International Exercise on Nuclear Disarmament

Photo: Forschungszentrum Jülich/Tobias Schlößer On behalf of the Federal Foreign Office and the French ministry of defense and foreign affairs, researchers from the Carol Friedrich von Weizsäcker Center for Science and Peace Research at Universität Hamburg are organizing a multi-day exercise on controlled nuclear disarmament. Approximately 30 researchers and diplomats from 12 countries are taking part at the Forschungszentrum Jülich. The exercise will take place from 4-8 April 2022 in the laser protection area of the Forschungszentrum Jülich. Seven participants will take on the role of inspectors to face 7 parliamentarians from a fictitious nuclear power. They will practice with a decoy of their own design that does not contain plutonium but the less harmful radioactive barium and californium. The background of the exercise is the still unrealized Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons from 1968, the goal of which was nuclear disarmament under international supervision. While nuclear powers the world over have since destroyed an estimated 60,000 nuclear warheads, they have not done so under international supervision.