On 17 July 2008, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that 6.3 kilograms (nearly 14 pounds) of HEU in spent nuclear fuel had been removed from Bulgaria and secured at a Russian facility. Through NNSA's Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), the United States worked in close cooperation with the Russian Federation, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to pack, secure and ship the material. This is the second shipment of HEU to be sent to Russia from Bulgaria – the first shipment of 16.9 kilograms (37.3 pounds) of fresh HEU fuel occurred in December 2003 – and completes the removal of all HEU from Bulgaria. Bulgaria is the second country under which GTRI has removed all HEU received from the Soviet Union; Latvia's HEU was removed in May. GTRI has also completed the removal of all eligible U.S.-origin HEU spent fuel from 13 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Thailand. Read NNSA's press release. (Denmark and Chile, however, still have small amounts of other HEU.)

For more on GTRI and the removal of HEU from high-risk sites, see the assessment on pp. 81-92 and the recommendations on pp. 119-123 of Securing the Bomb 2007, and the web section on Civilian HEU Reduction & Elimination.

At the summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrial democracies held in Hokkaido Toyako, Japan from 7-9 July 2008, the G8 announced that the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction would be expanded on a case-by-case basis beyond the current targets of Russia and Ukraine to address proliferation challenges around the globe. The G8 also emphasized security for nuclear materials as an additional top priority for the partnership. Launched at the 2002 G8 Summit in Kananaskis, Canada, the Global Partnership was conceived as a 10-year initiative that would provide up to $20 billion for priority areas of work in Russia and later Ukraine. It has expanded over the years to include 22 member nations and the European Union. The partnership has been slow in moving from pledges to implementation, however, and up to this statement, only a tiny portion of the non-U.S. funds have been devoted to security for nuclear weapons and materials. Much of the partnership's effort has focused on submarine dismantlement and chemical weapons destruction in Russia, priorities of the Russian government; other priorities identified in the 2002 statement included plutonium disposition and scientist redirection.

See the G8's Report on the G8 Global Partnership, the Partnership for Global Security's press release G-8 Global Partnership: Adapting To New Realities, and p. 41 of Securing the Bomb 2007 for more information.

On 3 July 2008, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that 18.14 kilograms (nearly 40 pounds) of irradiated U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) and nine U.S.-origin plutonium-239 sealed sources had been returned to US nuclear facilities from Japan, Germany, Sweden and Denmark through NNSA's Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). According to DOE, this is the 42nd shipment from 28 countries of U.S.-origin research reactor fuel returned to the United States. Read NNSA's press release. GTRI has already taken back roughly 90% of all the eligible U.S.-origin HEU it plans to address; under current plans, most of the estimated 15.9 tons of U.S.-origin HEU in foreign countries will not be returned.

For more on consolidating global HEU stockpiles, see the assessment on pp. 81-92 and the recommendations on pp. 119-123 of Securing the Bomb 2007, and the web section on Civilian HEU Reduction & Elimination.

At the fourth meeting of the Global Initiative (GI) to Combat Nuclear Terrorism in Madrid, Spain on 16-18 June, participants identified strengthening detection and forensics, denying safe haven and financing to terrorists, and deterring terrorist intentions to acquire and use nuclear devices as key priority areas and agreed to a program of exercises related to nuclear and radiological terrorism for 2009. The GI was launched by Presidents Bush and Putin on 15 July 2006, to expand and accelerate the development of partnership capacity to combat the global threat of nuclear terrorism. Partner nations include all but a few of the states with substantial stockpiles of nuclear weapons or materials and key potential transit countries; the IAEA and EU attend as observers. Under the auspices of the GI, two nuclear terrorism exercises have been conducted to date: a tabletop exercise in which the scenario involved a radioactive source stolen from North Africa for a dirty bomb (Spain, May 2008); and a field exercise simulating an attack on a nuclear facility (Kazakhstan, June 2008), which included an estimated 900 Kazakh troops, along with international observers. The GI has also held a series of workshops on law enforcement, model nuclear detection guidelines and security of radioactive sources. By and large, however, the GI has not focused on convincing states to undertake rapid improvements in security for their nuclear stockpiles, helping them do so, or discussing and agreeing on what levels of security should be required for nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material. By June 2008, 75 nations had signed on as GI partners, of whom 56 attended the Madrid meeting. Previous meetings were held in Rabat, Morocco (October 2006), Ankara, Turkey (February 2007), and Astana, Kazakhstan (June 2007).

See the State Department's page on the Global Initiative To Combat Nuclear Terrorism and pp. 35-36 of Securing the Bomb 2007 for more information.

