The Back from the Brink Podcast
Jul 16, 2026 · 31 min · 8 segments
When countries agree to get rid of their nuclear weapons, verification tools can confirm that they actually did it. But how does it work? Arms control expert Mike Edinger talks to host Ryann…
Michael EttingerGuest
Ryann Blackshere VargasHostSo we've talked a lot on this show about treaties and countries coming together to agree to get rid of nuclear weapons.
Now, I know that you are the U.S. government lead at the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, right? IPNDE.
Can countries verify whether another country has dismantled a nuclear weapon?
When you're talking about treaties, these are legal agreements and specificity matters in a way that it doesn't in so many other places.
And we have understood and identified and figured out what the tools are, what the processes and procedures are to use those tools to really do the kind of verification that you need.
Let's get into how that verification works and dive into the logistical and technological aspects of getting rid of nuclear weapons.
within the IPMEV, within the partnership, the way we sort of approached it was we had to give ourselves some boundaries on what that meant.
And so from our perspective, dismantlement really was focused on the separation of the high explosive material from the nuclear material inside of a warhead.
That was what we used as the measure of dismantlement, because that really takes that weapon and renders it unusable for its design purpose.
Now, then you get into the issues of where does that high explosive and nuclear material and other material go? How do you verify the movement of that? But that's the core of where we focused our efforts.
And what do you do with those materials to make sure they don't get used for nuclear weapons again in the future?
And there are, you know, you can down blend it so that you reduce the enrichment level of the material.
So we've talked a lot on this show about treaties and countries coming together to agree to get rid of nuclear weapons.
Now, I know that you are the U.S. government lead at the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, right? IPNDE.
Can countries verify whether another country has dismantled a nuclear weapon?
When you're talking about treaties, these are legal agreements and specificity matters in a way that it doesn't in so many other places.
And we have understood and identified and figured out what the tools are, what the processes and procedures are to use those tools to really do the kind of verification that you need.
Let's get into how that verification works and dive into the logistical and technological aspects of getting rid of nuclear weapons.
within the IPMEV, within the partnership, the way we sort of approached it was we had to give ourselves some boundaries on what that meant.
And so from our perspective, dismantlement really was focused on the separation of the high explosive material from the nuclear material inside of a warhead.
That was what we used as the measure of dismantlement, because that really takes that weapon and renders it unusable for its design purpose.
Now, then you get into the issues of where does that high explosive and nuclear material and other material go? How do you verify the movement of that? But that's the core of where we focused our efforts.
And what do you do with those materials to make sure they don't get used for nuclear weapons again in the future?
And there are, you know, you can down blend it so that you reduce the enrichment level of the material.
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