NTI, through analysis, advocacy and action, is drawing attention to and spurring more effective action to address the danger of unsecured nuclear bomb making materials, the need to prevent the spread of the technology to make that material and the urgent imperative to reduce the use of weaponsusable nuclear material in civil commerce.

Osama bin Laden has said that acquiring nuclear weapons is a religious duty. He sought and received a religious ruling, a fatwa, giving him permission to use a nuclear weapon against innocent civilians. The 9/11 Commission has said that a "trained nuclear engineer with an amount of highly enriched uranium or plutonium about the size of a grapefruit or an orange, together with commercially available material, could fashion a nuclear device that would fit in a van like the one Ramzi Yousef parked in the garage of the World Trade Center in 1993. Such a bomb would level Lower Manhattan."

The hardest step for the terrorists to take is acquiring the highly enriched uranium they need to make a bomb. The most effective way to prevent nuclear terrorism is to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons materials.

The relative ease of obtaining weapons designs and engineering non-nuclear components makes control over nuclear materials the first line of defense for preventing states or terrorist groups from developing or obtaining nuclear weapons. A global approach to removing and securing nuclear materials is essential because the chain of security is only as strong as its weakest link.

There are nuclear weapons materials spread around the world. The largest quantity of this material is in Russia. The United States and Russia have been working cooperatively to secure and eliminate excess material. The job is currently about half done, if one counts quantities of materials under security, or nearly three-quarters done if one counts buildings under enhanced security. There is also nuclear weapons material in countries without nuclear weapons – used in research facilities and reactors designed for peaceful purposes. The materials are there because for decades, the United States and the Soviet Union provided research reactors fueled by highly enriched uranium (HEU) to countries around the world under the "Atoms for Peace" initiative. The purpose was to share the beneficial aspects of nuclear technology for science, medicine, and other peaceful purposes with countries that agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. Today more than 100 research facilities in over 40 nations have enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Some of these facilities lack adequate security, making them an enormous security risk in today's world where terrorist organizations have nuclear ambitions and a stated interest in killing millions of innocent civilians.

NTI is helping nations move away from routine use of the raw material of nuclear terrorism through a range of projects including the removal of two and a half bombs' worth of weaponsusable HEU from a research reactor near Belgrade; the creation of a comprehensive U.S. — Russia-IAEA plan to remove HEU from Soviet-origin research reactors worldwide; the elimination of HEU stocks in Kazakhstan; and conversion of Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers to low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel.
These types of projects helped spur the creation of the $450 million U.S. Global Threat Reduction Initiative, announced in May 2004, combining a number of dispersed programs into a single office, and setting milestones for reducing risks of fissile and radiological materials stored around the globe.

NTI is also working with Russian experts to consider options for accelerating the elimination of dangerous stocks of excess Russian HEU. NTI's study will lay the groundwork that could help governments ensure rapid conversion of these materials to LEU, which cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon.

Preventing the spread of nuclear technology is an essential part of the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. As more nations turn to nuclear energy to meet their development needs, there is the very real danger that the technology to make nuclear weapons materials could be developed in dozens of countries around the world.

That is because the same uranium enrichment technology that is used to take natural uranium and enrich it to low enriched uranium to be used as fuel in a nuclear power plant can also be used to enrich natural uranium to highly enriched uranium that can be used to make a nuclear bomb. Nations that have met their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty have the right to develop uranium enrichment facilities, but we will be living in a very dangerous world if every nation that has that right opts to use it.

Today, nations that are seeking to expand their use of nuclear power have two choices: purchase nuclear fuel from foreign sources or invest in the technology to create nuclear fuel domestically. A country's decision to rely on imported fuel, rather than to develop an indigenous enrichment capacity, may pivot on one point: whether or not they have confidence that they can receive without fail nuclear fuel from the international market.

NTI believes that ensuring that states have confidence in choosing to rely on imported fuel is a security imperative. To help provide that assurance, in 2006 NTI announced a $50 million commitment to the IAEA to help create a low enriched uranium stockpile owned and managed by the IAEA. Warren Buffett, one of NTI's key advisors, is financially backing and enabling this NTI commitment.

