The U.S. drafted Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the EU/E3+3 negotiators and Iran is a remarkable achievement. It has excellent specificity on technical constraints, timelines, and sequencing. The terms spell out a fair and equitable deal for all parties. JCPOA will allow Iran's peaceful nuclear program to grow at a natural pace, is effectively verifiable, and provides a solid fifteen year window during which the United States and other members of the P5+1 can build stronger relationships with Iran to reduce Iran's incentives for nuclear weapons. The negotiators are to be congratulated!
There are, however, important outstanding elements that must be clarified in the coming months. The text of the JCPOA says that no uranium enrichment will occur at Fordow, and that approximately two-thirds of the current 2976 centrifuges installed there will be removed. This leaves about 1000 centrifuges at Fordow, with some fraction enriching elements other than uranium. Although the Fordow capability is notionally a non-uranium capability, unless specifically designed to be incompatible, those centrifuges could be rapidly repurposed for enriching uranium under a breakout scenario. If those centrifuges are only first generation IR-1 centrifuges, they will not significantly affect the breakout calculation. U.S. officials have confirmed that this is their understanding, however, the text of the terms released leaves some ambiguity.
Other oustanding questions do not enter the breakout calculation, but are nonetheless important and will take considerable effort. For example, the extent of research allowed could be more carefully sepecified: will research on laser enrichment or other isotope separation and isotope breeding techniques be allowed at sites other than Fordow? Also, the mechanism by which Iran will maintain its LEU inventory below 300kg UF6 needs to be specified. The parameters for the redesign of the Arak reactor are already well in hand, but arrangements for exporting spent fuel will be difficult to negotiate. Principles for the long-term enrichment plan beyond 15 years needs to be resolved.
Many of these outanding areas are also issues for other emerging nuclear-power countries. The excellent work of the negotiating teams lays the ground not only for a peaceful resolution of the Iran nuclear issue, but can also help address the connection between nuclear power and nuclear proliferation more generally. If it takes up the charge, Iran can become a leader in securing a world free of nuclear weapons, helping to find ways for others to share in the fruits of nuclear energy.
R. Scott Kemp
Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mareena Robinson | Nuclear Science and Engineering
On Nov. 19, the MIT chapters of Global Zero and Radius hosted a roundtable discussion on the status of negotiations between Iran and the E3+3 the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany—about Iran’s nuclear program. The discussion covered the history of the diplomatic process, the forces influencing current negotiations, and the likelihood and implications of a successful agreement.
Prof. R. Scott Kemp, former Science Advisor at the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control.
R. Scott Kemp, an assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) at MIT and director of the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy (LNSP), led the discussion. Before joining the faculty, Kemp served as science advisor in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, where Iran was his primary responsibility. He has continued to participate in Track II talks—those involving non-state individuals and groups—since leaving government service.
Kemp brought a mix of technical and political insights to the discussion, covering many intricacies of the diplomatic constraints. The event opened with Kemp setting the stage for the current negotiations, beginning with the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani and the appointment of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as Iran's chief negotiator. Kemp asserted that this change in leadership marked a political shift that opened up the possibility of engagement that was not possible with the previous Iranian administration. On November 24, 2013, the new leadership agreed to a Joint Plan of Action that froze escalatory actions on both sides. After an extension in July of this year, the one-year anniversary and putative deadline for an agreement is now just days away.
Kemp said it was very unlikely that a final agreement would be reached by the November 24, 2014 deadline. "I'm sorry to say, but there is virtually no chance that a final deal will happen by Monday,” Kemp said, “but that's not as bad as it sounds." It is still possible, he added, that negotiators might achieve agreement on a framework for the broad outlines of a deal. Kemp said the element of brinkmanship pushes important decisions to the deadline. He reported that the Nov. 9–10 meeting between Foreign Minister Zarif, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and EU envoy Catherine Aston was unproductive beyond reaffirming that all sides continue to believe that a deal is in the best interest of all parties and that an extension of some sort seemed likely.
