What’s the Nuclear Threat Initiative?

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The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is a public charity founded in 2001 by Ted Turner, a media mogul, and Sam Nunn, a 24-year US Senator from Georgia. The Nuclear Threat Initiative is headquartered in Washington, DC, with Sam Nunn incumbent as the current CEO. The organization stands out for operating in full transparency. According to the organization’s website, NTI’s main goals are “to prevent terrorists from obtaining a nuclear bomb and to strengthen global health and security.” The NTI operates on a budget of approximately $50 million annually.

One of the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s most significant achievements to date has been the production of Last Best Chance, a 45-minute film illustrating the danger of nuclear terrorism. In the film, terrorists steal weapons-grade uranium from poorly guarded research reactors, build a nuclear bomb, and successfully smuggle it across the American border. The film ends before the bomb is actually detonated, leaving the bomb’s effects to the viewer’s imagination. The implication is that the detonation of an atomic bomb in a major American city would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and displace millions.

Another of the results of the Nuclear Threat Initiative was Project Vinca, an effort to remove over two bombs of highly enriched uranium stored in an undersafety civilian research reactor in Vinca, Serbia. The recovered uranium was either downblended (not enriched) or moved to more secure storage facilities in Russia. The NTI says there are dozens of poorly guarded civilian research reactors around the world, any of which could have enough highly enriched uranium to build several atomic bombs.

A third NTI achievement has been the strengthening of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) programs to protect vulnerable nuclear material by improving safety at selected sites. Thanks to contributions from the NTI, the size of the IAEA’s physical security program has effectively doubled. The grant also triggered an avalanche of additional contributions from the United States and other nations, netting the IAEA more than $25 million in additional funds.

The NTI’s most important contributions may be behind the scenes in Washington, convincing American policymakers to take the risk of nuclear terrorism more seriously. US intelligence officials have emphasized the explicit desire of groups such as Al Qaeda to acquire a nuclear weapon and use it to attack the United States. A single nuclear weapon with a payload equivalent to a Hiroshima bomb would be capable of destroying the Capitol, the White House, the National Mall and many major national monuments with a single blast.

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