IF POLITICIANS are serious about nuclear security, they should start listening to scientists. That鈥檚 the appeal from scientific groups as world leaders promised better security at a summit in Washington DC this week, but said little about how to achieve it.
At the summit, 47 countries , which could be used to create a nuclear bomb, by securing all stockpiles within four years. Some of the world鈥檚 estimated of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) are kept in poorly guarded buildings, and there have been 18 known attempted thefts since 1993. One crude bomb could cause global economic chaos, a report by nuclear security expert Matthew Bunn of Harvard University last week.
鈥淭here have been 18 attempted thefts of fissile material documented since 1993鈥�
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Yet there are at present no agreed standards for what is required to make fissile material 鈥渟ecure鈥�, says Ed Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC. The International Atomic Energy Agency has only voluntary guidelines dating from 1999, and efforts to update them in time for this week鈥檚 summit failed: national nuclear agencies baulk at the idea of an outside agency imposing, and possibly verifying, expensive security measures. What has been agreed so far, says Lyman, offers little improvement. For instance, nations are still not required to post armed guards at stockpiles of fissile material.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science and have argued in recent reports that more research could aid international cooperation, as well as improving technology. For example, networks of could help to spot smuggled fissile material; shared databases on stockpiles of fissile materials could make it easier to pinpoint sources; and HEU could be replaced as a fuel.
