International attention is focused on the 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit set for Monday and Tuesday. Leaders of 54 countries and four international organizations will get together to discuss ways of preventing nuclear terrorism and strengthening global nuclear security.
The biennial summit has significant implications as it comes amid growing concerns about nuclear weapons programs involving North Korea and Iran. It also reminds the international community of the importance of nuclear safety after Japan’s Fukushima reactor disaster caused by a devastating earthquake and tsunami last March.
U.S. President Barack Obama initiated the meeting after presenting his vision of a nuclear-free world in his historic Prague speech in April 2009. The first summit was held in Washington in 2010 to step up global cooperation to enhance nuclear security.
However, the world still has a long way to go before realizing the initiative for a world without nuclear weapons. That’s why the Seoul meeting is all the more important to work out a new strategy and detailed plans to translate the objective of nuclear security into action.
First, the participating leaders should check whether they have made faithful efforts to keep the pledges they made during the Washington summit two years ago. They need to hammer out concrete steps to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists, criminals or other unauthorized actors.
There still exist radioactive materials worldwide that could be utilized to produce as many as 130,000 nuclear weapons. So, it is urgent to eliminate highly-enriched uranium (HEU), plutonium or other weapons-grade substances. The leaders should make tangible progress in converting HEU-powered reactors to low-enriched uranium (LEU) ones.
It is also necessary to set a new framework to encourage the safe operation of nuclear power plants and other facilities. The Fukushima case showed that the tsunami-triggered reactor meltdown is as catastrophic as a nuclear bomb explosion.
A Seoul communique will come out at the end of the summit. All the states should strive to meet shared commitments to be listed in the statement. They must comply with their obligations to make the world a safer place.
Nuclear nonproliferation and denuclearization are not on the agenda of the summit. But the leaders had better send a strong message, if not a direct one, to North Korea and Iran that such countries should give up their nuclear weapons programs and move toward peace and coexistence.
More than anything else, major nuclear powers should take a new initiative to drastically cut their nuclear arsenals if they really want to see a world free of nuclear dangers. They must act first before telling others not to have nuclear ambitions.