Nuclear Disarmament Partnership Launches Working Groups

The International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification (IPNDV) last week at its second plenary meeting launched three working groups to address nuclear weapons dismantlement, inspection regimes, and warhead verification. The U.S. State Department, in partnership with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), established the IPNDV last year to build global capacity in nuclear disarmament verification by supporting technical initiatives.

 

The plenary meeting, hosted in Oslo by Norway’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, brought together technical experts from 25 countries to create a framework for the working groups to begin their activities. The first working group will focus on “the dismantlement phase of the nuclear weapons lifecycle, including the types of information and criteria needed to determine whether those objectives are being met,” the State Department said. The second group “will draw lessons from existing on-site inspection regimes and assess the applicability of fundamental on-site inspection principles to possible future nuclear arms control agreements,” and the third “will work to identify practical solutions to technical challenges related to nuclear warhead verification, including methods for nuclear warhead authentication, establishing and maintaining chain of custody, and authenticating necessary data and equipment,” the State Department said. Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, Sweden, and the United States are among the partner countries spearheading these efforts. The working groups will meet in February and will give updates on their activities at the third IPNDV plenary meeting in summer 2016.