Bombers vs verifiers: A nuclear race worth winning
- 24 June 2009 by Debora MacKenzie
- Magazine issue 2714
IN VIENNA, Austria, scientists are listening for clandestine nuclear tests. In Norway, other researchers are trying out a device that reveals the contents of a nuclear missile without betraying its deepest secrets. And 1000 kilometres east of Moscow in Votkinsk, 30 Americans who watch Russians make missiles to aim at other Americans may not be coming home at Christmas after all.
The world is in the midst of an unprecedented wave of negotiations aimed at saving global agreements to keep nuclear weapons in check. Few realise that this involves at least as much science as it does diplomacy. The weapons treaties involved are totally dependent on verification science: inspections, remote monitoring and other methods of ensuring that people do not build or conceal banned weapons.
The diplomats can only rescue the treaties if they convince sceptics that verification works, so scientists are launching a renewed research effort to enable verifiers ...
