Staff Reports
NS&D Monitor
3/21/2014
A four-year effort to secure vulnerable nuclear material around the world failed to provide effective security for the world’s most at-risk nuclear materials, according to a report released yesterday by Harvard’s Belfer Center. The report, “Advancing Nuclear Security: Evaluating Progress and Setting New Goals,” comes on the eve of next week’s third Nuclear Security Summit, and notes that the four-year effort that wrapped up in 2013—a signature initiative of the Obama Administration—made some progress in protecting vulnerable materials, but it said important weaknesses remain in many countries and no international nuclear security regulations exist to standardize how to protect sensitive nuclear materials. “There are still countries with: no on-site armed guards to protect nuclear facilities, even ones with plutonium or HEU; no required background checks before granting access to nuclear facilities and materials; and limited protections against insider theft,” the report said, adding that testing and assessment programs are also lacking around the world.
The international nuclear security framework “remains weak and uneven,” the report said. “There are no global rules that say how secure a nuclear weapon or the materials needed to make one should be,” the report said. “There are no agreed approaches for building confidence that states are fulfilling their nuclear security responsibilities. After the Nuclear security summits end, it is not yet clear what forums will enable focused high-level dialogue on improving nuclear security to continue.”
