Creating a Next Generation Nuclear Material Security Architecture

I am very pleased to address the INMM Annual Meeting today. I consider INMM to be one of the great resources for the promotion of global nuclear material security. Its members are one of the foremost repositories of knowledge on protecting nuclear materials and ensuring that the global community can continue to safely utilize nuclear technology for peaceful and productive purposes. This afternoon, I’d like to talk about how changes in the global environment in recent years have impacted the security structures and mechanisms that we rely on to keep nuclear and radiological materials out of the hands of terrorists. Then I’d like to offer some suggestions for how we can and should move beyond the current nuclear material security architecture to develop a more robust barrier against the devastating possibility of nuclear terrorism. In particular, I believe that the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit should be viewed as a starting point for the development of a next generation architecture for nuclear material security. The President’s four year goal for securing all vulnerable nuclear material is extremely important. But this is not a four year problem. This is a forever problem as long as dangerous nuclear materials reside on the earth. And we need to improve the barriers to the misuse of these materials. In my view, government, civil society and the private sector must work more closely together to counter the twenty-first century threats that are challenging today’s nuclear material security and nonproliferation regimes. I think that the INMM – which incorporates all key stakeholders of this nuclear material security issue – has a vital role to play in facilitating progress on these important objectives.