Raising international standards for protecting nuclear materials from theft and sabotage

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The break-up of the Soviet Union resulted in conditions that focused attention on the possible risk of “loose nukes.” But the risk from insecure nuclear materials is not limited to the former Soviet Union; there is a need to ensure adequate physical protection on a global basis. Weapons-usable materials— plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)—are spread widely around the world. A significant portion of these materials exists in civilian rather than military inventories. For example, some 12 countries (Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) possess among them over 180,000 kilograms of separated, civilian weapons-usable plutonium—as compared with approximately 250,000 kilograms in weapons or weapons reserves. It takes only a few kilograms of this material to make a nuclear weapon. If any of this material were stolen or illegally removed from an existing inventory, it could be used by another country or terrorist organization to make a bomb. Without effective cooperative efforts between many countries to guard weapons-usable materials, no government can protect its people from the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists or hostile states. In 1997, the US Department of Energy (DOE) established a goal of guarding weapons-usable materials just as well as US nuclear weapons are guarded. However, many civilian weapons-usable materials are not yet so protected even in the United States. And, even if they were, that might not reduce American risks much if other countries continued to maintain lower standards. Hostile countries or terrorist groups that want to obtain weapons-usable materials are likely to go wherever these materials can most easily be bought or stolen.