On 5 June 2008, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that the second plutonium-producing reactor at Seversk in Russia had been shut down, ahead of schedule; the first reactor was shut down in April 2008. This leaves only one remaining plutonium production reactor at Zheleznogorsk, which is to be shut by the end of 2010. Since the reactors not only produced hundreds of kilograms of plutonium every year, but also used hundreds of kilograms of HEU in thousands of small, easily carried fuel elements, which had to be fabricated and transported every year, this shut-down is an important consolidation step. NNSA's Elimination of Weapons Grade Plutonium Production program worked with Russia to build replacement fossil fuel heat and electricity capacity, allowing the reactors to close. Plans for re-employing the thousands of workers who once worked at the Seversk reactors and the associated reprocessing plant are not yet clear.

See the NNSA press release and NNSA's Office of Nuclear Risk Reduction for more information; for a program summary from several years ago, see the web section on Plutonium Production Reactor Shutdown.

On 16 May 2008, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that nearly 30 pounds (14.4 kg) of Soviet-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) in spent nuclear fuel had been removed from the Salaspils Research Reactor in Latvia and secured at Russia's Mayak nuclear storage facility through NNSA's Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), completing the removal of all HEU from Latvia. This is the second shipment of Latvian HEU to be returned to Russia, with the first shipment of three kilograms of Soviet-origin HEU fresh fuel in May 2005. The shipment is part of a prioritized, accelerated HEU fuel return schedule developed in fulfillment of the February 2005 Bush-Putin Bratislava Joint Statement on Nuclear Security Cooperation. Eleven U.S.-supplied countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Greece, Italy, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Thailand) and three Soviet-supplied countries (Latvia, Georgia, and Iraq) have had all their HEU removed. (Denmark and Chile have had all their HEU eligible for the U.S. take-back program removed, but still have modest stocks of other HEU.) Ukraine, Belarus, and South Africa, countries with particularly dangerous HEU stockpiles, have not yet agreed to eliminate those stocks.

See NNSA's press release, NNSA's GTRI website, the assessment on pp. 81-92 and the recommendations on pp. 119-123 of Securing the Bomb 2007, and the web section on Civilian HEU Reduction & Elimination for more information.

On 19 March 2008, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that the VVR-SM research reactor at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Uzbekistan had been converted from highly enriched uranium fuel to low enriched uranium fuel. According to NNSA, 207 research and icebreaker reactors worldwide are designed to operate on HEU fuels, and GTRI hopes to convert 129 of these to LEU fuel. (The remaining 78 research reactors – more than 70 of them in Russia – either have defense-related missions or have unique designs, and would be very difficult to convert.) To date, 56 of the HEU-fueled reactors on GTRI's list targeted for conversion have converted or shut down (including 15 in the United States and 42 in other countries) and NNSA is working to convert the other 73 on its targeted list by 2018.

See NNSA's press release, NNSA's Office of Global Threat Reduction January 2007 Strategic Plan, the web section on Past and Current Efforts to Reduce Civilian HEU Use, and pp. 89-92 of Securing the Bomb 2007 for more information.

All plutonium and HEU removed from Sandia National Lab
On 28 February 2008, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that all stocks of weapons-usable nuclear material requiring the highest level of security protection, which includes plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU), had been removed from Sandia National Laboratory, seven months ahead of schedule. Under current plans, removing all potential nuclear bomb material from Hanford, Livermore, and Los Alamos will take somewhat longer, but NNSA hopes to have only five sites with weapons-usable material remaining in its nuclear-weapons complex by 2012. According to NNSA, as of 24 July 2008, a total of 12 metric tons of plutonium and HEU had been removed from nuclear weapons sites during fiscal year 2008.

Read NNSA's press release, pp. 27-28 of Securing the Bomb 2007, and DOE's Complex Transformation Vision for more information. For an analysis that suggests DOE's efforts should be both more urgent and more comprehensive see chapter 4, "Fissile Material Consolidation in the U.S. Nuclear Complex," in the International Panel on Fissile Materials' Global Fissile Material Report 2007.

On December 11, 2007, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the return of 80 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in "spent" nuclear fuel from the Nuclear Research Institute in Rez, Czech Republic to Russia as part of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI). According to the Nuclear Research Institute, the shipment consisted of 549 irradiated fuel assemblies that contained 37.3 kilograms of 80 percent uranium-235 (U-235) and 43.4 kilograms of 36 percent U-235. The shipment also included 281.4 kilograms of 10 percent enriched U-235. The HEU and low-enriched uranium was packaged into sixteen transportation casks, and transported through Slovakia and Ukraine to a Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Russian facility, where the spent fuel will be reprocessed over several years. With the completion of this shipment on December 8, GTRI has returned approximately 590 kilograms of Russian-origin HEU fuel to Russia from Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Libya, Uzbekistan, Poland, Germany, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Vietnam.

See the National Nuclear Security Administration press release, the U.S. Embassy in Prague's press release, and the English-language Nuclear Research Institute's homepage for more information.

On November 8, at 12:16 a.m., four armed attackers broke into the Pelindaba nuclear facility, 18 miles west of Pretoria, South Africa, a site where hundreds of kilograms of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) is located. According to the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (NECSA), the "technically sophisticated criminals" entered the facility by cutting a hole in an outside fence and then deactivated several security layers on an electric fence. The four attackers spent nearly 45 minutes walking around the facility before forcing their way into the emergency control room, where they shot Anton Gerber, a senior emergency services officer, in the chest, and made off with a computer. The thieves escaped without being caught by the site security forces, though they left the stolen computer behind. The CEO of NECSA, Dr. Rob Adam, argued that the thieves' success at getting in and out of the facility "was evidence that the criminals had prior knowledge of the electronic security systems." The incident appears to have been a coordinated attack, as another team of intruders penetrated the security perimeter from the west at the same time, but fled after being shot at by a patrolling security officer. That four gunmen were able to penetrate the site's security systems, go to the control room, and then depart uncaught raised serious questions about the adequacy of security at the site; NECSA suspended six security employees at the site, and promised an investigation. South Africa's National Intelligence Agency is also involved in the investigation. On November 16, local police arrested three suspects — ranging in age from 17 to 28 — in connection with the incident.

For more, see the NECSA press release of Dr. Adam's November 13 media briefing, and a New York Times article of the attack. For an account of the dangers posed by inadequately secured nuclear material around the world, see "The Global Threat."

The United States and Russia have signed a joint statement outlining a joint plan for using excess Russian weapons plutonium as fuel in the BN-600 and BN-800 fast-neutron reactors, representing a major shift from past efforts focused on using this material in Russia's fleet of light-water reactors. The United States pledged to provide $400 million to support the effort. Critics have attacked the new approach, arguing that it effectively subsidizes Russian movement toward a large-scale plutonium economy based on fast-neutron breeder reactors that produce more plutonium than they consume. Critics have also raised fears over whether adequate safety and security will be maintained in Russia. Supporters counter that, as with the previous approach focused on light-water reactors, the effort will take separated plutonium in a form that could readily be used in bombs and put it into spent fuel, which, under the terms of the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, cannot be reprocessed until disposition of all 34 tons of plutonium covered by the agreement is complete, decades from now. Advocates also argue that with sufficient investment, high standards of safety and security can be maintained throughout the process. (While NNSA has previously said it would only support the BN-800 if it were converted from a breeder, producing more plutonium than it consumes, to a burner, reducing the total stock of plutonium, no such conversion was mentioned in the joint statement — and in any case, the modifications being discussed would only shift the breeding ratio from slightly above 1.0 to slightly below 1.0, which would have little nonproliferation impact.) Senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, released a statement commending the new accord as "a major advance toward achieving the elimination of enough plutonium to make more than 8,000 nuclear bombs." Read NNSA's press release.

For more on U.S. and Russian plutonium disposition programs and the relevant controversies, see Matthew Bunn and Anatoli Diakov, "Disposition of Excess Plutonium," in International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Materials Report 2007 (Princeton, N.J.: IPFM, October 2007).

On October 31, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the completion of U.S.-funded security upgrades at 25 Russian nuclear missile sites. The cost to the United States for the upgrades at these sites since 2003 was $150 million, or roughly $6 million per site. According to NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation William Tobey, "completing this security work at the Strategic Rocket Forces sites helps to fulfill President Bush's commitment under the Bratislava joint statement with Russia, and shows our continued partnership with the Russians."

While the February 2005 Joint Statement does not mention these sites specifically, it led to U.S.-Russian agreement on a plan of work to upgrade security at nuclear warhead and nuclear material sites that included these facilities. The United States has agreed to help with security upgrades at 97 Russian nuclear warhead sites by the end of 2008, followed by a several-year transition period after that, ending with Russian nuclear security and accounting systems sustained solely with Russian resources by the beginning of 2013.

Read NNSA's press release, and a New York Times news story about the security upgrades completed at the 25 sites. For more information on the status of warhead security upgrades, see Securing the Bomb 2007, pp. 68-71.

On 17 September 2007, U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman announced that the United States was declaring another nine tons of plutonium excess to its military needs. (See Gregg Webb, "U.S. to Convert Weapons Plutonium Into Fuel," Global Security Newswire, 17 September 2007.) Some 52.5 tons of the 99.5 ton stockpile held by the Departments of Defense and Energy had been declared excess in the 1990s. The new declaration brings the total U.S. excess plutonium to 61.5 tons, leaving approximately 38 tons of plutonium available for nuclear weapons. In 1994, the Department of Energy (DOE) allowed a committee of the National Academy of Sciences to use four kilograms of plutonium per weapon as an unclassified "planning figure" — so the plutonium still available for weapons amounts to enough for over 9,000 nuclear weapons. Russia, which has far larger stockpiles of plutonium, has not yet declared any additional material excess. DOE officials have indicated that the newly declared nine tons of excess will be added to the material to be fabricated into uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel at a controversial plant now being built at Savannah River. For more on plutonium disposition and the importance of reducing plutonium stockpiles to the minimum needed to support small, agreed nuclear warhead stocks, see Matthew Bunn, "Troubled Disposition: Next Steps in Dealing With Excess Plutonium," Arms Control Today, April 2007.

August and September were busy months for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).  In September, GTRI helped the only research reactor in Vietnam fueled with highly enriched uranium (HEU) convert to low enriched uranium (LEU) which cannot be used in a nuclear bomb.  The HEU-fueled reactor at Purdue University in the United States also converted in September with GTRI's help.  September shipments removed all the fresh, unirradiated HEU from Vietnam and the last of the U.S.-origin HEU from South Korea, and an August shipment removed several kilograms of fresh HEU from Poland.  Read the National Nuclear Security Administration's press releases on the Vietnam conversion and shipment; the Korea shipment; and the Purdue conversion.  For an account of the Polish shipment, see John Fox, "Polish Reactor Turns Over Nuclear Fuel," Global Security Newswire, 5 September 2007. These efforts and others are described in DOE's fact sheet on GTRI's accomplishments as of early September 2007.  For a summary of progress made and steps yet to be taken on removing potential nuclear bomb material around the world, see  Securing the Bomb 2007, pp. 81-92.

In July, the United States and India completed negotiations of a nuclear cooperation agreement which, if approved, would authorize each country to sell nuclear reactors and materials to the other.  Congress had amended the Atomic Energy Act to permit such an agreement even though India does not have full-scope safeguards on its nuclear facilities. The agreement has been controversial because it is seen as bending nonproliferation trade rules and implicitly accepting India's status as a nuclear weapon state.  (See, for example, the resources available from the Arms Control Association.)  Before the agreement goes into effect, India must still negotiate a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to cover a portion of its nuclear facilities; the Nuclear Suppliers Group must authorize a change to its rules barring exports to countries without full-scope safeguards; and the U.S. Congress must approve the accord.  Despite the agreement, India continues to refuse any cooperation with the United States to improve security and accounting for its nuclear stockpiles; the agreement, however, like other U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements, specifies that all of the nuclear material covered by the pact has to be protected in a way that meets very general International Atomic Energy recommendations.  Conceivably, the agreement might make the problem of guarding separated plutonium worse.  Under the terms of the pact, the United States grants India prior approval for reprocessing plutonium, if India builds a new plutonium reprocessing plant under international safeguards where this work would be done.

On 3 August 2007, President George W. Bush signed the "Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007" (Public Law 110-53). It was passed in the House on a 371-40 vote and 85-8 in the Senate. The act establishes a Coordinator for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism in the White House; it also directs the President to discuss with the President of Russia the creation of a corresponding office in the Kremlin. The act also establishes an independent, nine-member Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which would conduct hearings and release a report with recommendations for corrective measures of U.S. efforts to prevent WMD proliferation. To attempt to reduce the likelihood of nuclear smuggling through one route, by July 1, 2012, the act allows a cargo container to enter the United States only if it is scanned by "nonintrusive imaging equipment and radiation detection equipment at a foreign port before it was loaded on a vessel." Finally, the act rescinds all existing Congressional restrictions on the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program.

According to former Rep. Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, with the enactment of this law, approximately 80 percent of the panel's 41 recommendations will have been implemented. See the full text of the act, and the full list of 9/11 Commission recommendations, pp. 361-428.  Our reports have recommended the appointment of a senior White House official with a narrower mandate, focused on leading all the myriad efforts related to reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism.  See, for example, Securing the Bomb 2007, pp. 143-145.