“The amount of material which is better controlled is larger,” Anita Birgitta Nilsson, nuclear safety and security director at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a weekend interview.
The Vienna-based body is helping countries prevent smuggling of uranium, plutonium or other items that could be used to make a nuclear device or a dirty bomb, which combines conventional explosives such as dynamite with radioactive material.
Its work to improve security includes training for border control, equipment and other support with an annual budget of at least 20 million euros ($27 million).
Asked whether she believed the world was becoming safer in this regard, Nilsson told Reuters: “I think that there is progress ... the fact that it’s a positive development I think we have to recognize.”
However “one cannot be complacent on the threat situation, that is very clear ... the effort is to tighten the system so that it is more difficult” for militants to obtain nuclear bomb components.
Analysts say radical groups could theoretically build a crude but deadly nuclear device if they have the money, technical know-how and required amount of fissile material.
They say groups such as Al-Qaeda have been trying to get the components for a nuclear bomb. Obtaining weapons-grade material is the biggest challenge and keeping it secure is vital.
At talks in Washington last April, the United States and 46 other countries agreed on a voluntary action plan to secure all vulnerable nuclear material over the next four years.
Since then, 2,500 kg (5,500 pounds) of highly radioactive spent atomic fuel — some of it potential bomb material — has been shipped under heavy security from Serbia to Russia.
SMUGGLING IN EX-SOVIET UNION
The month-long operation was the largest single shipment made under a multinational program to return nuclear material to the countries from where it originally came.
In December, Ukraine said it sent a “significant portion” of its highly enriched uranium (HEU) stock to Russia under a deal with the United States aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism.
Both Nilsson and the head of the IAEA, Director General Yukiya Amano, said more needed to be done.
“Terrorist groups have financial resources, technology, they have Internet access, they have educated people ... it is not impossible to develop nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices,” Amano told Reuters earlier this month.
“We should do more and we can do more.”
He said the IAEA, which set up a database on illicit nuclear trafficking in nuclear or radioactive materials in the mid-1990s, received on average a report of an incident about every other day and this could be the “tip of the iceberg.”
Nilsson said some concerned innocent materials but there were cases of attempted smuggling involving enriched uranium, which can be used for bombs if refined to a high level.
In Georgia in March last year, two Armenian men were arrested on suspicion of smuggling 18 grams of HEU from Armenia into Georgia, both former Soviet republics.
It illustrated the risks posed by smuggling of unsecured nuclear material across porous borders and potentially falling into the hands of radical groups.
“Throughout the years there have been a number of (trafficking) cases with nuclear material,” Nilsson said, although they had declined since the late 1990s. “There is material moving which is not supposed to move around.”
