You report David Cameron as asserting at the global nuclear security summit in Washington that, along with the US, “Britain is very much giving the lead on nuclear security on nuclear sites, transport and materials” (World leaders meet to plan for ‘all too real’ nuclear doomsday scenario, 2 April).
Unfortunately, the truth is the opposite; Mr Cameron and his ministers are deluding themselves if they believe this.
In January the respected Washington DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) – whose mission to strengthen global security by reducing the risk of use and preventing the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons – published its annual assessment of nuclear security worldwide. Of the 25 countries with weapons-usable nuclear materials, the UK is actually ranked bottom, below the pariah state North Korea – ranked 15th – with Argentina and Australia ranked top (the US and Russia are joint 20th).
Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel peace prize winner and former International Atomic Energy Agency secretary general, said that NTI “is a role model for me of a private-public partnership in issues of security and of survival … NTI has been a trailblazer”. Its evaluation should therefore be respected.
I set out these details and much more in a paper “Nuclear’s insecure future” I presented to the European Environmental Foundation Laureates’ Symposium in Freiburg, Germany, last month.
What is just as depressing as this spin by the government is the lack of challenge by the media, all of which reported the initiative without any question.
Dr David Lowry
Senior research fellow, Institute for Resource and Security Studies, Cambridge, USA
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