Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
10/2/2015
A U.S. interagency nonproliferation team that for over two decades did not conduct physical security visits to 11 foreign nuclear sites containing thousands of kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) plans to visit one of the locations in the next six months, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Agency spokeswoman Shelley Laver also highlighted host countries’ refusal to allow access as the reason the team failed to visit two of the facilities.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week showed that President Barack Obama’s 2009 initiative to secure the world’s nuclear materials within four years led to the repatriation of 1,581 kilograms of HEU and plutonium and the downblending of 4,900 kilograms of HEU to low-enriched uranium from 2009 to 2013. However, as part of the initiative, an interagency team did not visit four Category I and seven Category II sites that hold over 3,500 kilograms of U.S.-origin HEU. Category I sites hold 5 or more kilograms of HEU or 2 or more kilograms of plutonium-239.
Laver said the U.S. interagency team “plans a visit to one of those [Category I] sites in the next six months,” but did not specify the country. Of the seven Category II facilities, “two are in countries that the U.S. interagency has been denied or delayed access due to difficult political circumstances,” she said.
Laver added that although the United States has not conducted site visits at the other three Category I facilities and the other five Category II facilities in the last five years, “the U.S. Government has conducted physical protection assessments at other sites in those countries and continues to cooperate in physical protection and nuclear security.” She said that since 2009 the team “has conducted over 45 physical protection assessments and seven follow-up visits at sites holding or expecting to receive U.S. obligated nuclear material,” as determined by a prioritization methodology. While the interagency team has set a goal to visit Category I sites every five years, “this goal is not mandated by law or regulation,” Laver said.
