Nuclear terrorismU.S. to ratify two long-stalled nuclear terrorism bills

Deep in the USA Freedom Act which was signed into law by President Barack Obama last week, there is a section which will let the United States complete ratification of two-long stalled treaties aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism. One treaty is the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which took effect in 2007. Countries which sign the treaty pledge to pass laws to criminalize certain nuclear terrorist actions and punish individuals who illegally possess or use radioactive or nuclear materials and devices or damage nuclear facilities. President George W. Bush signed the treaty in 2005, and the Senate ratified it in 2008, but it was not until last week that the Senate approved the necessary legislation to allow enforcement of the treaty, a requirement to complete the ratification process, notesU.S. News & World Report.

Last week’s passage of the surveillance bill will also let the United States complete ratification of the 2005 amendment to the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. U.S. News & World Report reports that the original treaty called for securing nuclear material during international transport, but by the 1990s it became clear that the treaty would not be enough to prevent nuclear terrorism because nuclear materials had already spread across the globe. The 2005 amendment requires nations to place standards to protect nuclear materials while it is stored and transported domestically, and take criminal action against people who try to steal, smuggle, or damage nuclear materials and facilities.

“Today, nearly 2,000 metric tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe — some of it poorly secured,” said former Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). “We know that to get the materials needed to build a bomb, terrorists will not necessarily go where there is the most material. They will go where the material is most vulnerable.”

The Homeland Security News Wire reported last year that Energy Department officials were becoming increasingly concerned with the amount of nuclear materials found in the domestic market. In one case, federal officials want to halt the use of blood irradiators used by hospitals and blood centers to ensure that blood is properly treated before transfusions occur. The irradiation devices contain cesium chloride, a highly radioactive powder which terrorists could use to make a dirty bomb.

“If we could make headway on this — if you could get all the cesium chloride off the market — it would be permanent risk reduction,” said Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

“In failing to ratify these treaties, the United States is dangerously out of line with other countries that also have nuclear weapons and nuclear materials — among them Russia, China, India, and the United Kingdom — all of which have ratified both treaties,” former senior national security adviser to the energy secretary and NTI President Joan Rohlfing wrote in The Hill on 28 May 2013, shortly after activists broke into Oak Ridge, Tennessee’s Y-12 nuclear complex, the nation’s main storage vault for weapons-usable highly enriched uranium. “Failure to ratify these treaties is an embarrassment,” he said.

One possible reason for why it took so long for the Senate to pass legislation implementing the treaties after the House passed its versions in 2012 and 2013, is that Democrats in the then-Democratic controlled Senate could not agree on authorizing the death penalty for nuclear terrorism offenses. “Some Democrats who oppose the death penalty weren’t comfortable with that,” notes U.S. News.

 Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) introduced legislation last month to authorize the death penalty, criminalize the support of nuclear terrorism, and allow the government to request wiretaps to investigate suspected nuclear terrorists.

“Fears of nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation are rising, especially as Iran moves closer to obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Grassley said in introducing his bill last month. “In this environment, it’s obvious that the government needs the ability to seek the death penalty for nuclear terrorists under the appropriate circumstances.”

These provisions, however, were not included in the USA Patriot Act, but could be added to future legislation.