More than 50 participants from 19 countries gathered in Belgium last month for the first in-person meeting of the International Partnership for Disarmament Verification (IPNDV) in more than two years to tackle a tabletop exercise for verifying the transport and long-term storage of nuclear warheads.
“We do not know when we will be able to move back to negotiating nuclear arms control agreements involving the major actors,” Axel Kenes, Belgian Foreign Ministry of Affairs Director General for Multilateral Affairs and Globalisation, said in his opening remarks. “What we do know, however, is that humanity has a shared interest in those agreements and that we must be ready when the opportunity presents itself.”
Experts from the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) Nuclear Materials Security program were among the attendees. With other attendees, they worked through a scenario involving a fictional nuclear-weapon state. Therein, teams were divided into inspectors and hosts to learn about verification protocols and identify challenges to dismantlement. Processes, procedures, techniques, technologies – all were on the table for discussion.