Nuclear Proliferation and Accidents

Washington, D.C., 14 October 2015 - In July 1984, U.S. customs agents arrested a Pakistani national, Nazir Ahmed Vaid, at Houston International Airport for trying to purchase krytrons--useful for triggering nuclear weapons—and smuggle them out of the United States Some months later, Vaid was found guilty of violating export control laws, but a plea bargain produced a light penalty: deportation. Months later, journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a major article about the Vaid case for the New York Times and quoted a U.S.

Related Materials

Nunn-Lugar Revisited
U.S.-Russian cooperation on threat reduction from the Soviet Union in 1991 to Syria in 2013
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 447

Project Sapphire 20th Anniversary
More than a half-ton of weapons-grade uranium removed from Kazakhstan in 1994
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 491

Photos

1.    The Bal Qar Gai conference “yurt.” Tom Blanton at the head of the conference table.
 

Washington, D.C., July 14, 2015 -- Four decades ago -- in the mid-1970s -- U.S. and Iranian officials haggled over a range of concerns that uncannily prefigured similar clashes that surfaced prior to today’s history-making nuclear accord between the P5+1 governments and Iran, according to documents posted today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org. The documents from the 1970s record the Shah of Iran’s insistence that his country had “rights” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to develop such a program.

Washington, D.C., June 29, 2015 – Long before Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities – based on gas centrifuge technology – became the center of international negotiations, the U.S. tried to deny that same technology to any country that sought it. In 1954, Washington prohibited a company in occupied Germany from selling gas centrifuges to Brazil, according to declassified documents published today for the first time by the National Security Archive and the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP).

Washington, D.C. April 24, 2015 - The nuclear inspection agency that is central to the current Iran negotiations is flunking international transparency norms, according to a report posted today by Freedominfo.org and the National Security Archive's Nuclear Vault. Key documents about International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proceedings, found in various national archives and private collections but closed at Agency headquarters in Vienna, are included in today's posting.

Washington, D.C., April 15, 2015 – The U.S. government first learned of Israel's secret nuclear program at Dimona from an American corporate official talking to U.S. diplomats in Tel Aviv during mid-summer 1960, according to a declassified document published today for the first time by the National Security Archive, the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Other documents published today detail the discovery of the secret project that some in the U.S.

Washington, D.C., December 23, 2014 – A recently released Sandia Labs film contains fa
Washington, D.C., December 23, 2014 – A recently released Sandia Labs film contains fascinating glimpses into the U.S. government's efforts to maintain nuclear weapons safety over the years, including a late 1960 episode in which a senior Los Alamos Laboratory staffer advised a U.S. soldier in West Germany to take shots with his gun at nuclear bombs on German fighter-bombers if he ever became concerned about the possibility of their misguided or accidental use.

Washington, DC, November 17, 2014 – Twenty years ago this week a team of American specialists completed an unprecedented operation known as Project Sapphire, working with the government of Kazakhstan to secure more than a half-ton of highly-enriched uranium that had been abandoned from a Soviet submarine project during the Cold War, according to declassified documents, video and photographs posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

Washington, D.C., September 12, 2014 – During the spring and summer of 1969, officials at the Pentagon, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the White House debated and discussed the problem of the emergence of a nuclear Israel. Believing that Israel was moving very close to a nuclear weapons capability or even possession of actual weapons, the Nixon administration debated whether to apply pressure to restrain the Israelis or even delay delivery of advanced Phantom jets whose sale had already been approved.

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Safety Issues, 1957-1986 Washington, D.C., June 9, 2014 – A recently declassified report by Sandia National Laboratory, published today by the National Security Archive, provides new details on the 1961 Goldsboro, North Carolina, nuclear weapons accident. Both multi-megaton Mk 39 bombs involved in the mishap were in the "safe" position. Yet the force of the crash initiated mechanical actions that normally required human intervention. In both cases, the "fuzing sequence" had begun: an important step toward arming a nuclear bomb.