In addition to detecting smuggled nuclear material, countries and international agencies work to prevent nuclear material from falling into terrorist hands from power plant reactors and weapons stockpiles.

“It’s easier to eliminate the source than to detect,” said Glenn Sjoden, associate professor in the nuclear and radiological engineering department at the University of Florida.

Protecting reactor fuel

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency verify that countries are using their nuclear material for energy not weapons. An independent organization, the IAEA has safeguards agreements with 145 countries as of January 2003 and has confirmed the use of nuclear material in more than 900 facilities around the world, according to the agency’s Web site.

The IAEA tries to prevent the conversion of the plutonium used in nuclear power plants into nuclear weapons. Fortunately, the science of separating nuclear material from a reactor and diverting the material into a weapon is difficult both to do and hide, said Sjoden, a retired Air Force Lt. Col. And nuclear engineers in U.S. universities and national laboratories are developing proliferation-resistant reactor technology to hinder the conversion further, he said.

President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership offers another means of controlling sources of nuclear material. The partnership advocates:

• Nations with nuclear power would give reactor technology to countries without it but that agree to use the technology only for power generation.
• A fuel agreement between the two countries would allow only the parent country to provide fuel for the new reactors.

Managing the stockpile in the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration works to maintain the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile. Not only does the NNSA manage current warheads, the agency also works with national laboratories to keep up with technological advances to design new warheads if needed, according to the agency's Web site.

Although the current number of warheads in the U.S. stockpile is debatable, the NNSA plans to cut the stockpile in half and consolidate the Nuclear Weapons Complex into fewer sites by 2030, according to the agency's Web site.