For years, American politicians on both sides of the aisle have agreed that nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious national security threats the United States faces. In 2013, President Obama must capitalize on this rare consensus point and on his own power as a second-term president. After all, despite ongoing polarization in Washington, bipartisan cooperation has been the norm for nuclear security since the launch of the Nunn-Lugar program more than two decades ago, making the issue a unique outlier in Washington -- and for good reason.

Four years ago, President Barack Obama called preventing nuclear terrorism a top security priority. But even though he said in his State of the Union speech last week that Washington "would continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands," the United States is only marginally safer from that threat today than it was at the beginning of his first term.

The medical isotope metastable technetium 99 emits gamma rays that physicians heavily rely upon to examine how organs such as hearts, lungs, and kidneys function. Technetium 99 is so beneficial to the medical community that it's used in approximately 80-85 percent of the world's diagnostic imaging procedures (cardiac perfusion scans and bone scans among them) and 12 million procedures in the United States alone. The size of the global nuclear imaging and therapeutics market is estimated at $3.7 billion per year.

The world has not secured all nuclear materials vulnerable to theft and sabotage. Will it find a way to keep working toward this goal? 

A major outcome of the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, was the commitment by 47 nations to collaborate in developing new technologies that require neither highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuels for reactor operation nor HEU targets for producing medical or other isotopes. This principle of HEU minimization also was included in the final document of the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which was adopted by consensus.

The White House fails to put its money where its mouth is on nuclear weapons security

What Canberra has done—and can do—do to keep dangerous radioactive materials out of malicious hands.

Earlier this month, widespread inaction on the increasing dangers posed by nuclear proliferation and climate change forced the Bulletin's Doomsday Clock to move one minute closer to midnight, indicating the mounting perils confronting humanity's survival. One factor pushing the clock forward to five minutes to midnight was the failure to ensure strict security and comprehensive international oversight for nuclear weapons and materials, which continue to accumulate in a few nations.

Steps Washington and Moscow took to transform their space rivalry into cooperation can serve as a model for working together to help prevent nuclear terrorism.

The attack and occupation of nuclear reactors by Russia—a nuclear weapon state—exposed a wholly new kind of risk, which needs a new term.

Probing the 2016 presidential candidates’ records on nuclear weapons makes for some interesting reading and could foretell US nuclear policies to come, yet the subject still deserves far more attention between now and November. 

What signatories of the Trilateral Initiative can do between now and the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit

The Nuclear Security Summit taking place in Seoul next month is expected to reinforce the commitment of the international community to confronting the threat of nuclear terrorism. The summit process provides a unique opportunity to ensure that nuclear security receives the high-level attention it deserves from governments around the world. It also entrusts the participants with a special responsibility not to let this opportunity pass by.

A compilation of quality nuclear policy news published on the Web, around the world. Iran Nuclear Deal How the Nuclear Deal Has Reconfigured Iran’s Political Landscape Nikki Haley Slams the Iran Deal, Says It ‘Empowered’ Iran and Russia Russia and Iran’s Marriage of Convenience United States Q&A: Moniz looks to get U.S. nuclear scientists more … Continued

Nonproliferation projects are getting squeezed by sequestration and fiscal battles.

As we witness the increasingly detrimental effects of global climate change, the role that nuclear power could play globally to mitigate its effects continues to be debated. The series of articles featured in the Bulletin in December 2016 aired a broad spectrum of opinions, ranging in assessment of the role of nuclear power from insignificant … Continued

How will we track progress on nuclear security once removals are done?

Few national security issues are as important to President Barack Obama as reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Obama devoted his first major foreign policy speech as president to the subject in April 2009 in Prague, where he pledged America's commitment to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons. In particular, the president laid out a series of interim steps that the United States must take to reduce the risk of a nuclear catastrophe.

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the "Global Fissile Material Report 2008: Scope and Verification of a Fissile Material (Cutoff) Treaty." The complete report can be found here.