It ties for 13th place with Belgium. Last place goes to North Korea, a police state that the report finds to be seriously deficient on issues of atomic security, and next-to-last to Pakistan. The edgy ranking is a joint endeavor of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private advocacy group in Washington, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, a company in London that does risk analyses. Their goals are to stir debate on how to promote security and to encourage governments to strengthen protections against atomic terrorism. "We'll never get this job done if we continue to operate behind closed doors," Deepti Choubey, senior director for nuclear security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said Tuesday in an interview. The analysis was unveiled Wednesday morning and posted online at www.ntiindex.org. "It was pieced together" from a wealth of obscure data. Those financing the threat initiative and the study include the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2010, he held a security summit meeting in Washington that drew attention to the danger. A second summit meeting is scheduled for March in Seoul, South Korea. For each country, the study looked at 18 factors, including known quantities of nuclear materials, physical protections, accounting methods and transportation security as well as larger societal factors like political stability and corruption. Australia came out on top, the report says, because it has reduced its holdings of weapon-usable materials to "a small amount" and did well on the overall indicators. It received 94 out of 100 possible points. Among the nine countries known to possess nuclear arms, Britain came out on top with a score of 79. The report credits its high status to concrete security measures as well as "its commitment to and follow-through on international obligations." The United States scored 78 - a fairly good ranking, the evaluators said, considering its possession of a sprawling nuclear complex that dates from the earliest days of the atomic era. Japan received a score of 68 because of its vast stores of plutonium, relatively poor measures with security personnel and lack of an independent regulatory agency. A surprise nation on the list is Iran. It claims no ambitions for making bomb fuel even while global leaders worry that its growing atomic program seeks just that capability. The study team said that Iran was included in the analysis because of its possession of highly enriched uranium for a research reactor in Tehran. Iran received an overall score of 46, its standing undercut by what the report judged to be corruption, political instability and poor procedures for nuclear control and accounting. Of 32 nations, it ranked 30th. Pakistan, with a security score of 41 and a nuclear complex that is undergoing rapid growth, was faulted for poor transportation security, political instability and the presence of terrorist groups eager to get their hands on the nuclear materials. North Korea came in last with a score of 37. The report cited 10 indicators that came in below the global average, including site and transportation security as well as political stability. The report said nearly a quarter of the nations with materials that can fuel atom bombs scored poorly on social factors because of "very high levels of corruption." And it warned that several of those "also scored poorly on the prospect of political instability over the next two years." That bleak combination, the study concluded, "significantly increases the risk that nuclear materials might be stolen, with help from corrupt insiders or in the midst of government distraction or political chaos."