No improvements have been made in the past two years to on-site physical protections, insider threat prevention, security during transport, control and accounting practices, and incident response measures assessed by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The nonprofit organization released its third biennial report card in January in advance of the fourth—and likely last—Nuclear Security Summit to be convened in Washington, DC, later this month.
The NTI ranks the 24 nations possessing at least 1 kg of weapons-usable nuclear material by how well they secure it. For the third time, Australia, a non-nuclear-weapons state, took first place. Among the five declared nuclear weapons states, France came in 8th place; the US, 10th; the UK, 12th; Russia, 18th; and China, 19th. Among the undeclared nuclear weapons states, Israel was rated 20th, followed by India and Pakistan. North Korea was last.
Some 59 security improvements were made in all 35 categories assessed...
