Nuclear security summit looks at threat posed by Islamic State
US President Barack Obama is hosting an international nuclear security summit in Washington on Thursday and Friday. The summit is aimed at ensuring that nuclear material in the world's 1,000 atomic facilities is secure and out of the hands of criminals.
Issued on:
Analysis of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington
The Nuclear Security Summit will continue discussions that began during the first summit of its kind in 2010, which also took place in Washington.
The agenda includes debates on minimising the use of highly-enriched uranium, securing vulnerable materials, countering nuclear smuggling, and detecting and disrupting nuclear terrorism attempts.
President Obama will welcome leaders from China and Nigeria, as well as representatives from nearly 50 other nations. Russia, however, said it won’t participate in the meeting, and Pakistan's prime minister, Nawaz Sharif has cancelled his planned trip following the terrorist attack in Lahore on Sunday.
"There are radioactive isotopes, which sometimes come from the medical arena or the industrial arena, that have got no use for nuclear weapons, as such, but could still be very potent as terrorist weapons," said Matthew Healy, a lecturer in defence and security at Cranfield University in the UK.
"You can also have highly enriched uranium, or forms of plutonium, that are also used in the civil sector, which could potentially be formed into a crude nuclear weapon."
The Nuclear Security Summit is taking place just days after 32 people were killed and 340 were injured in bombings at Brussels airport and the Belgian capital's metro. Two of the Brussels suicide bombers have been linked to possible efforts by the Islamic State armed group to secure fissile material.
Matthew Healy told RFI: "I think the recent events in Belgium have exposed an appetite to circumnavigate some of the physical protection measures that have been in use in nuclear power facilities, and people who use radio active isotopes.
"But the weakness of any system, however good the physical protection is, is always the people. This nuclear security summit will hopefully respond to some of the probing of the potential weakeness by IS by looking at the people as part of the system instead of the physical security."
Since the summits began, 14 nations have eliminated their fissile material stockpiles, and other countries have stepped up efforts to secure theirs. But, at the same time, Pakistan, India and North Korea have built new bombs, and experts warn these fall behind in safety standards aimed at preventing accidental detonation.
Tim Street is a researcher at the Oxford Research Group - an independent peace and security think-tank based in the UK:
"If state, or non-state actors, which may include terrorists, were able to get hold of fissile materials, of which there are large quantities around the world - some of which are not totally secure because they are in conflict prone locations - then there is the potential for those fissile materials to be weaponised," says Street.
"The Soviet Union is a particular concern. After the end of the Cold War, there were nulerous stocks of fissile materials located in the former Soviet Union. There were nuclear weapons in former Soviet states, including the Ukraine. Those installations had to be secured, and the fissile materials stored properly. Going forward, it's important that nuclear reduction programmes are reinstalled."
The Islamic State group has already used chemical weapons. Experts fear the jihadists are trying to secure fissile material to make a "dirty bomb". Such a device would not trigger a nuclear explosion but would scatter radioactive material with potentially devastating physiological, medical and economic effects.
But the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has taken a more critical approach to the summit. "This initiative, originating with President Obama's wider commitment to achieving a nuclear weapons free world, has made some positive progress, but it has been limited by the selective nature of participation: an invite-only process," Kate Hudson, CND general secretary, told RFI.
"We support a universal approach to these crucial problems and would like to have seen the inclusion of Iran and North Korea in the process. We are also concerned that this discussion should not divert attention from the crucial NPT goal that remains to be addressed: nuclear disarmament."
A 2015 US government audit found that Obama's goal of improving the physical protection of more than 43 sensitive buildings, and making 34 foreign reactors more "proliferation-resistant", had not been met.
The International Panel on Fissile Materials, an independent group of arms-control experts, estimated that the global stockpile of highly enriched uranium stood at around 1370 tonnes at the end of 2014. Most of these stockpiles were being held in Russia.
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe