Political Quotes

“The strength of nuclear forensics depends on the strength of our database. That material can come from many nations, some friendly, some unfriendly, and the individual recipes are closely-held secrets. However, little of the information needed for nuclear forensics is of direct use to our adversaries, and in the case of our allies, the risk of not sharing the data and failing to discover a security breach is much greater than sharing the information. Thus, the bill asked the President to negotiate agreements with other nations to share information on the make-up of their nuclear materials. We can come to bilateral agreements with our allies or sign multi-lateral treaties through the IAEA. We can even begin the database with just civilian reactor materials where information security is less of an issue. But we must get started now. The National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center should play a key role in the negotiations since in the end, the data we obtain must be the data that the experts need. Nuclear terrorism is a threat of paramount danger and uncertain probability.”