Promoting Best Practices in Nuclear Materials Security
The future of peaceful uses of nuclear energy is linked to the nuclear community's ability to ensure that all nuclear materials are managed responsibly and protected from credible threats.
Supplies of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the necessary materials to make a nuclear weapon, are widely dispersed around the world. Obtaining these essential materials is one of the most difficult tasks for a terrorist wanting to make a nuclear weapon. Since these materials are difficult to make, the most likely way a terrorist organization will get them is through illicit purchase or theft. Terrorists will try to acquire nuclear material from wherever it is easiest to steal or from anyone willing to sell. Terrorists won't necessarily look where there is the most material; they may go to the place where the material is the most vulnerable or accessible.
Vulnerable nuclear material anywhere is a threat to everyone, everywhere. Like most global problems, the defense against nuclear terrorism is dependent upon cooperative and collective global action.
The concern of the international community has been translated since 9/11 into several new international initiatives to help strengthen our global capability to keep nuclear materials and weapons out of the hands of terrorists. International agreements and treaties help create the necessary norms and legal frameworks but are not sufficient to achieve security without concrete action. The international community, including government, industry and nongovernmental organizations, has worked, through various means, to act to implement those frameworks with mixed success. The reasons for this include inadequate implementing mechanisms for nuclear security initiatives, and the institutional and budgetary constraints of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international organization charged with supporting many of these efforts.
To deal with these implementation challenges and to meet the changing threat, there is a need for additional international efforts to strengthen nuclear material security worldwide in a way that will complement and supplement the efforts of the IAEA, its Member States and the various international global security initiatives. A key element of these efforts must be focused on the facility operators with the first line responsibility for the security of their materials.
One way to improve nuclear material security is to facilitate the global sharing of best practices. This sharing could help security practitioners worldwide implement more effective and efficient security programs for nuclear materials in use, storage, and transit. In order to support this exchange of information, there should be a regular forum for operators and practitioners to share security strategies and best practices. Entities can choose to participate in these activities voluntarily and on a case-by-case basis. Such a forum would allow practitioners to consider implementation methodologies derived from world-wide experience and lessons learned.
An option for creating such a forum is to establish a new international entity we are notionally calling "The World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS)" which could serve as the coordinating and facilitating body for the sharing of information about nuclear material security best practices. WINS would serve the common nuclear security needs of its members from the nuclear industry without prejudice to fuel cycle choices. The overarching goal is to ensure nuclear security at all facilities through the appropriate exchange of best practices and lessons learned by the operators of those facilities, on a voluntary basis.
In March 2006, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Institute of Nuclear Material Management (INMM) agreed to establish a WINS concept development project overseen by a coordinating committee consisting of representatives from NTI, INMM, and the US Department of Energy, with the participation of the IAEA.
In November 2006, NTI organized and co-sponsored, with INMM, an international "Experts Group" meeting to explore the WINS concept. Twenty-five participants attended from 17 different countries and the IAEA, including representatives of government regulatory bodies, ministries, and private industry. At the conclusion of the meeting, there was general consensus on the need for and value of WINS and the importance of continuing to advance the concept with support from NTI, INMM, and other international partners.
Part of the WINS concept development process has been to conduct "pilot projects" to demonstrate the value of WINS-type activities to nuclear material managers and facility operators. These pilot activities include supporting an INMM best practices workshop and creating a Web site that will serve as a repository for best practices developed through all INMM workshops or contributed by INMM members. Another pilot project was sponsored by Norwegian Foreign Ministry and hosted by Norway's Institute for Energy Technology (IFE). At this meeting, operators from research reactors, including those responsible for managing highly enriched uranium, came together to discuss nuclear security best practices at research reactors. These pilot projects have demonstrated that the concept of improving nuclear material security through the exchange of practices by professionals is possible.
An organizational and governance guidance document describing the vision, financing requirements and other logistical questions for the establishment of WINS was drafted by a small international group at a meeting in September 2007 and circulated to the Baden Experts and the INMM WINS Steering Committee for comments. The document is designed to be the basis for discussion with potential WINS supporters and participants, outlining the elements of an independent business entity, governed by a board of directors, and preferably located in Vienna, Austria.
The coordinating committee continues its outreach with a goal of getting funding and other commitments of support from key government and private entities to launch the new WINS organization in 2008. For current information on the status of WINS developments, see the NTI WINS Web site.
© 2008 Institute of Nuclear Materials Management