For the international society to succeed in nuclear disarmament efforts, systems and procedures need to be in place to ensure the required confidence between the parties involved, and to verify that claimed steps toward nuclear disarmament have actually been accomplished. Since January 2007, four Norwegian institutions (the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, the Institute for Energy Technology, the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority and NORSAR) have cooperated with counterparts in the United Kingdom to arrive at methods and procedures to achieve this.
From 15 to 19 June 2009, an exercise will be conducted at Kjeller, during which Norwegian players from a fictitious nuclear weapon state will host United Kingdom inspectors from a fictitious non-nuclear weapon state, in an effort to verify dismantlement of a mock nuclear weapon. View a press release on this event here (in Norwegian).
NORSAR has experience from work over the last 40 years on technical arrangements for seismological verification of compliance with nuclear testing treaties, both from a research and a technology development perspective. In particular, NORSAR has participated on behalf of Norwegian authorities in negotiations and implementation of international verification arrangements for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). This experience includes several aspects that are of relevance to this cooperative effort with the United Kingdom, such as planning of exercises for technology demonstration and validation, and negotiation of verification procedures.
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