Charting Nuclear Security Progress in South Asia

Nuclear terrorism is still a dangerous threat, as highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium are still used in the civil sphere. These could become quickly dangerous were they to fall into the wrong hands. While HEU has decreased due to recent summits, separated plutonium has made less progress.

Implications: As India and Pakistan are not members of the nuclear NPT, they are not bound to its guidelines. This is especially worrying because they don’t have the IAEA as a verification regime to ensure they don’t use HEU or separated plutonium for nuclear terrorism. Knowing the level of civilian use plutonium will be a small, but positive step towards nuclear nonproliferation.