Nuclear security summit must carry on beyond Obama’s term in office

Andrew Hammond says though the chance of a nuclear terrorism event is low, its consequences would be so catastrophic that international cooperation on nuclear security must continue

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World leaders meet during a previous nuclear security summit in the Netherlands in 2014. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:26pm, 30 Mar 2016Updated: 1:26pm, 30 Mar 2016

Washington plays host on March 31 and April 1 to the fourth and potentially final Nuclear Security Summit, convened by US President Barack Obama. Following the tragic Brussels attacks last week, the event has assumed heightened importance with media reports that some of the self-ascribed Islamic State (IS) bombers had initially planned to attack a nuclear power plant in Belgium.

There is growing concern about the threat of nuclear terrorism. After Brussels, British defence secretary Michael Fallon pointed to a “new and emerging threat” of terrorists acquiring nuclear weaponry, while former US defence secretary Robert Gates has noted that “every senior leader, when you’re asked what keeps you awake at night, it’s the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear”.

A Belgian soldier stands guard on a road leading to Zaventem airport after the attacks in Brussels. Photo: Reuters

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More than 50 countries will convene at the Nuclear Security Summit to focus on “minimising the use of highly enriched uranium, securing vulnerable materials, countering nuclear smuggling and deterring, detecting and disrupting attempts at nuclear terrorism”. This wide-ranging agenda first came to prominence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when concerns were raised about safeguarding the former communist state’s extensive nuclear weaponry.

The urgency of nuclear terrorism was raised by the September 2001 attacks

More recently, however, the urgency of nuclear terrorism was raised by the September 2001 attacks. This was interpreted in some quarters as a wake-up call to the possibility that a group such as al-Qaeda could detonate a small nuclear weapon or a radiological dispersal device (a so-called dirty bomb).

The summit process kicked off soon after Obama assumed office when he asserted that nuclear terrorism represents “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security”. In the same speech, he gave an ambitious deadline to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years”.

While this deadline was unrealistic, there has been progress in reducing the number of countries with access to highly enriched uranium and plutonium. For instance, enough such highly enriched uranium for some 3,000 nuclear weapons has been “down-blended” in Russia and the US, around a dozen countries have returned their previous stockpiles of it back to the country of origin (mostly to the US and Russia); and around 20 countries have launched an initiative against nuclear smuggling.

However, this effort remains a work in progress. As of late 2013, for instance, some 30 states from Europe to Asia, including Uzbekistan and Pakistan, had at least 1kg of highly enriched uranium in civilian stocks.