Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has a issued a sobering warning.
"We are at a crucial juncture. The system is faltering," ElBaradei told a conference in the Norwegian capital where he and the IAEA received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
He said the IAEA was aware of 150 cases per year of nuclear material going missing, which could potentially end up in the hands of "organized crime or worse -- extremists".
He said that if extremists gained nuclear weapons they would "almost certainly be used", since the concept of mutual deterrence that exists between countries with atomic arms was "totally irrelevant to extremist ideology."
Readers of AstroRoach know that I've made this same observation many times. Unfortunately, I still don't know what to do about it. Over at Accelerating Future, Michael Anisimov talks about this problem as well as self-replicating weapons more powerful than nukes, and suggests a demonstration of their destructive power (in an unpopulated area) might be necessary to get them taken seriously.
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