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Four dangers the nuclear talks will overlook

Oren Dorell
A nuclear summit in Washington that opens on March 31, 2016 will focus on how to keep terrorists from getting nuclear material from facilities such as this nuclear power plant in Doel, Belgium, photographed on March 12, 2016.

Leaders from 50 countries converge on Washington this week for the fourth Nuclear Security Summit, part of President Obama’s call for a worldwide effort to secure nuclear materials from terrorists.

Here are four nuclear security vulnerabilities they will discuss Thursday and Friday — and four that are not on the agenda:


What they'll discuss: The recent uptick in terrorist attacks in Europe have made world leaders more worried about terrorists using conventional bombs combined with nuclear material to explode radioactive "dirty bombs" that could cause injuries, panic and economic damage over a large area.

The leaders will discuss safeguards at facilities such as hospitals and research labs that use nuclear materials, ways to improve intelligence to better detect plots to use dirty bombs, and responses to a potential dirty-bomb attack, said Bruce Blair, co-founder of Global Zero, the international movement for eliminating nuclear weapons.

Overlooked: Accidental explosions. More recent nuclear weapons countries, such as India, Pakistan and North Korea, are decades behind the United States and Russia in terms of safeguarding their nuclear weapons in case of a mishap, Blair said. If a weapon falls from an aircraft that is crashing and is hit by an explosive force, "chances are there’d be a chain reaction and the weapons would explode,” he said.

Also, those countries along with China are moving toward a state of nuclear readiness that raises the risk of accidental nuclear launches and detonations. “That whole agenda is being ignored,” Blair said.

This Jan. 12, 2016 photo,  shows No. 3 nuclear reactor, bottom, at Takahama nuclear power station in Takahama town in Fukui prefecture, northwestern Japan. Japan has restarted a nuclear reactor that burns plutonium-based fuel for power generation, first under the post-Fukushima safety rules. The No. 3 reactor at Takahama nuclear plant in western Japan, operated by Kansai Electric Power Co., becomes the first one using plutonium-uranium hybrid fuel known as MOX to go back online since the 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima.


What they'll discuss: The summit will address the possible theft of highly enriched uranium and plutonium in civilian facilities, such as research reactors, that can be used to fuel a nuclear device, Blair said.

Previous summits have focused on converting nuclear reactors to use less harmful low-enriched uranium or sending it back to Russia or the United States, where it would be more secure.

Overlooked: Many other nuclear thefts or sabotage, such as rogue military insiders working with outside groups to steal nuclear material or detonate a device, Blair said.

Obama-led summit focuses on preventing nuclear terrorism


What they'll discuss: The summit deals with highly enriched uranium and plutonium that are under civilian control, mainly nuclear power authorities around the world, but also some medical and research facilities. They oversee 2% of the world’s total stock of highly enriched uranium and plutonium — enough to produce 4,000 nuclear weapons.

Overlooked: Military stocks of nuclear fuel plus civilian plutonium, which represent 98% of the world’s supply of weapons-grade material. Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, told reporters that military programs will be discussed. But they can't be specific because the United States is the only nuclear power that has declared the size of its nuclear stockpile. Plus, Russia, which has the world's largest nuclear stockpile, is boycotting the summit because of displeasure over how the U.S. organizers prepared the agenda. "So how can they focus on it with any specificity?" Blair said.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano of Japan speaks during a news conference after a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors in Vienna, Austria, 07 March 2016. The meeting of which IAEA in their calendar did not provide any further details is scheduled to last until 11 March 2016.


What they'll discuss: The White House says international attention has focused on improving institutions that deal with nuclear security around the world. This includes improving the capabilities of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency; the international law-enforcement agency, INTERPOL, which combats nuclear smuggling; and the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, an 86-nation group. All have been reinvigorated in recent years.

"We will look for ways to enhance the global nuclear security architecture,” Rhodes said.

Overlooked: These efforts don’t include plutonium reprocessing, which countries use to recycle spent nuclear fuel. It can be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

Japan now has 10 tons of civilian plutonium on its soil, enough to build 2,500 nuclear bombs, Blair said. But it’s not being discussed for diplomatic reasons.

Japan could convert that material into nuclear fuel and produce nuclear weapons if it decided it needed to deter North Korea, a nuclear state that repeatedly has threatened to launch nuclear missiles targeting Japan, South Korea and the United States. "We're not talking to Japan about that because it's a proliferation risk," Blair said. To do so is too sensitive, he said. It "would be a clear statement of concern that Japan would go nuclear."