Kemp identified three primary issues that remain unresolved: the size of Iranian stockpiles of low-enriched uranium, the duration of the period for which Iran would accept restraints and special inspection provisions, and the number of centrifuges Iran would operate during that period. Based on his expertise in enrichment technology, Kemp explained the tradeoffs between these parameters. The mission of the E3+3 negotiators is to lengthen Iran's nuclear "breakout" time to something like 12 months by reducing the number of centrifuges in operation and the stockpile of enriched uranium in Iran's possession. Iran, by contrast, argues that it needs to retain a significant capability because of their future civil energy plans and face-saving considerations. Based on personal conversations with Foreign Minister Zarif, however, Kemp articulated reasons why believed these claims were not the entire story. Kemp had proposed to Zarif several ways Iran could retain its centrifuges by using them for non-provocative purposes, such as enriching molybdenum for medical purposes. Zarif appeared uninterested in non-uranium alternatives, suggesting that Iran saw its nuclear program as having a military-strategic value.
Aron Bernstein, a professor in the MIT Physics Department and faculty advisor for MIT’s Global Zero, echoed Kemp's view, arguing that Iran’s enrichment capabilities serve as a "virtual nuclear weapon," giving the Iranian leadership the option to arm themselves in the future. In addition to this, Kemp explained that nuclear capabilities, whether for civilian or military purposes, are an intense source of pride for the Iranian public, making it difficult for the leadership to relinquish these capabilities while preserving their dignity.
Many other issues were discussed during the 90-minute roundtable, including the response of Saudi Arabia to a successful deal between Iran and the West, and how a final agreement would impact the strategic calculus for Israel. While nobody in the room was confident in predictions about the future, participants did agree that a successful deal would be a productive step towards lowering the tension between Tehran and the West. Kemp articulated a large agenda of foreign-policy items for which a warming of relations with Iran would be useful, including the problems of ISIS and Middle East stability.
Mareena Robinson-Snowden, the president of the MIT chapter of Global Zero and a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the NSE department, described the event as "an opportunity to explore the various issues influencing the success of this deal and provide people with a forum to discuss the meaning and impact of this event at the ground level. The entire world is awaiting the outcome of these negotiations, and will be actively listening to the decisions announced on the morning of November 25th."
John Hanson | Nuclear Science and Engineering
The Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy welcomed the Honorable Rose Gottemoeller, U.S. under secretary of state for arms control and international security, for a roundtable lunch discussion with students and faculty last Friday. The discussion focused on the application of new technologies in arms control, and the role that NSE can play.
The Honorable Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary of state for arms control and international security.
Photo: David Carpenter
Gottemoeller was the chief negotiator for the most recent U.S.-Russian arms-reduction agreement called “New Start,” which reduced deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 per side. One important challenge limiting further reductions in future agreements is the lack of a verification technology able to protect secret warhead information. NSE professors Scott Kemp and Areg Danagoulian lead a research project to develop those tools. When asked to what extent the lack of a verification approach was holding back further diplomatic efforts, Gottemoeller said that while it is not the immediate problem, as the United States first needs a “willing dance partner” in Russia, verification was the next problem on the list. She expressed concern that, as in the past, the technology might not be ready when the political opportunity suddenly arose, but she added that she “gets the feeling that we could be ready” after talking with researchers at NSE.
Gottemoeller also spoke on how personal technology could improve inspection regimes, calling this the future of arms control. First, inspectors need better tools that go beyond current limitations to pen, paper, and a ruler. Second, she hopes that ubiquitous sensing on mobile platforms could provide unprecedented sensor grids or opportunistic detection of nuclear material. Finally, she added that real-time process monitoring for nuclear materials, rather than simple material accounting, will become ever more important. These ideas received considerable discussion, as well as the idea of using open-source information with data fusion to infer potential treaty violations. Gottemoeller agreed with a view that open-source data is not given sufficient attention by policymakers.
The under secretary also discussed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the United States signed in 1996 but which has not been ratified by Congress. She argued that the treaty offers the United States a clear national security benefit by preventing other countries from developing more advanced weapons while locking in the U.S. advantage in this area, and that past concerns about undetectable cheating have been overcome by technology. Gottemoeller discussed her strategy for building support for the treaty’s ratification starting with the public. By speaking on the issue at universities, and focusing on regions with populations most affected by nuclear weapon testing, she hopes to build grassroots support on what should be a strong bipartisan issue. Gottemoeller, who said she has been “accused of being the great optimist,” found a similarly optimistic group at the roundtable discussion Friday, and the resulting discussions gave reason to believe that the optimism is well founded.
The lunch discussion was followed by a public talk on the “Future Prospects for U.S.-Russia Arms Control,” jointly organized by Prof. R. Scott Kemp of NSE and Subrata Ghoshroy of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society.
Peter Dunn | Nuclear Science and Engineering
From early in its development, the nuclear community has emphasized the need for a “culture of safety.” Today, with an increasing range of potential nuclear threats, there is growing emphasis on a “culture of security”—and MIT NSE has augmented its presence in this area by appointing Assistant Professor Areg Danagoulian to contribute to its security-related technology research.
Danagoulian will collaborate with Assistant Professor Scott Kemp, a specialist in nuclear technology policy, and other NSE and Physics faculty and scientists in the newly formed Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy, which studies technology-policy interactions in nonproliferation, arms control, materials security, and verification. He will also co-teach class 22.09, Principles of Nuclear Radiation Measurement and Protection and 22.071, Electronics, Signals, and Measurement.
“The great thing about this department is that you have technologists like me working in close multidisciplinary collaborations with policy researchers and information theorists,” says Danagoulian, who earned an SB in Physics from MIT and a PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics from the University of Illinois. “That’s ultimately what’s needed to solve these problems—policy research driving technological development, and vice versa, technological progress that shapes policy.”
Danagoulian worked as a post-doctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory before a five-year stint as senior scientist at Passport Systems Inc., a Billerica, Mass., developer of technologies for detecting nuclear weapons and materials hidden inside shielded cargoes.
“It’s a difficult but important task,” he notes. “If an organization has the intellectual capacity to obtain and smuggle a weapon, they’ll know how to shield it.” That’s the driver behind one of Danagoulian’s main research thrusts—a program funded by the Department of Homeland Security that will develop shield-penetrating particle beams for active scanning of freight containers, trucks, and other cargo carriers.
When a beam of “interrogating particles” is sent into the container, “it excites the hidden materials, and triggers processes in fissionable material,” explains Danagoulian. “That generates emissions unique to those materials—fast neutrons, and characteristic gamma rays for isotopes of uranium or plutonium.”
Existing beam technologies are relatively inexpensive, but inefficient because they emit at a wide range of energy levels, only a fraction of which are useful. Danagoulian’s post-doc and student researchers will seek a monochromatic beam source that emits at a fixed energy level. This would make the process faster and more effective, and slash the radiation dose—an important consideration for many reasons, including risk to electronic devices, and to stowaways who sometimes secret themselves in cargo containers.
Related work will explore tunable beam sources that can change the energy of interrogating beams to detect specific isotopes and materials, and new combinations of electronics and light-detecting materials for better detection devices.
Danagoulian’s other major line of research (funded by the Department of Energy and also involving Senior Research Scientist Richard Lanza) will address another challenging topic—compliance with international disarmament treaties that require verifiable destruction of nuclear weapons.
“Inspectors would be limited to eyeballing weapons earmarked for elimination,” Danagoulian says. “They can’t look inside, or gather spectral or nuclear data, because the other side doesn’t want them to extract highly secret information, but they need some way of ascertaining that the weapons aren’t fakes.”
The approach being pursued, called ‘zero knowledge detection’, will develop methods of ascertaining authenticity through comparison to a known weapon—creating, in effect, a comparator that can tell whether two devices are identical without revealing anything about them, perhaps through measurement of nuclear resonance fluorescence. There will be heavy student involvement in this research, with participants learning to utilize simulation, build proof-of-concept systems, and conduct data analysis en route to a working system.
Ultimately, notes Danagoulian, verifiable destruction could not only help larger countries, but also provide regional nuclear powers, like India and Pakistan, with incentives to reduce or even eliminate their arsenals.
More broadly, he says, nuclear security is a matter of risk reduction. “We can never bring the risk to zero, but can we reduce it by a factor of 10, or 100? I find it fascinating, and intellectually stimulating—and I really wanted to work on something meaningful, that would improve society and make the world safer for my children.”
