The nuclear power industry was spawned by research that developed nuclear weapons. The U.S. government pushed the idea of the Peaceful Atom in the 1950s partly to ally the public’s fears of nuclear technology resulting from the bombing of Japan at the end of World War II. It also was seen as a way to invest more funds in nuclear research than would have been made available by Congress for weapons development.

                As time went by and other countries joined the nuclear weapons club, the parallel development of nuclear power generation continued. Some of the same materials and equipment that are necessary for creating nuclear reactor power stations can also be used to purify uranium to the point where it can be used in nuclear weapons. Plutonium can be extracted from nuclear reactor waste for use in nuclear weapons. While the countries with peaceful nuclear reactor power generation generally are in favor of other countries supplementing their internal power generation with nuclear reactors, those countries which currently possess nuclear weapons are in favor of disarmament and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The fact that a country can possibly develop nuclear weapons under the guise of developing a nuclear program for power generation is currently roiling the international scene as accusations of such actions are being leveled at Iran.

               The global anti-nuclear movement in growing and the international trend is toward nuclear disarmament. I strongly support their efforts to make the world safer and I will devote space in my blog to their work. The problem of nuclear proliferation is one of the arguments against the use of nuclear reactions to produce electrical power but, however important, confuses the issue when talking about the pros and cons of nuclear power on its own merits.

                I will be devoting a great many of my future blog posts to the arguments against nuclear power. The proponents of nuclear power have powerful and rich corporations on their side as well as many government agencies both here and abroad. Their side of the argument is well represented in speeches, advertisements, government programs, books, magazine, etc. I want to contribute in my own way to making certain that the argument against nuclear power is equally well presented to the public.

                 One of the big problems with the opposition to nuclear power is that it is often in the form of fighting against a particular problem associated with nuclear companies and nuclear facilities. One group is opposing a particular mine, another group is trying to prevent a nuclear reactor from being built or restarted, a third group is attacking a plan to site a nuclear processing plant, a forth is attempting to stop the creation of a nuclear waste facility. There are many other groups with specific concerns that are working against the nuclear industry. But the proponents of nuclear power are bigger, richer, more influential and more unified in their actions and goals than any one interest group opposing them. My blog will try to cover as many of the major problems with nuclear power generation as possible as well as highlighting groups working to solve all of these problems.

             There are some interesting parallels between the current debate on guns and the long running debate on nuclear weapons. Both debates revolve around a particular type of weapon and who should have it under what circumstances.

             One of the profound things that the nuclear debate has highlighted is the question of when is enough enough. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have thousands of warheads which could destroy the other many times over. Both sides accumulated these weapons out of fear of the other side and their fear ran away from reality. Other countries only have arsenals in the hundreds of warheads but even an exchange of one hundred nuclear bombs could have devastating consequences for the entire world. In a similar fashion, you have people arming themselves past the point of utility. Why would anyone person in our society need 10 guns, 100 guns, 1000 guns? The gun shops will happily sell a hundred assault rifles to one person at one time. This is just plain nuts. Unless he is planning on reselling them, he could not possibility use all of them.

            Then there is the question of the sanity of the person who wants the guns. Part of the gun debate is over making sure that people who are mentally ill are not able to purchase a gun. In a similar way, there is a debate over whether some country led by people whose sanity is questioned should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

           Mexico is being flooded with guns smuggled in from the Unites States. Incredible harm is being done to their society with tens of thousands of people being murdered by these smuggled guns. The international community fears that there may be countries, organizations or individuals who would sell nuclear weapons to others who would use them to harm the people of countries that they hate or disagree with about something. Just as law enforcement agencies work to prevent gun thefts, illegal sales and smuggling, national and international agencies are trying to prevent the illegal proliferation of nuclear weapons.

           Asymmetry is also an issue. The idea of a small nuclear state such as North Korea attacking a huge nuclear state like the United States would be like a few criminals attacking the New York Police Department. The problem is how to respond with appropriate force to such threats in order to minimize collateral damage to bystanders.

