Editor’s Note : On Jan. 18, diplomats from 65 countries at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva will try to agree to begin talks on a treaty that would stop the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Cutting off production of fissile materials for weapons could provide the basis for irreversible reductions of all nuclear weapons.

In the article below, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian and Frank von Hippel, all at Princeton University and affiliated with the International Panel on Fissile Materials, propose the basic pillars of a fissile material cutoff treaty, how compliance with such a treaty could be verified and who should pay the tab. We’d like your views, which could help inform ongoing discussions of what should be in this treaty and how it might work, as well as help us further develop the article; please use the Comment feature at the end of this page.

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