The United States, Russia and the UN are working to round up nuclear material across the globe to keep it out of the hands of rogue states and militants trying to acquire anything from crude "dirty bombs" to atomic weapons.
US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave details of the initiative in a speech on Wednesday to members of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Washington has earmarked more than $450 million for the plan, he said.
Abraham said the initiative addressed "the threat posed by the entire spectrum of nuclear materials (and) reflects the realities of the 21st century that were so startlingly made clear on a September morning three years ago".
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the plan was a crucial step in reducing the nuclear threat in light of the recent discovery of a global black market that supplied sensitive atomic technology to countries like Libya, North Korea and Iran.
"We live in an increasingly polarised world," ElBaradei told reporters. "If you put these...things together - a polarised world, the proliferation of (nuclear) technology, the proliferation of terrorism - you know we will need to adjust, augment, strengthen our defence."
The initiative includes a plan to repatriate all unused Russian-origin highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel by the end of next year and all spent nuclear fuel by 2010. Spent fuel can be reprocessed to extract plutonium.
Nuclear arms can use either weapons-grade HEU or plutonium. Of the two bombs the United States dropped on Japan in 1945, one had an HEU core and the other was made of plutonium.
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