targets of any nuclear terrorism and are reluctant to invest substantial sums to curb what they consider to be a distant threat.
Still others may see their holdings of nuclear explosive materials as a kind of insurance policy — something that could one day be converted into weaponry if international conditions change and they feel newly threatened.
What’s the United States doing about its own fissile material stockpile?
The United States struck a deal with Russia in 2000 that calls for converting 34 tons of its weapons plutonium into reactor fuel, in exchange for that country doing the same. But Russia has decided to burn its plutonium in new reactors that are capable of efficiently producing more plutonium. The U.S. program to turn its own plutonium into reactor fuel was supposed to cost $1 billion, but the actual pricetag will more likely total $35 billion over the next 20 years, according to a government estimate last year. So far, none of the plutonium has been converted, and Washington hasn’t settled on a clear, new path forward.
The Department of Energy has done a better job reducing its stock of surplus weapons-grade uranium, turning 143 metric tons of it into a form can’t readily be converted to bomb fuel.
So what’s your next series of stories about?
Please tune in next week.
Correction, March 11, 2015 6:12 p.m.: An earlier version of this story stated there are nine nations that don’t have nuclear weapons but have enough fuel to build one. There are 10 such nations.
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