New Group Seeks to Fortify Nuclear Sites
Sep 29 - International Herald Tribune
A new organization is being unveiled Monday in Vienna that seeks to bolster
security at thousands of nuclear sites around the globe in an effort to
block atomic theft and terrorism. Its aim is to promote the best security
practices, eliminate weak links in the global security chain and,
ultimately, keep terrorists from getting the bomb.
No single organization now does that for the world's expanding maze of
nuclear sites - private and public, civilian and military.
"The stakes are very high," Sam Nunn, a former Democratic U.S. senator from
Georgia and the force behind the new organization, said in an interview.
"There's no doubt that terrorist groups are trying to get this material."
An atom bomb that could raze Lower Manhattan requires a ball of nuclear fuel
no larger than a grapefruit.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private group in Washington led by Nunn, is
setting up the new organization, which is known as the World Institute for
Nuclear Security, or WINS. The institute is starting with $6 million in
donations and plans to expand in the next two years to an annual budget of
perhaps $8 million and a staff in Vienna of a dozen or so nuclear
specialists.
The institute intends to provide a forum where nuclear security
professionals can meet and share information about how to keep sensitive
materials out of unfriendly hands. Its focus will be less on locks and
cameras than such management issues as how to keep guards alert and how to
foil sophisticated attackers.
"These are common concerns," said Corey Hinderstein of the Nuclear Threat
Initiative. "But until now, these professionals have had no way to talk to
their peers about how to handle these kinds of challenges."
The institute's first director is to be Roger Howsley, who until recently
was director of security for British Nuclear Fuels, which employs about
10,000 people.
The institute is being set up in Vienna mainly because of its proximity to
the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which provides
some nuclear security advice to United Nations member states. Mohamed
ElBaradei, the agency's director, is expected to be at the unveiling Monday
and has strongly endorsed the institute.
"I am confident," he wrote to Nunn, that the new forum will help establish
"a global nuclear security regime."
The public announcement of the institute's founding is to take place Monday
afternoon at the Austria Center as part of the IAEA's annual meeting.
The IAEA, an arm of the United Nations whose principal job is to make sure
that member states use their atomic facilities for peaceful ends, also
tracks atomic theft and smuggling. It reports that 18 cases of illicit
trafficking have involved relatively small amounts of atom bomb fuel.
Experts worry that some of the seizures have involved what amount to samples
on the global nuclear black market.
Initially, the World Institute for Nuclear Security plans to work with sites
handling materials that can fuel an atom bomb, which number in the hundreds.
It then expects to expand its agenda to include sites that use a wider array
of radioactive materials, which number in the thousands.
The institute is modeled on the World Association of Nuclear Operators, an
organization founded in London after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster to promote
global atomic safety.
Nunn said that he got the idea for the security institute after working for
the operator association and finding that its agenda gave little attention
to preventing nuclear theft.
"The world cannot afford what I call a security Chernobyl," he said. "That
would set back the whole effort to use the atom for positive purposes," like
diminishing the global addiction to fossil fuels. "So I think this effort is
enormously important, beyond preventing the human tragedy that would come
from any kind of security disaster."
Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.
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