ABSTRACT
An area in which concern over risks is mounting and which also holds a promise for closer East-West cooperation is the prospect of terrorist exploitation of nuclear power, whether through theft or construction of a nuclear explosive device, dissemination of plutonium or radioactive material, or attacks on nuclear power facilities. Both civil and military nuclear programs are vulnerable. In 1986, Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev submitted a statement to the United Nations calling for a reliable system of measures to prevent nuclear terrorism. The issue was also raised by the Soviet Union at a special session on Chernobyl of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In the United States the Nuclear Control Institute, a private organization, recently issued a report calling attention to the problem. 54 Title V of the 1986 Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act deals with international nuclear terrorism. A report from the Department of Defense required by that legislation warned that, as the commercial use of plutonium increases (by the late 1990s, 300 shipments of plutonium are expected to leave Europe annually), so do the opportunities for terrorism. 55
