“The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a mission to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and to work to build the trust, transparency, and security that are preconditions to the ultimate fulfillment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s goals and ambitions.” The NTI has issued a report on the global distribution and security of nuclear materials that could be used to make nuclear bombs. Countries possessing such nuclear materials have dropped by twenty five percent in the past two years. Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine, Vietnam, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary have removed most or all of their nuclear materials that could be used to create nuclear weapons.
The report considered such factors as accounting methods, physical security and transportation security in creating a ranking for the twenty five nations with weapons grade nuclear materials. Australia was cited as the most secure country on the list, followed by Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Norway. The United States is ranked at number eleven. Israel, Pakistan, India, Iran and North Korea were ranked as being the worst with respect to nuclear materials security.
It is estimated that there are about fourteen hundred tons of highly enriched (HE) uranium and about five hundred tons of plutonium at hundreds of sites around the globe. Highly enriched uranium and plutonium are the nuclear materials that can be used to construct nuclear weapons. A multi-megaton nuclear bomb can be constructed from about nine pounds of plutonium or about thirty five pounds of uranium.
Reprocessing facilities for plutonium is more difficult to detect than comparable reprocessing facilities for highly enriching uranium. Due to the much smaller quantity of plutonium required for a bomb than uranium, plutonium is the most sought after choice on the black market. About A relatively small amount of HE uranium or plutonium can be used to build a single bomb. Terrorist organizations have expressed the intent to
U.S. President Obama declared in 2009 that he wanted to lock down all the plutonium and HE uranium in the world. World leaders will meet in March to discuss security of weapons grade nuclear materials. Although the U.S. is placed at about the middle of the security ranking, there are still serious security issues in the U.S. In July of 2012, anti-war protesters broke into the Y-12 complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee where the U.S. stockpile of HE uranium is stored. The catalog of U.S. nuclear missile forces problems that I presented in my previous post reinforces the point that the U.S. has some serious work to do on nuclear security.
If terrorists get their hands on weapons grade nuclear materials and manage to acquire the technology and expertise to create a working nuclear bomb, the whole world will pay the price regardless of where the bomb is detonated.
Logo for the Nuclear Threat Initiative:
