The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program deactivated 10 nuclear warheads last month, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) announced yesterday (see GSN, March 17).
In addition, the initiative destroyed two ICBM silos, secured four nuclear-weapon train shipments and established a biological monitoring station in Kazakhstan.
Since its inception in 1991 to secure and eliminate weapons of mass destruction in one-time Soviet states, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated 7,514 strategic nuclear warheads and destroyed 752 ICBMs, 498 ICBM silos, 143 mobile ICBM launchers, 633 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 476 SLBM launchers, 31 ballistic missile-capable submarines, 155 strategic bombers, 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles and 194 nuclear test tunnels.
In addition, the program has safeguarded 433 nuclear-weapon train shipments, boosted security at 24 nuclear weapons storage facilities and constructed 18 biological agent monitoring stations. It removed all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, nations that once respectively held the world's third-, fourth- and eighth-largest nuclear arsenals (U.S. Senator Richard Lugar release, April 15).