U.S. - Russian assessment says safeguards needed, and fast
| image courtesy of Harvard Kennedy School |
Researchers from the United States and Russia issued a joint assessment Monday (June 6) on the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences.
The first joint threat assessment by experts from the world’s two major nuclear powers concludes: “If current approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the question will become not if but when, and on what scale, the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs.”
The study recommends measures to tighten security over existing nuclear weapons and the nuclear materials that terrorists would need to make a crude nuclear bomb, along with expanded police and intelligence cooperation to interdict nuclear smuggling and stop terrorist plots. The report also calls for improved protection of nuclear facilities that might be sabotaged, and of radiological materials that might be used in a dirty bomb.
The “The U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment on Nuclear Terrorism” report, released in Cambridge and in Moscow, results from a nearly yearlong partnership by authorities on nuclear security from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and theInstitute for U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow, a leading Russian research center. Read more
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