Russia also considers this to be a serious problem. In late 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of the Presidium of the State Council in Moscow that nuclear power plants and storage facilities for radioactive materials must be reliably protected from any criminals.

President Putin said Russia had accumulated more than 70 million metric tons of solid-state radioactive waste and that the processing infrastructure was not sufficiently developed.

If terrorists got hold of nuclear weapons, they could use them for hitting preset targets. They could also attack nuclear reactors and other similar facilities or try and build radiological weapons using radioactive materials.

The problem is quite serious because the eight nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel -- now wield 12,100 combat-ready nuclear warheads plus another 15,000 reserve warheads.

Russia and the United States each have 5,682 and 5,521 nuclear warheads, including 3,352 and 5,021 strategic warheads and 2,330 and 500 tactical munitions, respectively.

Britain, France and China each have 185, 348 and 130 combat-ready nuclear warheads, respectively.

The West often claims that Russia does not ensure the safe storage of nuclear warheads. In the mid-1980s, even small units of the Soviet Armed Forces had many nuclear weapons stored at thousands of facilities with up-to-date security systems.

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Defense Ministry decided to store all nuclear weapons in Russia after conflicts flared up in outlying Soviet regions. By December 1991, Ukraine remained the only post-Soviet republic with a substantial nuclear arsenal that was dismantled in the early 1990s. Moreover, all nuclear weapons were removed from the former Warsaw Pact countries.

By the mid-1990s, all nuclear munitions, including those of small army units, were stockpiled in arsenals of the Russian Defense Ministry's 12th Main Directorate in charge of nuclear control. Such arsenals are pretty well protected and can even withstand a nuclear blast. To the best of our knowledge, similar foreign compounds also feature reliable security systems for warding off intruders.

However, dozens of countries operating their own nuclear power plants, industrial and research reactors, nuclear-fuel production, processing and recycling plants, as well as uranium-ore production and enrichment facilities, face even more substantial security risks.

-- (Next: The "dirty bomb" threat)

(Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser with the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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