           India and Pakistan are neighbors who are not getting along and have been involved in military exchanges in the past like a couple of people who live near each other and have had fights. Both India and Pakistan feel that they need to have nuclear weapons in case the other side uses them. But just like the situation where statistics show that owning a gun to protect yourself is likely to lead to you being harmed, if either India or Pakistan started a nuclear war, they would wind up eating the fallout from their own weapons.

         And, finally, part of the problem in both cases is that there are powerful rich organizations and individuals who profit handsomely from the sale of weapons and who apparently have no concern about who might use them and for what purpose.

         The human race as individuals and as nations really has to find better ways to resolve disputes than to resort to the use of weapons which may be as harmful to the user as they might be to a target.

               I have covered many topics related to radioactivity in this blog including reactors, bombs, accidents, organizations, heath effects, environmental effects and so on. During my research for these blog articles, I have come to the conclusion that it is time to end the use of nuclear reactors to generate electrical power. There are many arguments pro and con for the inclusion of nuclear generation in the mix of sources of commercial electricity. I have mentioned both in previous blog entries. In my estimation, the reasons to stop using nuclear power far outweigh the reasons to keep using it.

               In future blog posts I am going to concentrate on the arguments against nuclear power including profiles of groups that are opposing its use. I have tried to be honest and objective in writing this blog, reporting as accurately as I can the results of my research into matters nuclear. I will continue to be as honest as possible about the nuclear power situation but I will be concentrating on criticisms of this source of power.

               I understand that the world is currently in a desperate position with respect to the increase of CO2 in our atmosphere leading to global warming, the rise of sea level and wild weather with more droughts, hurricanes, record breaking temperatures, etc. It is absolutely critical that we roll back our production of CO2 from power generation and fossil fuel use or we risk the end of our global civilization. Nuclear power has been offered as a way to reduce fossil fuel consumption and CO2 production. Setting aside all the dangers and problems association with nuclear power for the moment, I want to focus on why the CO2 argument is a lot weaker than most people realize.

               The construction of a nuclear power plant is a huge undertaking. A great deal of fossil fuel is utilized in the creation of the materials and equipment required. The transportation of all these things to the site and the preparation of the site consume fossil fuels. The mining and refining of uranium for fuel requires fossil fuels. The enormous amount of concrete that goes into building a nuclear power plant generates a huge amount of CO2 as it cures. If the spent fuel rods are stored on site in dry casks, they are made of steel and concrete which consumes fossil fuels. If the spent fuel rods are transported to some temporary or permanent storage site, more fossil fuels are burned. And the creation of a permanent spent fuel rod facility will require still more fossil fuels to dig. And finally, nuclear power reactors have a limited lifespan after which they have to be decommissions which depend on fossil fuel. All of these activities require the burning of fossil fuels which generate huge amounts of CO2. When the CO2 footprint of nuclear power generation is discussed, there is not enough emphasis on all this CO2. I have heard it said but I cannot quote the research to prove it that it takes about fifteen years of full time operation of a nuclear reactor generating power before it compensates for all the CO2 generated to create a fuel it. And most reactors are licensed for about 30 years initially although many have their licenses extended.

            One of the primary arguments for nuclear power generation, the reduction of CO2 production, is not as beneficial as it has been portrayed. Other arguments such as low cost of such power have been proven false. When nuclear power generation was being sold in the 1950s to civilians, some proponents claimed that the power would be so cheap that it could be given away for free. Well, that has certainly turned out to be false. With the price of alternative sustainable power constantly dropping and the cost of nuclear power stable or rising, it is far past time for the world to begin phasing out nuclear reactors for commercial electric power generation.

              Since the development of nuclear bombs in the 1940s, suggestions have been made for possible civilian peaceful uses of these powerful explosives. The United States explored some of these possibilities in Operation Plowshare and the Soviet Union worked on them in their Nuclear Explosives for the National Economy program. The primary use was for large scale earth moving but there were other uses such as seismic exploration and sealing major leaks in gas fields that were considered. Despite the hostility between these two nations during the Cold War, there were several bilateral conferences where scientists from the two nations compare notes on their experiments. After over one hundred explosions were triggered during the tests, in the end, both of these projects were cancelled due to technical problems, environmental pollutions and public opposition. Since the Soviet ended its program in 1989, there have been no other serious explorations of peaceful use of nuclear explosions.

