Nuclear Summit 2012, Seoul
Program History:
The heads of as many as 53
nations, including India, are expected to attend the 2012 Nuclear Security
Summit in Seoul on March 26 and 27. The first such summit was held in
Washington in April 2010, fulfilling a promise President Obama made in his 2009
Prague speech while calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapon.
Reason to start that Program:
1.
Getting rid of existing nuclear arsenals
2. Securing and eventual
elimination of all fissile materials (i.e. materials which undergo nuclear
fission and provide the explosive energy of nuclear weapons
3. The Nuclear Security
Summit (NSS) was designed to bring high-level political attention to this vital
but hitherto obscure problem of nuclear materials security.
Achievements of NSS 2010, Washington:
·
To start with,
the very fact that such a summit took place was a success in itself.
·
Until then, the
security of fissile materials would hardly have been considered the stuff of
global summits. Nor were they matters of great public concern. Yet 50 world
leaders converged on Washington.
·
India, neither a signatory to the NPT nor a member of the Nuclear
Suppliers Group, has been kept out of most international nuclear enclaves in
the past. Its inclusion in the Washington Summit was a welcome development
·
reached a
consensus that nuclear terrorism is among the top global security challenges
and that strong nuclear material security measures are the most effective way
to prevent it
·
29 of the
countries present made voluntary commitments to enhance nuclear security
·
Chile removed all
its Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) — 18 kg — in March 2010
·
Philippines
joined the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism
·
India announced that they would create new “centres
of excellence” to promote nuclear security technologies
·
approximately 60
per cent of these national commitments have been completed, and notable
progress has been made on the rest
·
Kazakhstan has
secured enough material to make 775 nuclear weapons, Russia has ended its
plutonium production and signed a plutonium disposition protocol with the U.S.,
Ukraine has removed over half of its HEU and so on
Targets for NSS 2012, Seoul:
·
Seoul 2012 may
choose to address the securing of all radioactive materials, and not just
fissile materials
·
Radioactive but non-fissile materials used for medical, agricultural and
scientific purposes can
cause casualties and massive disruption, even if not at the scale of nuclear
weapons
·
A suitcase full
of such radioactive material (the so-called dirty bomb) if exploded in a public
place would, in addition to killing some people and polluting the neighbourhood
with deadly radiation, also create enormous panic resulting in massive
stampedes and more casualties given the public's extreme fear of radioactivity
especially after Fukushima
·
They are much
easier to assemble. One just pilfers from hospitals and research
laboratories bits and pieces of radioactive junk which are not guarded anywhere
nearly as well as fissile material
·
Recall the Cobalt-60 leak from Delhi University equipment found in a
scrap metal shop
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