Statistician Nate Silver Says Rational Policy Would Focus on Threat of Nuclear Terrorism

We are happy to serve you a daily summary of the day's top nuclear policy stories each morning, with excerpts from the stories in bullet form.  

Stories we're following today:

Crunching the Risk Numbers - Nate Silver in the Wall Street Journal [link]

• Most of us are horrible assessors of risk. Travelers at American airports are taking extensive steps due to fears of terrorism. But in the decade of the 2000s, only about one passenger for every 25 million was killed in a terrorist attack aboard an American commercial airliner (all of the fatalities were on 9/11). By contrast, a person has about a one in 500,000 chance each year of being struck by lightning.
• There is one concern that rates as a clear exception to these statistics: the threat of terrorism involving nuclear weapons. The renowned Harvard scholar Graham Allison has posited that there is greater than a 50% likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack in the next decade, which he says could kill upward of 500,000 people. If we accept Mr. Allison's estimates—a 5% chance per year of a 500,000-fatality event in a Western country (25,000 causalities per year)—the risk from such incidents is some 150 times greater than that from conventional terrorist attacks. 
• In other words, a more rational anti-terrorism policy would focus resources heavily, perhaps almost exclusively, on threats of nuclear and weapons of mass destruction terror. The good news is that, because it requires so much coordination to acquire fissile material, build a nuclear weapon, and successfully detonate it, the international community has many opportunities to stop such catastrophes before they occur—although Mr. Allison and other experts contend that present efforts are inadequate.

 Exclusive: Iran Offers Nuke Fuel Deal - Laura Rozen in Politico [link]

• While the Obama administration has stepped up talk of expanding sanctions on the regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iranian news reports and U.S. official sources say that Iran has recently returned a formal counter offer to swap low enriched uranium, or LEU, in exchange for nuclear fuel cells produced in the West.
• The Tehran Research Reactor proposal, or TRR, calls on Iran to immediately send 1,200 kg of its LEU to Russia, and France would in return supply Iran with nuclear fuel cells for medical use. The plan would have left Iran without enough fissile material to enrich for use in a nuclear weapon, putting time back on the clock for international negotiations on the nation’s nuclear program.
• One source told POLITICO that an agreement between Iran and the “P5+1” - as the group composed of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. is known - could be announced in “the very near future.”

UN Chief Pledges to Work for Nuclear-Free World - Associated Press [link]

• Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pledged Friday to do everything in his power to build on the historic U.N. summit chaired by President Barack Obama and advance the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world.
• ''Today, there is a new window of opportunity in disarmament and nonproliferation,'' he said. ''Last year, we saw several encouraging developments. This year, we have much on which to build -- and a heavy agenda going forward.''
• In early February, Ban will attend the Global Zero Summit in Paris, which is expected to bring hundreds of international leaders to the French capital to discuss a step-by-step plan for the phased, verified elimination of nuclear weapons. He will then attend the 46th Munich Security Conference which will address the major security challenges including nuclear proliferation.
• The secretary-general said he also will attend the summit on Nuclear Security that Obama is hosting in Washington in April to bring government leaders together to consider cooperative efforts to track and protect weapon-usable materials and to safeguard against nuclear terrorism.

North Korea Calls for Peace Treaty Talks with U.S. - New York Times [link]

• North Korea on Monday proposed talks with the United States to reach a formal peace treaty that would replace the truce that ended the Korean War 57 years ago, indicating it would not give up its nuclear weapons until Washington signed such an accord.
• “If a peace treaty is signed, it will help resolve hostile relations between North Korea and the United States and speed up the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North’s state-run news agency, K.C.N.A.
• Stephen W. Bosworth, President Obama’s special representative on North Korea, visited the capital, Pyongyang, last month, said the United States could discuss a peace treaty and other incentives only when the process of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula gained “significant traction.”

A View from the Dark Side 

A Nonstarter on Arms Control - Ariel Cohen in the New York Times [link]

• The Kremlin feels it has a winning hand in the nuclear bargaining as the follow-on treaty is considered more important to the United States than Russia. The White House already ceded deployment of a stationary missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic and has agreed to pull U.S. inspectors from a missile factory in Votkinsk, Russia. The removal will make it impossible to monitor production of Russia’s new RS-24 mobile multi-warhead ICBMs. This missile will be the mainstay of Russian strategic forces by 2016. Thus, the stronger party starts looking like a loser.
• To put it simply, the new treaty must not compromise U.S. or allied national security. It should not limit U.S. missile defenses or nuclear modernization. The U.S. should oppose a Russian offensive nuclear posture, and counter the further lowering of the nuclear threshold. The United States should pursue a “protect and defend” strategy, which includes a defensive nuclear posture, missile defenses and nuclear modernization.