To make a national based historical survey of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons: Experiences from the example of Sweden

Full text: This project was initiated by the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate and approved by the Agency as a Support Programme Task to increase transparency and support the implementation of the Additional Protocol in Sweden. A general model of how such a historical survey can be conducted has been worked out in order to serve as help for other countries evaluating their nuclear and nuclear related activities in the framework of the Additional Protocol. The model consists of the following parts: 1. A State's nuclear activities profile since the mid-forties. In this part the task is to analyse the State's civil and military nuclear plans in broad terms, as well as to investigate how these ambitions were carried out in practice. A central ingredient is to map-out how the nuclear energy projects were organised over time; i. e. to pin-point the government authorities, organisations, private companies, universities and research institutions who were involved in the activities and who had the authoritative power at different times since 1945. 2. A description and analysis of the State's role and interactions in the area of international non-proliferation. This part of the model includes a list of the national laws that have regulated the use of nuclear materials since 1945. Are there exceptions in the national jurisdictions that obstruct the international/national inspections to be carried out in practical terms? How have the import and export regulations been designed since 1945? Who are allowed to use sensitive nuclear materials and on what conditions? Another part of the analysis of the State's international policy of non-proliferation includes a description of the international and bilateral agreements that were signed and ratified over the span of the period under consideration. The experiences from the work with the survey of the Swedish nuclear activities show that not all co-operation necessarily went through bilateral (government controlled) agreements procedures. 3. A description and analysis of the nuclear-related materials and activities since 1945 (this is especially important when the state in question has had extended plans to acquire nuclear weapons capability, as in the case of Sweden). This part of the project lists the international inspections of nuclear materials and reactor facilities in the specific State (an important aim is to show how the early inspection routines were designed, and how it was developed later on, especially in the sense of co-operation with other States and the Agency). Questions like the following have to be answered: How were the plans intended to be worked out in theory and practice? Who were involved in the programmes/projects and what sorts of experiments were carried out? Where were the laboratories located, which and how much nuclear-related material was used and how did the decommissioning of the activities take part? Are there any materials or facilities left over from the programmes/experiments? In addition to this task, there is another important enumeration to be made: i. e. the national archives (and perhaps foreign archives as well) that comprise documentation related to both civil and military nuclear energy activities. An important aim is to show what each archive contains, especially about nuclear materials, facilities and equipment that can be used to produce nuclear weapons. It is also important to investigate whether the archives in question are available for the public and/or researchers. 4. An estimation of a State's capability to produce nuclear weapons? Several models can, of course, be practicable in terms of evaluating a certain State 's latent capability to produce nuclear weapons. In the survey of the Swedish nuclear activities, a model from the American political scientist Stephen M Meyer's The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation was used. (author)