NTI envisions that this stockpile will be available as a last-resort fuel reserve for nations that have chosen to rely on international fuel supplies and thus have no indigenous enrichment facilities of their own. NTI's contribution is contingent on two conditions, provided they are both met within the next two years: (1) that the IAEA takes the necessary actions to approve establishment of this reserve; and (2) that one or more member states contribute an additional $100 million in funding or an equivalent value of low enriched uranium to jump-start the reserve. Every other element of the arrangement — its structure, its location, the conditions for access — would be up to the IAEA and its member states to decide.

The concept of a nuclear fuel bank is not new, but it has never moved beyond the discussion phase. The NTI proposal and pledge has already sparked renewed international interest in the idea and helped define a global debate about how best to ensure nuclear fuel assurance and limit the proliferation risks posed by the spread of nuclear enrichment technology.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei welcomed NTI's proposal saying "this generous NTI pledge will jump start the nuclear fuel bank initiative. It will provide urgent impetus to our efforts to establish mechanisms for non-discriminatory, non-political assurance of supply of fuel for nuclear power plants." The New York Times editorialized in support of the proposal saying "Washington would do well to take a harder look at Mr. Buffett'... excellent idea. And then come up with the cash."

The international community has a common interest in the security and management of materials that could be used for nuclear weapons, improvised nuclear devices or other acts of nuclear terrorism. The protection system is only as strong as its weakest link, and a threat to one is a threat to all. NTI is working to develop a role and sense of responsibility within the private sector to ensure that dangerous nuclear materials do not fall into terrorist hands.

NTI has started an effort, in partnership with the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management (INMM), to improve the security of nuclear materials through the establishment of a new organization for the exchange of information on and promulgation of "best practices" for nuclear materials security in nuclear facilities and during transportation. This effort began with a speech at the INMM 2005 Annual Meeting by Charles Curtis, President of NTI. Curtis appealed to INMM members, many of whom are responsible for securing, accounting, and tracking nuclear materials as they move throughout the world, to play a larger role in the world's number one nuclear security imperative: preventing nuclear terrorism.

Since then, the INMM and NTI have been working together to advance the creation of an organization to help improve the security of nuclear materials around the world and have consulted with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other nuclear security professionals. NTI has worked to broaden the dialogue to a wider group of international experts in order to further refine the concept and planning, and sponsored a two-day experts' meeting in Baden to create a draft mission, activities and organizational plan that has sufficient detail for use as a basis for securing membership, staffing, and funding for the new institution in early 2007. The working name of "WINS" (the World Institute for Nuclear Security) is being used to describe this organization.

Once launched, NTI believes that WINS can be a mechanism for raising the level of global best practices of nuclear materials security rapidly and serve as a tool for the nuclear industry and operators who want to stay ahead of the threat. WINS would provide a forum for the exchange of experience, lessons learned, and new ideas at the "grass roots" facility-operations level; a forum for practitioners rather than policy makers. In this way, the nuclear materials management community, and all of the partners involved in WINS, can help reduce the risk of a catastrophic terrorist event.

Visit the WINS page

NTI's Global Health and Security Initiative (GHSI) has developed innovative partnerships worldwide to address the threat of natural pandemics, accidental outbreaks from laboratories and use of biological agents as a weapon. GHSI's efforts seek to improve disease detection and response and to promote safe practices in biomedical science to secure dangerous pathogens and prevent the misuse of biotechnology information.

Biotechnology research and commercial activities are transnational in nature. These activities bring enormous benefits in medicine, public health, nutrition, agriculture, and industrial processes. There is, however, a dilemma because some of the same advances in science and technology that are being used to benefit society can also be used by terrorists to make biological weapons. The risks to public health, safety and security from the misuse of the life sciences and associated technologies are not being adequately addressed.

For example, there have been great advances in the emerging fields of synthetic genomics and synthetic biology. In 2002, researchers reported that they had chemically synthesized poliovirus according to its genetic material from commercially purchased genetic material over the course of three years. This experiment represented a scientific first: the assembly of a virus from scratch. Then in 2005, researchers reported the synthesis of a bacterial virus in only two weeks. The scientific and policy communities are only beginning to grapple with the implications of the possibility of the creation of both old and new viruses from scratch.

