Several IPNDV participants came together during the week of July 15, 2019 for the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, California. During a two-hour panel event, speakers discussed the benefits of exercising – using tabletops, simulations and practical experiences to strengthen disarmament verification approaches. Speakers included:
- Irmgard Niemeyer, Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany)
- Styrkaar Hustveit, Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (Norway)
- Marek A. Sobótka, Polish Permanent Representation to the OSCE (Poland)
- Alicia Swift, CNS/Y-12 National Security Complex (United States)
- Rob Floyd, Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office (Australia)
- Corey Hinderstein, Nuclear Threat Initiative
After a brief overview of the history and current operations of the IPNDV, speakers presented on: lessons learned from planning and executing exercises through the UK-Norway Initiative and the Quad Nuclear Verification Partnership – from the perspective of both possessor and non-possessor states; IPNDV’s upcoming Nuclear Disarmament Verification (NuDiVe) Exercise, jointly hosted by the French and German governments; and lessons learned from an IPNDV tabletop exercise exploring the verification aspects of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) and if lessons could be applied to future nuclear disarmament verification.
Following the presentations, the speakers engaged in a question-and-answer session in which they fielded questions related to reconfiguration of facilities for warhead dismantlement, confidence-building, social aspects of exercises, acceptable levels of uncertainty, and use of advanced systems technology for exercise planning and execution.