             Another plan for peaceful use of nuclear explosions that never got beyond the study and planning stage called for the use of nuclear explosions to generate electricity. The idea had been around since 1957 when it was suggested that megaton fusion bombs be exploded in a cavity dug out of solid granite to heat steam. As part of Operation Plowshare, Los Alamos National Laboratories researched the concept under the name Project PACER during the 1970s. They considered the use of thermonuclear fusion bombs but later decided that atomic fission bombs would be a better choice.

             The basic idea was create an underground chamber where nuclear devices could be exploded to heat steam for power generation. An early design called for a one thousand foot diameter dug five thousand feet underground in a salt dome. It would be filled with water. Fifty kiloton bombs would be dropped in at about the rate of two a day. The resulting steam would be run through a heat exchanger and the secondary steam would power a generator. Estimates were made that two gigawatt of energy could be generated in this way

              A later design called for kiloton nuclear bombs to be detonated every forty five minutes. The heat of their explosion would be captured by molten salts running down the side of the chamber. The molten salts would enter a heat exchanger where the heat would be used to generate steam. The steam could then drive a turbine to create electricity.

              After the cancellation of Operation Plowshare, additional studies and designs have been explored. One of these later designs was based on a steel cylinder one hundred feet in diameter and three hundred feet tall with walls that were four feet thick. The cylinder would be embedded in concrete in a hole in the ground. The cylinder would be half full of molten salts which would be continuously pumped to the top and allowed to flow down. In this rain of molten salt, a one kiloton fission bomb would be detonated every forty five minutes. A heat exchanger would generate steam from the molten salt to drive a turbine and generate electricity.

               One of the problems with these bomb generator is that they would require a steady supply of small nuclear bombs which would make the economic feasibility of such a system less attractive. The cost of fueling a PACER style system was estimated in one study to be about ten times the cost of fueling a conventional light water reactor.

              Since the development of nuclear bombs in the 1940s, suggestions have been made for possible civilian peaceful uses of these powerful explosives. The United States explored some of these possibilities in Operation Plowshare and the Soviet Union worked on them in their Nuclear Explosives for the National Economy program. The primary use was for large scale earth moving but there were other uses such as seismic exploration and sealing major leaks in gas fields that were considered. Despite the hostility between these two nations during the Cold War, there were several bilateral conferences where scientists from the two nations compare notes on their experiments. After over one hundred explosions were triggered during the tests, in the end, both of these projects were cancelled due to technical problems, environmental pollutions and public opposition. Since the Soviet ended its program in 1989, there have been no other serious explorations of peaceful use of nuclear explosions.

              One project that was proposed in the U.S. but never developed involved the use of nuclear explosions to power a spaceship by what was called Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. A company called General Atomics initiated research into such possibilities in what was called Project Orion in 1958.

              The basic concept was to build a spaceship that would have a shock absorbing disk on the back end. Nuclear bombs, either fission or fusion, would be tossed out of a hole in the center of the disk and their explosions would accelerate the ship. Theoretically, the idea was found to be quite attractive. Space propulsion systems are rated on “thrust” and “specific impulse”.   The thrust is a measure of how much force the propulsion system can generate. To launch a vehicle into space, the thrust must be greater than the force of gravity, analogous to horsepower in a car. Specific impulse is a measure of how much speed can  be generated by a unit mass of propellant, analogous to miles per gallon in a car. Usually, in space propulsion systems, there is a trade-off between thrust and specific-impulse but for the proposed nuclear propulsion has both high thrust and high specific impulse.

            One drawback of the NPP engine is the fact that its thrust comes in the form of explosive bursts. This means that there must be a way to absorb the shock of each blast and protect the rest of the ship from being shaken apart by changing stresses. In addition, there is the problem of intense radiation from the bomb blasts. The rest of the ship and especially the crew must be protected from the radiation. The shock absorber disk can also provide shielding. The design of such a craft would be long and thin with the engine on one end and the crew quarters as far away as possible on the other end.

