Verification as socio-epistemic challenge: the case of nuclear archaeology for nuclear disarmament verification

Abstract An essential element for arms control agreements is effective verification—measures to assess the participating parties’ compliance with their obligations. For verifying future nuclear disarmament, a lot of technical challenges are to be addressed. One of these is related to the fissile material: How can one verify that a disarming State does not retain any undeclared “secret stockpiles” that could be used for re-armament? Approaches to this challenge are being developed with nuclear archaeology: by analyzing samples, waste, or historical documents from former fissile-material production facilities, one can deduce information on the facilities’ operation and amount of produced fissile material—which can then be compared to the State’s declarations. This approach is, however, practically limited as uncertainties, stemming from information gaps and potentially complex and decade-long operations, will likely remain significant. From a sociological perspective though, the production of knowledge in nuclear verification that informs political decision-making processes depends on a much more complex interplay of not only technologies, but also actors, institutions, and practices: verification is not only technical but also a social and political process. Applying a perspective that focuses on those uncertainties arising with nuclear archaeology and the production of “nonknowledge” in nuclear verification allows to first identify the sources of uncertainty more precisely and to improve the understanding of them beyond the technical, in order to developing better coping strategies with uncertainties for future cases of nuclear disarmament verification.