Introduction

The Hiroshima Report 2014 (PDF) can be downloaded from the following links:
--Report and Evaluations (in Japanese and English)
--Evaluation Sheet (in Japanese and English)
--Exective Summary (in Japanese and English)
The Hiroshima Report 2012 (PDF) can be downloaded from the following links:
--Report and Evaluations (in Japanese and English)
--Evaluation Sheet (in Japanese and English)

November 7, 2013

[Op-Ed] James M. Acton, "Two Nuclear Dilemmas for Japan"

Japan is where the nuclear age began on August 6, 1945.  And, for the last 68 years, the Japanese people have been at the forefront of efforts to bring this perilous era to an end.  The Hiroshima Report continues this tradition by usefully highlighting where progress toward a more secure and more just nuclear future has been made—and where it hasn't.

Rightly, the Hiroshima Report scores Japan highly on disarmament (where Japan ranks first among the ten non-nuclear weapon states surveyed) and non-proliferation (where Japan ranks equal second among the same group). That said, it must also be acknowledged that most of Japan’s points were earned for activities that did not come at the expense of conflicting policy goals. For example, Japan’s voting record in the United Nations General Assembly and its adoption of tougher IAEA safeguards, while laudable, did not carry any particular political cost (even if enhanced safeguards do come with a significant financial cost).


In the near future—possibly within the next twelve months—Japan will face two genuinely tough choices: whether to commission the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant and whether to sell nuclear reactor components to India. These decisions are highly consequential for the future of the nuclear order. But, doing the right thing will incur a high political cost because it will mean sacrificing competing objectives.

November 1, 2013

[Op-Ed] Mark Fitzpatrick, "North Korea, the Nuclear Outlier"

The Hiroshima Report is to be commended for its thorough analysis of the measures that key countries have taken in fulfillment of obligations in the areas of nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation and security. While acknowledging the limits of a mathematical approach, they back each number with solid evidence. The report is analytically sound and politically fair. Readers can easily draw their own conclusions. 

One obvious conclusion is that one nation stands alone as a dishonorable outlier, in last place in every field. There is good reason North Korea falls under its own separate category in the report. It is the only state to have withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the only state to have signed the treaty with the intention of violating it to develop nuclear weapons. Kim Il Sung showed interest in nuclear weapons since the early 1960s. 

North Korea also violated the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States and the 1991 North-South Denuclearization Agreement, under which the two Koreas agreed to forgo uranium enrichment and reprocessing. More recently, North Korea violated the 2005 Joint Statement of the Six Party Talks and the 2012 Leap Day deal with the United States.