            With the passage of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 which prohibited nuclear explosion in space, interest in Project Orion waned and the project was dropped in 1965. Through the years since, a number of studies have been done on different configurations of shape and nuclear propulsion for interstellar craft for exploring beyond the solar system. Some of these designs would utilize a greater number of small nuclear explosions from pellets as opposed to the nuclear bombs envisions for Project Orion.

Artist’s conception of a Project Orion vehicle from NASA:

                While the United States had Operation Plowshare to explore the peaceful use of nuclear explosions, the Soviet Union also had a similar program.  It was called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (NENE). A literal descriptive name but lacking in the resonance of Operation Plowshare.

               Following the detonation of their first nuclear bomb in 1949, the Soviets said that although they would have as many nuclear bombs as they needed in case of a war, they were dedicated to the peaceful use of such explosives for “blowing up mountains, changing the course of rivers, irrigating deserts, and charting new paths of life in regions untrodden by human foot.” However, they strongly advocated total nuclear disarmament and this impeded their research into peaceful uses for nuclear explosives.

               The Soviets waited until the mid-1960s to start their NENE program. Initially aimed excavation and petroleum stimulation, their program eventually expanded into other areas of interest. Broadly speaking, the Soviets were conducting tests for two categories of applications. 

               Employment of Nuclear Explosive Technologies in the Interests of National Economy was the name for the part of NENE that was focused on creating underground water reservoirs, dams and canals and the creation of huge underground caves as places to store dangerous toxic waste. Between 1965 and 1989, the Soviets exploded one hundred and twenty four nuclear devices in research on these possible uses for excavation.

               Peaceful Nuclear Explosive Technologies in the Interests of National Economy was the name for the other part of NENE. It focused on the use of nuclear explosions as a ground wave generator for seismological mineral exploration, shattering bodies of ore to make mining easier, cracking underground formations to make the extraction of gas and oil easier, and created underground chambers to store the gas and oil. This part of NENE exploded one hundred and fifteen nuclear devices as part of their research.

              In addition to all of the test explosions, the Soviet Union actually used nuclear explosions in real world applications in several cases. A gas field in Uzbekistan had been burning out of control for three years when a thirty kiloton nuclear device was used to snuff out the fire. A forty five kiloton nuclear device was used to seal a blow out in another gas field.

             Some of these underground tests released radioactivity into the atmosphere that was detected beyond their borders. Another test failed in its objective but polluted local water with plutonium that remained far beyond safety limits for decades. A third blast release a radioactive plume in near a populated area and the site could have been flooded by a nearby river which could have polluted a huge area.

            NENE ended in 1989 as a part of the Soviets unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. Overall, the results of the tests were disappointing with respect to the goals of the tests and showed many problems with the civil use of nuclear bombs.

Lake Chagan in Kazakhstan created by a nuclear explosion:

 

              The primary use of nuclear bombs is as weapons. They are compact and extremely powerful. However, conventional explosives find use in civilian applications such as excavations for mining and construction. Early in the history of nuclear explosives, the suggestion was made that they might have use for such peaceful purposes.

              The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission had worked during the 1950s to convince the American public that atomic research and development was important for many civilian uses such as nuclear medicine and nuclear power generation. However, the Korean War and the Cold War had created an atmosphere of fear around nuclear science because of the threat of nuclear annihilation. The U.S. government wanted to counter that fear by encouraging the public to believe that the use of atomic bombs could be valuable for civilian projects. They needed to maintain the public’s confidence and support for pouring money into nuclear research much of which aided nuclear weapon research.

             Operation Plowshare (or Project Plowshare) was a child of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. The project was formally launched in 1957. In 1960, Eisenhower’s Vice President delivered a speech in which he discussed the new. He touted the great possibilities of what he called “atomic dynamite” for moving mountains and digging harbors and canals.

              In 1961, Operation Plowshare began testing nuclear bombs for the purpose of earth moving by underground detonation. The idea was to control the placement and size of craters to enabled controlled earthmoving for such things as harbors and canals, mountain passes, earth dams and underground storage caves for water or natural gas. Potential projects were brought forward such as carving a harbor into the coastline of Alaska and digging an alternative to the Panama Canal between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Another possible idea was that nuclear blasts underground could release natural gas locked in the rock or “atomic” fracking. Between 1961 to 1973, 27 atomic bombs were exploded as part of Operation Plowshare, most of them at the Nevada Test site.

