State Department Fact Sheet on Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty NPT Article VI – Accomplishments by the United States The United States is firmly committed to the goal of disarmament spelled out in the Preamble and Article VI of the NPT, and has demonstrated international leadership in taking effective measures in support of the Treaty’s objectives. The United States has taken and continues to take dramatic and unprecedented steps in that direction, including: working to resolve destabilizing tensions and establishing the necessary security conditions for progress toward that goal; drastically cutting its numbers of nuclear delivery systems; introducing a draft Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) at the Conference on Disarmament; continuing its moratorium on underground nuclear testing and working to make it indefinitely sustainable through the development of a more reliable (and much safer and more secure) warhead design; reducing its numbers of operationally-deployed strategic nuclear weapons and cutting back the size of the overall U.S. stockpile; dramatically reducing the size and complexity of the United States’ nuclear weapons infrastructure; dismantling great numbers of warheads; removing many tons of fissile material from our nuclear weapons programs; moving to reduce reliance upon nuclear weapons, including by improving non-nuclear means to accomplish strategic deterrence; and seeking to negotiate a legally-binding post-START arrangement with the Russian Federation and continuing to strengthen the new strategic relationships that have resulted from post-Cold War circumstances. Over the past 20 years, the United States has worked to help establish an international security environment conducive to progress toward disarmament. The United States has also made remarkable progress toward achieving the nuclear disarmament goals set forth in the Preamble and Article VI to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and has a strong record of compliance with its Article VI obligations. The nuclear arms race that was in full swing when the NPT was opened for signature has, in fact, been halted. The United States has taken dramatic and unprecedented steps toward the goal of nuclear disarmament, including working to resolve destabilizing global and regional tensions; reducing its nuclear forces and nuclear weapons stockpile, through both unilateral and bilateral initiatives; and working cooperatively with allies and partners further to reduce nuclear threats. Some highlights: • The START Treaty, which entered into force in December 1994, reduced U.S. and Russian deployed strategic warheads from well over 10,000 to 6,000 each, with full reductions implemented, on schedule, at the end of 2001. • The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) set in motion a process of reducing reliance on nuclear forces to achieve U.S. national security objectives, including by improving the ability to nuclear means. • The NPR also articulated a vision, later embodied in the 2002 Moscow Treaty, for additional deep reductions from more than 6,000 operationally deployed warheads in 2001 to 3,079 as of September 30, 2007 – fully on target to meet Moscow Treaty limits of 1,700-2,200 by 2012. • The most dramatic U.S. stockpile reductions, in proportional terms, have been in non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW, sometimes popularly called “tactical” weapons), which have unilaterally been reduced to less than one-tenth of Cold War levels. -- In 1991, the United States and its NATO allies unilaterally decided to retire all nuclear artillery shells, nuclear warheads for short-range ballistic missiles, and naval nuclear anti-submarine warfare weapons. Not one of these weapons exists today; all were dismantled by 2003. -- These unilateral actions reduced NSNW in NATO by nearly 90 percent, reduced the types of U.S. nuclear weapons based in Europe from five to one, and reduced nuclear weapon storage sites in Europe by 80 percent. -- With these steps, the United States has fully complied with its Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) commitments – undertaken in 1991 and 1992 in parallel with reciprocal Russian commitments – for dramatic reductions in NSNW. • The United States has also: -- Retired over 1,000 strategic ballistic missiles, including the most modern ICBM (the Peacekeeper), 350 heavy bombers, and 28 ballistic missile submarines. -- Removed from strategic service four modern Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, carrying a total of 96 Trident missiles. • In May 2004, in addition to the Moscow Treaty reductions in operationally-deployed strategic warheads, President Bush also took steps to reduce the total number of warheads in the overall U.S. nuclear stockpile, including both deployed and non-deployed warheads. By 2012or sooner, the nuclear stockpile will be reduced by nearly one-half from its 2001 level – and three-quarters from its 1990level – resulting in the smallest stockpile since the 1950s. • The United States dismantled its last W-56 warhead for the Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile in December 2007. • U.S. officials have in recent years dramatically stepped up the pace of warhead retirement. The United States is now already below the dramatic reductions in active stockpile levels it had planned for the year 2012, and it will now retire an additional 15 percent of the U.S. stock pile below its originally-planned 2012 levels. • The United States has not enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons since 1964, nor produced plutonium for nuclear weapons since 1988. Nor does the United States plan to produce these materials for use in nuclear weapons in the future. In fact, the United States in 2006 tabled a global treaty that would prohibit production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. • The United States announced in November 2005 that it will remove, in future decades, up to an additional 200 metric tons (MT) of HEU from further use as fissile material in nuclear weapons. This is above and beyond the 174 MT of HEU removed from defense stocks in 1994. These HEU removals together will amount to the equivalent of approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons worth of material (according to International Atomic Energy Agency equivalency figures - see footnote). -17.4 MT of excess HEU has been set aside to blend down to low-enriched uranium for a reserve to support nuclear fuel assurances for states that refrain from pursuing enrichment and reprocessing programs. • The United States and Russia have committed to down-blending more than 500MT of HEU from Russia’s dismantled nuclear weapons for use in U.S. nuclear power plants. More than 325 MT of this material has been down-blended to date – enough material for nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons/1 – providing 10 percent of America’s total electric power each year. • The United States has removed 61 MT of plutonium from potential use in nuclear weapons, of which 34 MT will be converted into fuel for use in civil nuclear power plants. The United States is also working with Russia to permanently dispose of its34 MT surplus weapon-grade plutonium by irradiating it as fuel in nuclear reactors. The United States is spending billions of dollars on three new facilities – a Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility, a Mixed- Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility, and a Waste Solidification Building – that together will enable the transformation of plutonium warhead “pits” and other excess plutonium into fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors. • Since 1992, the United States has maintained a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing and is working to make it indefinitely sustainable through the development of a safer, more secure, and more reliable warhead design that would enable further stock pile reductions. ---------- Footnote: The IAEA defines a “significant quantity” of HEU to be 25 kilograms and of plutonium to be 8 kilograms. |