Search en America, awash in nuclear weapons materials The United States maintains huge stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) for weapons use—far larger than needed for any conceivable military contingency. After disposing of the plutonium it has designated as excess to military requirements, the United States will retain enough for some 10,000 nuclear weapons. After disposing of HEU it has deemed excess, the United States will have enough for 10,000 to 16,000 nuclear weapons. Though still grossly oversized, the US nuclear arsenal has dropped to somewhat fewer than 5,000 weapons, including those in reserve. The United States should declare all fissile material above the amount needed for 5,000 weapons as excess to military needs and dispose of it expeditiously. To reduce the risk that terrorists could steal and use US plutonium to make a nuclear weapon, the United States should directly dispose of excess plutonium rather than using it to fuel reactors. 2014-03-01 00:00:00 <a href="/bio/lisbeth-gronlund">Lisbeth Gronlund</a>, <a href="/bio/e-macdonald">E. MacDonald</a> Siegfried S. Hecker: The story of Plutonium Mountain In this interview, former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried S. Hecker details one of the world’s great nonproliferation stories—the effort to secure the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. He recounts his visit to the Russian nuclear weapons labs in early 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when he found underfunded scientists who were indifferent to the cleanup of the testing site in the now-independent Kazakhstan and doubtful that the site would pose a security threat. Hecker talks about how he was able to organize engineers and nuclear scientists in the United States, Russia, and Kazakhstan to come together in a 15-year, $150-million effort to secure many of the tunnels and test areas at the sprawling Semipalatinsk Test Site. 2013-09-01 00:00:00 From danger to dollars: What the US should do with its highly enriched uranium Although the Obama administration has highlighted the need to secure fissile material worldwide, domestic efforts to secure highly enriched uranium (HEU) have been sluggish and uninspired. In the post-9/11 era, the United States has tremendous opportunities not only to better secure its dangerous HEU, but to make money by doing so. The authors write that the United States could create a new HEU surplus by designating that which is unnecessary for military needs; reduce the backlog of retired warheads awaiting dismantlement; increase the rate at which surplus HEU is downblended into low enriched uranium (LEU), a form of uranium unusable for weapons but usable as nuclear fuel; and sell that LEU to nuclear power plants for billions of dollars. The slow pace of downblending HEU in the United States poses a security risk to the population, deprives taxpayers of a needed source of revenue, and sends the wrong message to the global community about the US commitment to combating nuclear terrorism, the authors point out, and developing and implementing a new downblending strategy should be a priority. 2010-11-01 00:00:00 <a href="/bio/peter-stockton">Peter Stockton</a>, <a href="/bio/ingrid-drake">Ingrid Drake</a>