             Unfortunately, it turned out that even underground explosions resulted in release of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Exact control of the dimensions of the craters were difficult. Underground nuclear explosions to extract natural gas were not as productive as anticipated and residual radioactivity contaminated the gas released. Underground explosions can contaminate underground water threatening supplies for human consumptions and irrigation. Underground nuclear explosions could also aggravate faults lines causing earthquakes.

             Operation Plowshare failed to produce useful results and there was a public backlash against the use nuclear bombs within the borders of the United States, especially near concentrations of population. The last test explosion was in 1973 and all funding ended in 1977. It is estimated that over seven hundred and seventy million dollars was spent during the life of the project. To date, the U.S government has not made public any consideration of further use of atomic bombs for civilian purposes.

Operation Plowshare test crater:

          In 2008, right after the election of Barack Obama as President of the U.S., the Russian President Medvedev announced that the Russian Federation would deploy new sort-range missiles on their western border as a counter to the announced intention of the U.S. to place anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic on the Russian border. The Bush administration claimed that the new missiles were being deployed to counter Iranian missiles The Russian President stated that any negotiations on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to replace the original which was going to expire at the end of 2009 would have to be legally binding with lower maximums on nuclear warheads and their delivery vehicles.

           In early 2009, the Russian President said that the Russian Federation was going to start a major rearmament project including upgrading their nuclear arsenal. He said that since NATO was moving aggressively in Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation would increase their army, navel and nuclear capabilities as a response and that they would begin in 2011.

          In May of 2009, the U.S. and the Russians began working on a new start agreement and agreed to abide by the terms of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) after it expired in December of 2009 until a new treaty was signed. The new treaty would reduce the number of warheads they deployed to under one thousand five hundred each.

          In July of 2009, U.S. President Obama and Russian Federation President Medvedev signed the “Joint understanding for a follow-on agreement to START I in Moscow, Russia. The agreement requires that each side reduce its warheads to between one thousand five hundred and one thousand six hundred seventy five. The delivery systems were to be reduced to between five hundred and one thousand one hundred. This was only an interim agreement and the intention was to see a new treaty negotiated and signed before December of 2009 when START I expired.

         Despite the intent to replace START I before it expired in December of 2009, negotiations dragged on into 2010. Finally in April of 2010, the successor to START I, Measures to Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms was signed by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev. It replaced the proposed START II treaty which was signed but never implemented and the unfinished negotiations for a START III treaty. The treaty was ratified and entered into force in February 2011. Each side will have seven years to comply and the treaty will remain in force until 2021.

          New START requires that deployed warheads on both sides be reduced by 50%. This would be around one thousand five hundred. Total intercontinental missiles launchers, submarine missiles launchers and heavy bombers could not exceed eight hundred with only seven hundred of those being deployed. Stockpiled warheads are not covered by the treaty and each side still has thousands of inactive warheads in storage. A new inspection system with eighteen inspections per year will be developed to verify compliance. (There was a report from the U.S. State Department in 2009 that the Russians were not in full compliance with the previous START I treaty.)

Signing of New START:

             Following the use of atomic bombs on Japan, the U.S. was soon joined by other nations in developing and testing nuclear weapons. Over five hundred nuclear devices were exploded in atmospheric and ground tests in the decade after the end of World War II. The world became concerned about the health effects of the fallout from all the tests. The Prime minister of India called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide in 1953. However, the Cold War between the U.S., Russia and Red China made progress on nuclear disarmament very difficult.

          Almost another decade passed before the Partial Test Ban Treaty was drafted and signed in 1963. It banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater or in space but did not ban underground testing which could still result in the release of radioactive materials. France and China did not sign this Treaty.

          After further negotiation, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968. Nations that did not have nuclear weapons agreed not to manufacture, purchase or otherwise obtain them. All nations who signed the treaty whether or not they had nuclear weapons agreed to work towards nuclear disarmament. India, Pakistan and Israel did not sign this treaty.

