The War on Terrorism has many aspects that we don't normally see, because they are (properly) considered less important than direct action against terrorist groups in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. But they are still important and ought to be recognized.
Here is a fascination report on two obscure US government officials—both naturalized citizens who originally hailed from Eastern Bloc countries—who are crisscrossing the globe negotiating agreements to sequester bomb-grade nuclear materials held by dozens of small countries with Cold War era research reactors.
"A Race with the Terrorists," Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times, September 27 Over the last three years, two US nuclear weapons experts have quietly crisscrossed the globe, racing to secure bomb-grade uranium before terrorists can lay their hands on a single kilogram….
What may seem like a simple idea to make the world safer by locking down nuclear bomb materials is actually a tangle of political details, technical arguments about transportation safety and complex international shipping licenses….
The two engineers scored their latest success less than two weeks ago: they moved nearly 10 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a reactor in Vietnam to Russia, where it will be blended down into commercial reactor fuel….
Bieniawski's team has conducted 13 missions to civilian reactors in former Soviet Union republics and client states, securing enough fissile matter to build 20 nuclear bombs….
Nuclear weapons experts like Matthew Bunn of Harvard University say the program, known as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, is one of the most effective US efforts to preclude nuclear terrorism, not to mention one of the cheapest.
[L]ike many research reactors, security [in Vietnam] hardly meets Western standards.
At the front gate on a recent day, two young unarmed guards were on duty inside a glass-walled booth. A lone telephone sat on a desk to enable contact with a local police garrison.
Bieniawski's jaw dropped when he saw that the massive doors to the reactor containment building were held shut by a piece of old pipe jammed into the door handle….
When the plane was ready to go, the Russian pilot opened his cockpit window and waved goodbye to the Americans.
As the wheels left the ground, a beaming Bieniawski turned to Bolshinsky: "One more country cleaned out."
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