The Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Center for Strategic and International Studies joined to launch the New Approaches to the Fuel Cycle project. This project sought to build consensus on common goals, address practical challenges, and engage a spectrum of actors that influence policymaking regarding the nuclear fuel cycle. The project also tackled one of the toughest issues-spent nuclear fuel and high level waste-to see if solutions there might offer incentives to states on the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle and address the inherent inertia and concerns about additional burdens and restrictions that have stalled past efforts to improve the robustness of the nonproliferation regime. This report presents the group's conclusions that a best-practices approach to the nuclear fuel cycle can achieve these objectives and offer a path to a more secure and sustainable nuclear landscape.

The Nuclear Security Project, launched in 2007, helped reframe the global debate on nuclear issues and garnered significant global and domestic attention, increasing the political space for addressing global nuclear dangers and advancing understanding of the steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers. This volume, one of several under the project, presents a blueprint for actions government leaders can take to guide the policy making and technical development necessary to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Ten expert contributors identify the key technical, political, and diplomatic challenges associated with verifying, monitoring, and enforcing a world free of nuclear weapons and provide potential solutions to those challenges. Unifying themes include principal challenges or stumbling blocks; current technical limits that should inform decisions about investment in further research and technical analysis; technical constraints to developing the kind of system necessary to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons; and developing the architecture for a verification system. Contributors: Steven P. Andreasen, Everet H. Beckner, James Fuller, Steinar Hoibraten, Edward Ifft, Halvor Kippe, Harold Muller, Annette Schaper, Thomas E. Shea, Ralf Wirtz