© Don McPheeContainers holding used nuclear fuel being stored under water for up to five years before the uranium and plutonium is reprocessed.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a respected non-proliferation think tank, and the Economic Intelligence Unit have produced a new ranking system to assess the security of the world's scattered stocks of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.
The NTI Nuclear Materials Security Index is meant to be a measure of how vulnerable those stocks are to theft by terrorists or criminal groups. It is also intended to provide a baseline for assessing progress in locking those stockpiles up, ahead of the next Nuclear Security Summit, due in Seoul at the end of March.
The authors insist this is about establishing an objective view of the work still to be done to meet Barack Obama's ambitious goal to secure the global stockpiles by 2014. This is not about "naming and shaming" they insist. But if you publish a list comparisons are going to be made.
The project ranks the 32 states which possess more than a kilogram of highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium, according to some weighed criteria: how much stuff they have and in how many places; the security and control measures in place; to what extent they stick to global norms and agreements on nuclear security; the domestic political will and capacity to enforce those norms, and the fragility of their societies including the level of corruption.
No surprises about the bottom three when it comes to the overall score. North Korea is worse, then Pakistan and Iran (which has about 7 kg of spent HEU fuel stored at the Tehran Research Reactor). Vietnam, which also has research reactor fuel and a shaky infrastructure to protect it, is next.
The next group from the bottom is more noteworthy. India is 28th out of the 32 nuclear material states, China is 27th and Israel is 25th, below Russia and other former Soviet republics previously thought to be the worst threats in terms of nuclear security.
It seems that while Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine have taken significant steps in improving security at their nuclear sites, India, China and Israel have all been marked down for their lack of transparency when it comes to their nuclear holdings (which in Israel's case, reflects the official policy of ambiguity) and their failure to sign up to international agreements governing nuclear security.
On the top end of the scale, Australia is the winner for having very little material and for running a tight ship. The UK scores top for 'global norms' and ranks highly for general stewardship, but is ranked bottom for 'quantities and sites' because it not only has an arsenal but is also in the fuel reprocessing business, which is boosting the country's plutonium stocks. Overall Britain comes tenth, tied with Germany and Canada.
for the black humor, I just couldn't resist : Add Japan to that.