US needs to be nuclear black market's biggest customer in order to stop it.
The U.S. government is not doing enough to buy uranium and plutonium on the black market and keep it out of the hands of terrorists, criminals and rogue states, the Energy Department's top intelligence official said Monday.
"We must take urgent action to scoop up any nuclear material outside state control before terrorists do," Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Energy's intelligence director, said at a speech at the Washington Institute.
Since 1993 there have been 1,300 nuclear-smuggling related incidents, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. About 19 have involved the transfer of weapons grade uranium or plutonium, which could be used to fuel either a traditional nuclear warhead or turn a conventional explosive into a bomb that disperses radiation.
"The continuing instances of trafficking in nuclear materials means we collectively have not done enough to keep material out of the hands of terrorists," he said. "We must urgently intensify efforts to acquire any materials that may be for sale on the illicit nuclear market."
There are nuclear weapons materials in more than 40 countries, with significant amounts in some former Soviet states. Only a few kilograms of plutonium would be needed to make a primitive nuclear weapon, and such material is hard to detect in transit because it emits low levels of radiation, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington.
The amount of nuclear material U.S. agents buy on the black market is classified. The new revelation that the A.Q. Khan nuclear network sold a digital blueprint for a small nuclear warhead highlighted the danger.
That information was contained in a report by David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. arms inspector. The report was issued Monday. The Washington Post first reported on it June 15.
Khan, who headed Pakistan's nuclear program for about 25 years, headed a network that secretly sold nuclear technology to Iran and Libya on the black market. The network was discovered and largely dismantled in 2004.
In that investigation, Swiss officials seized computers and files from three brothers accused of smuggling for the network. By 2006 the files had been deciphered and among them was a detailed design for an advanced but small nuclear warhead.
Albright told The Associated Press on Monday that the design goes far beyond the schematics and information about nuclear weapons available on the Internet. "It's a very different category of information, and it's very dangerous," he said. "There are no other designs out there. There is very little information of this quality out there outside of the nuclear weapons states."
Mowatt-Larssen said the U.S. government assumes terrorists or developing countries can obtain or develop a warhead on their own. Preventing them from acquiring the nuclear materials needed to make a bomb is vital.
The possibility that a terrorist group or country that does not now have a nuclear weapon may build or buy one seems to be frightening enough to do what years of legislation and presidential directives haven't quite achieved: knitting together disparate American intelligence agencies into one well-meshed, functional brain.
Different agencies and offices within those agencies have traditionally worked on separate pieces of the nuclear question -- what the status of a given nation's nuclear energy program is, whether it has or is developing a warhead, if it is sharing or selling weapons information or parts, or the intent of a terrorist group to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Mowatt-Larssen said those analysts are now being tied together into a separate unit that can look at all those questions together and update their assessment of the nuclear threat based on changes in any piece of it. His office declined to provide further details, saying the effort is classified.
The U.S. government is not doing enough to buy uranium and plutonium on the black market and keep it out of the hands of terrorists, criminals and rogue states, the Energy Department's top intelligence official said Monday.
"We must take urgent action to scoop up any nuclear material outside state control before terrorists do," Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Energy's intelligence director, said at a speech at the Washington Institute.
Since 1993 there have been 1,300 nuclear-smuggling related incidents, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. About 19 have involved the transfer of weapons grade uranium or plutonium, which could be used to fuel either a traditional nuclear warhead or turn a conventional explosive into a bomb that disperses radiation.
"The continuing instances of trafficking in nuclear materials means we collectively have not done enough to keep material out of the hands of terrorists," he said. "We must urgently intensify efforts to acquire any materials that may be for sale on the illicit nuclear market."
There are nuclear weapons materials in more than 40 countries, with significant amounts in some former Soviet states. Only a few kilograms of plutonium would be needed to make a primitive nuclear weapon, and such material is hard to detect in transit because it emits low levels of radiation, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington.
The amount of nuclear material U.S. agents buy on the black market is classified. The new revelation that the A.Q. Khan nuclear network sold a digital blueprint for a small nuclear warhead highlighted the danger.
That information was contained in a report by David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. arms inspector. The report was issued Monday. The Washington Post first reported on it June 15.
Khan, who headed Pakistan's nuclear program for about 25 years, headed a network that secretly sold nuclear technology to Iran and Libya on the black market. The network was discovered and largely dismantled in 2004.
In that investigation, Swiss officials seized computers and files from three brothers accused of smuggling for the network. By 2006 the files had been deciphered and among them was a detailed design for an advanced but small nuclear warhead.
Albright told The Associated Press on Monday that the design goes far beyond the schematics and information about nuclear weapons available on the Internet. "It's a very different category of information, and it's very dangerous," he said. "There are no other designs out there. There is very little information of this quality out there outside of the nuclear weapons states."
Mowatt-Larssen said the U.S. government assumes terrorists or developing countries can obtain or develop a warhead on their own. Preventing them from acquiring the nuclear materials needed to make a bomb is vital.
The possibility that a terrorist group or country that does not now have a nuclear weapon may build or buy one seems to be frightening enough to do what years of legislation and presidential directives haven't quite achieved: knitting together disparate American intelligence agencies into one well-meshed, functional brain.
Different agencies and offices within those agencies have traditionally worked on separate pieces of the nuclear question -- what the status of a given nation's nuclear energy program is, whether it has or is developing a warhead, if it is sharing or selling weapons information or parts, or the intent of a terrorist group to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Mowatt-Larssen said those analysts are now being tied together into a separate unit that can look at all those questions together and update their assessment of the nuclear threat based on changes in any piece of it. His office declined to provide further details, saying the effort is classified.
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