NTI's Global Health and Security Initiative believes that the scientific community must work hand in hand with government to develop ways to enhance global biological security and safety and reduce the risk of the misuse of the life sciences without unduly encumbering beneficial research and advances in science.

To create this urgently needed collaboration, NTI sponsored and supports the development of the International Council for the Life Sciences (ICLS), an independent non-profit membership organization that provides a forum to regularly engage the life science community and governments on a global basis to develop and promote global best practices, standards and training curricula for biosecurity and biosafety, develop a shared language and common methodology for assessing biological risks regardless of origin and provide specialized briefings for policy officials on the full spectrum of risks.

ICLS is fostering new approaches to international and national policies for biological security and is providing a forum for policymakers to interact with specialists in biosecurity, biosafety and infectious disease.

ICLS has established an international advisory group of biosafety and biosecurity experts and policy makers from academia, government and the private sector based on the G-8 countries and others such as Sweden and Singapore. Drawing on the 2006 Russian presidency of the G-8, this mechanism was developed in close cooperation with Russian partners, the I. M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy and TEMPO, a consortium of 17 key Russian life science institutes. This initiative also attracted substantial support from the Canadian government and the Moscow-based International Science and Technology Center. It is also extending its networking activities to Central Asia through disease surveillance seminars specifically for Kyrgyzstan and for the region as a whole. The ICLS is presently taking this networking approach to other regions and is developping networks of life scientists and policy makers in the Middle East, the Gulf and South Asia.

These efforts are practical steps toward the development of an ICLS International Biosecurity and Biosafety System and the promotion of a common understanding of biological risks.

Infectious diseases have always been a serious threat to human life. Increased international travel and trade, shifts in agricultural practices, greater microbial resistance to drugs and more concentrated populations have made all of us more vulnerable to natural disease outbreaks. At the same time, advances in science add to the growing danger that terrorists will intentionally use disease as a weapon. Infectious diseases will not stop at a nation's border. There is an urgent need to build a strong and integrated global disease surveillance network so that an infectious disease — whether naturally occurring or intentionally caused — can be identified, contained and treated before it spreads around the world.

Regional disease surveillance networks can be the building blocks for a global system. NTI's Global Health and Security Initiative is working in some of the most complicated regions in the world to build disease surveillance networks to spur the cooperation and capacity building that will enable an effective response to infectious diseases.

For the past three years, NTI's Global Health and Security Initiative has supported the development of an infectious disease surveillance system in the Middle East. This network, called the Middle East Consortium on Infectious Disease Surveillance (MECIDS), currently involves public health leaders, academic institutions, and private health care facilities in Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority working together to prevent and reduce the risk of infectious diseases. The partnership was up and running when the first outbreak of avian flu was detected in the region and the MECIDS partnership enabled rapid communication and coordination of efforts to help contain the spread of the disease.

Building on the success of the work in the Middle East, NTI is using this model for work in other critical regions. The project BRIDGES: Building Regional Infectious Disease Systems for Global Epidemiologic Surveillance is working to help establish additional regional disease surveillance systems. NTI is now collaborating with partners in Asia, who have recent experience with infectious disease outbreaks such as SARS and avian influenza, to help improve regional collaboration, cooperation, and transparency on infectious disease threats and response. With six countries in the Mekong Delta in March 2007, NTI, together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Rockefeller Foundation, is sponsoring the first-ever simulation exercise to test responses to a pandemic influenza emergency. Using techniques similar to those in modern war-gaming, the tabletop exercise is designed to foster cooperation among Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, key countries in the region seen as the most likely source of a potentially devastating flu pandemic. The exercise will help identify gaps and weaknesses in systems for detecting, monitoring, tracking and containing infectious diseases — whether the diseases are naturally occurring or intentionally spread.

NTI's Global Health and Security Initiative, enabled by a generous grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is working to develop and advance regional disease surveillance networks by providing the building blocks for a global system.