          During the next two decades, the world remained in the grip of the Cold War with the United States, the United Kingdom, and France against the Soviets and the Chinese. Pakistan and India developed their nuclear arsenals as did Israel. Finally with the end of the Cold War on the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the situation improved for nuclear disarmament. In 1993, under the auspices of the United Nations, the signatories of the Partial Test Ban Treaty began discussing the possibility of expanding the original Treaty to cover a ban on all nuclear weapons testing.

           Despite three years of hard debate on the proposed treaty, the negotiators could not reach a consensus. The text resulting from the negotiations was submitted to the United Nations General Assembly as a draft resolution in 1996. In September of that year, more than two thirds of the U.N. General Assembly voted in favor of what was called the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty. Since the U.N. vote, only India, Pakistan and North Korea have carried out nuclear tests.

           The United States has signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty but it has not been ratified by Congress. Ratification will ultimately depend on the U.S. maintaining nuclear laboratories and a reliable nuclear weapons inventory as well as monitoring capability to verify compliance by other states. The U.S. also reserves the right to begin testing again after withdrawing from the Treaty if it proves impossible to maintain a reliable nuclear arsenal without testing.

            Despite fail of all signatory nations to ratify the Treaty, they refrain from testing and monitor the environment constantly for signs of any nuclear testing by any state. The debate over ratification in the U.S. and other nations continue.

 Annex 2 refers to a list of 44 countries which participated in the original treaty negotiations:

    

              During the early 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a series of talks about strategic arms reduction. Although the U.S. President Reagan had repeatedly accused the Soviets of violating the terms of the SALT II treaty, he was still willing to propose a reduction in all warheads at Geneva in 1982. The discussions that followed were originally referred to as SALT III but ultimately came to be called the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks or START I. IN the first phase, Reagan called a limit of all warheads on missiles to five thousand and a limit of warheads on ICBMs of two thousand five hundred. Only eight hundred and fifty ICBMs would be allowed per side and a limit of about one hundred of the heaviest class of ICBMS. In the second phase, there would be negotiations on the number of warheads carried by heavy bombers.

             At the time, the U.S. had a clear advantage in long range bombers which could reach Russia although the Soviet air space was well defended and the targets spread over the huge territory of the Soviet Union. The Soviet fleet of bomber were unable to reach the U.S. for the most part and were mainly intended for conflicts in Europe and Asia. The Soviets had a clear advantage in heavy ICBM so by starting with ICBM reduction, the U.S. would benefit more than the Soviets from the first phase of Reagan’s proposal.

            In 1983, Reagan announced the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) which was a shift of U.S. policy from the mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the prior decades when it was assumed that it was not possible to win a nuclear war with the Soviets and that if either side started one, both sides would be totally destroyed. The SDI was intended to shift U.S. policy to defending the U.S. against a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union with land and space based defense systems. This shift in U.S. policy alarmed the Soviets because they realized that if the U.S. could possibly stage a first strike against the Soviet Union and withstand a retaliatory strike from the Soviets. The Soviets withdrew from negotiations during the mid 1980s and the strategic arms race accelerated. Although SDI was viewed by many experts as being an impossible plan, billions of dollars were squandered on it in the 1980s.

            By the beginning of the 1990s, as a result of the nuclear arms race of the 1980s, both sides had more than ten thousand nuclear warheads. The START I treaty was signed in 1991 by the U.S. President Bush and the Soviet Premier Gorbachev to halt the increase in warheads. There were also limits set for fighter aircraft, tanks, artillery pieces and attack helicopters. The U.S. destroyed three hundred and sixty five B-52 bombers to comply with the treaty. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the Russians inherited the Soviet nuclear arsenal and the Treaty. Other countries that had been part of the Soviet Union sent their nuclear weapons to Russia and signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to become nuclear free countries. When the SALT I treaty expired in 2009, the U.S. State Department reported that the Russians were not in compliance with the terms of the Treaty but gave no specific details of violations.

Signing of the START I in 1991 from U.S. State Department: