural gas to Europe in the middle of winter.