Citizens to Stop Nuclear Terrorism

If there can be any comfort in the horror of September 11, it is in knowing that the two fuel-laden jetliners were piloted toward the Twin Towers as conventional weapons, not nuclear missiles. They killed nearly 3,000 people. That's only a fraction of the casualties that would be caused by a nuclear explosion.

Anti-terrorism experts estimate that a 10-kiloton nuclear device, smaller than the bomb that wiped out Hiroshima, could kill half a million people and cause $1 trillion in damage if detonated in midtown Manhattan on as typical a workday as 9/11 started out to be. The 9/11 Commission warned that terrorists "could fashion a nuclear device that would fit in a van like the one Ramzi Yousef parked in the garage of the World Trade Center in 1993." And Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded that "fabrication of at least a 'crude' nuclear device was within al-Qaida's capabilities, if it could obtain fissile material."

If this is so, then why hasn't all of the fissile nuclear material worldwide been locked down by now, far beyond the reach of terrorists?

The Belfer Center's Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate with the "Project on Managing the Atom," which was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Institute, reports that weapons-usable nuclear material is vulnerable to theft even though many countries have strengthened their nuclear security since 9/11. But Pakistan's nuclear stockpiles are an " urgent concern" because, although they are heavily guarded, they face threats from al-Qaida and nuclear insiders who might be willing to sell nuclear weapons technology.

The Belfer Center reports that U.S.-led programs over the past decade have "dramatically reduced" the threat to the United States from a variety of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices. More than three dozen countries have signed up for the U.S.-Russian-inspired Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. But the initiative hasn't accomplished very much.

"The essential ingredients of nuclear weapons exist in over 40 countries, and there are scores of sites that are not secure enough to defeat the capabilities that terrorists and criminals have demonstrated," said the Belfer Center's report on nuclear terrorism, "Securing the Bomb 2007." "Improved security for nuclear stockpiles in Russia and elsewhere as well as the disruption of al-Qaida's centrally controlled structure after 9/11 have reduced the risk, but far more remains to be done."

"In short," the report said, "this is not just an American problem: insecure nuclear material anywhere is a threat to everyone, everywhere."

To speed the cleanup of nuclear materials globally, Citizens to Stop Nuclear Terrorism endorses other recommendations of the Belfer Center's experts, among them:

• An urgent global campaign to ensure that every nuclear weapon and every significant cache of nuclear material worldwide is secure and accounted for.
• Stringent global standards for nuclear security.
• An expanded and accelerated global effort to remove potential bomb material from vulnerable sites worldwide.
• Appointment of a senior official at the White House to lead these efforts full time and to the keep them on the front burner, day in and day out

Further, Belfer Center Director Graham Allison has proposed what he calls a "Doctrine of Three Nos" to ensure that nuclear weapons and weapons-grade materials are kept from terrorists, and it's a strategy to which we've also signed on. Those three are:

• No unsecured nuclear weapons and weapons usable material; they should be locked down as quickly as possible.
• No new domestic capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium.
• No expansion of the nuclear club beyond its current 8.5 members, the half being North Korea.

The 9/11 terrorists didn't have access to nuclear materials. Osama bin Laden has served notice that he wants to get them. Will it take a nuclear 9/11 before the world acts with urgency to lock down the materials needed to fashion a device whose detonation could have a devastating effect on every man, woman and child on the planet?