1 U.S. exports of nuclear material cannot be adequately traced from country to country, according to a congressional report.
2 'Scarcely a day goes by without a report of a new black market deal,' said Sen. John Glenn in a statement reacting to the report. 'Given the staggering amount of nuclear materials we have exported, it could only be a matter of time before some of this deadly contraband proves to be of U.S. origin.'
3 As chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs in the last Congress, Glenn commissioned the report from the General Accounting Office, which conducts investigations for legislators.
4 The report says hundreds of tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium have accumulated worldwide, mostly from nuclear power generation.
5 It does not include figures on U.S. nuclear exports but says 71 export licenses for nuclear materials were granted in 1993. Nuclear exports for weapons use or weapons research are prohibited, as is transfer of nuclear materials to a third country.
6 The report said U.S. tracking showed that Japan produced about 20.3 metric tons of plutonium from U.S. materials between 1978 and 1992, but Japanese records showed 58.7 tons. A nuclear weapon can be made with as little as 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds) of plutonium, U.S. officials have said.
7 'We're looking at those kinds of discrepancies and we are confident that the material is being safeguarded as appropriate by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency,)' said Notra Trulock, chief of intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy, in an interview Tuesday.
8 The report quoted a U.S. official working on reconciliation of the two figures as saying one reason for the discrepancy was that Japan was only required to report to the United States the plutonium it sent to other countries for reprocessing.
9 Trulock said he did not want to comment on U.S. nuclear material sent to Europe because he was engaged in delicate negotiations on renewing the U.S. agreement with EURATOM, the nuclear section of the European Union. The congressional report noted that the 12 countries in EURATOM -- 15 countries since Jan. 1 -- have been treated as a unit for purposes of reporting transfers of nuclear material.
10 'The U.S. agreement with . (EURATOM) does not require most EURATOM countries to inform the United States of retransfers of U.S.-supplied materials from one EURATOM country to another.,' the report complained.
11 Trulock said the GAO had interviewed him for the report. It said officials of the Energy Department, the State Department and other agencies generally agreed with the facts it presented.
12 It added that they had offered the explanation that the size and complexity of the government's old tracking system was such that the Department of Energy had not yet improved it, but only adapted it for personal computers. The statement said the system should have planned and designed properly to begin with.
13 The report was signed by Victor S. Rezendes, director of energy and science issues. Dated Dec. 27, it was distributed to reporters this week.
14 Trulock was interviewed after a panel discussion Tuesday on the subject 'Who Controls the Russian Nuclear Button?' Participants warned of the danger of large-scale diversions of nuclear materials from Russian nuclear storage sites.
15 Saying he spoke for himself and not for the Department of Energy. Trulock agreed that such a diversion might be discovered only 'at a most inopportune time.' He noted that Russian nuclear materials are stored at many sites and said there were no good figures on how much material the Russians have.
16 He urged cooperation with the Russians on physical security of their stocks.

U . S . exports of nuclear material cannot be adequately traced from country to country , according to a congressional report .
nuclear material
What types of nuclear materials are looking to be tracked?