President Obama is calling this week’s two-day summit in Washington a success for raising global awareness of the threat of nuclear terrorism.
The unprecedented event brought together 47 nations.
“We also agreed that the most effective way to prevent terrorists and criminals from acquiring nuclear materials is through strong nuclear security, protecting nuclear materials and preventing nuclear smuggling,” said Obama.
Several countries touted news regulations designed to crack down on the illegal possession of nuclear goods, such as enriched uranium and plutonium, as well as plans to reduce their own stockpiles of those materials.
Egypt announced new legislation criminalizing trafficking in nuclear goods. Malaysia, a nation grown notorious as a transit point for illegal nuclear technology, announced a new law tightening export controls. Canada, Ukraine, Mexico and others vowed to give up their highly-enriched uranium. The United States and Russia signed an update to a ten-year-old agreement to eliminate weapons-grade plutonium from their military programs.
All nations present endorsed Obama’s (non-binding) goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. Of course, the issue will be holding those 47 nations accountable to that agreement.
North Korea’s continued efforts to build a nuclear weapons program kept it out of the Washington summit.
Unsecured fissile materials gathered by Russia, the US and other nations during the Cold War remain a huge security threat. Associated Press reports that something between 1,300 and 1,900 tons of weapons-grade uranium is stockpiled worldwide, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials.
Hundreds of tons of enriched uranium are packed into deployed or disused nuclear warheads in the US and Russia; tons more remain in Russian icebreakers, US missile submarines, in university research reactors and storehouses within Japan’s nuclear power system, according to AP. It only takes a few pounds of enriched uranium or plutonium to create a city-leveling bomb.
So far, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, counts almost two dozen known incidents involving plutonium or highly-enriched uranium since the early 1990s.
An AP analysis says experts say what’s needed are stronger treaties and other agreements to collect and dispose of fissile materials, to stop their production, to share intelligence, to enact tougher domestic laws and with more money flowing from rich to poor nations to tighten borders and controls on illicit trade.
The next global nuclear summit will be held in South Korea in 2012.
Photo of centrifuges by Fastfission via Wikimedia Commons.