Global Security Newswire

The United States and Europe have formally initiated four new cooperative efforts in the fields of nuclear security and nonproliferation, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced in a Monday press release (see GSN, Nov. 3, 2010).

At their second Joint Steering Committee meeting in Brussels, the European Atomic Energy Community -- known as Euratom -- and the semiautonomous agency of the U.S. Energy Department reviewed concrete ways of deepening their cooperation. Newly initiated trans-Atlantic initiatives touch on "certified reference material development, reference material production, spent fuel assay verification, and nuclear forensics," according to the NNSA statement.

The two sides also discussed options for correlating backing of the International Atomic Energy Agency; improving rules governing foreign sales of sensitive technologies; and assessing the performance of radiation scanners intended to identify smuggled nuclear and radioactive materials.

"In a fiscally constrained environment, it is important to consider innovative ways to leverage resources, capabilities and knowledge by engaging partner countries in our mission to strengthen nuclear security and nonproliferation efforts," NNSA Deputy Administrator Anne Harrington said in released comments. "International collaboration on global nuclear security priorities provides the opportunity to maximize our impact."

NNSA-Euratom collaboration is enabled by a 2010 nuclear security and nonproliferation cooperative agreement. The trans-Atlantic partners have been collaborating on efforts to stem the spread of sensitive and dangerous nuclear materials and equipment for over three decades (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release I, July 2).

Separately, NNSA officials last week issued updated figures on the Energy Department's plutonium stockpile through 2009.

The newly released data among other things covers "the completion of cleanup activities at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado in 2005; material consolidation and disposition activities; 2007 declaration of an additional 9.0 MT [megatons] of surplus weapons-grade plutonium; and the opening of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico," according to an NNSA press release (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release II, June 29).