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Urgent actions are needed to prevent a nuclear 9/11. Terrorists are actively seeking nuclear weapons and the materials to make them. With the needed nuclear materials in hand, making at least a crude nuclear bomb, capable of turning the heart of any modern city into a smoking ruin, is potentially within the capabilities of a sophisticated terrorist group. Yet scores of sites where the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons exist, in dozens of countries around the world, are clearly not well enough secured to defeat the kinds of threats that terrorists and criminals have demonstrated they can pose.

Evidence that terrorists are actively seeking nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them, and that some nuclear stockpiles around the world remain dangerously vulnerable to potential theft and transfer to terrorist groups, continued to accumulate in the past year. A comprehensive strategy for preventing nuclear terrorism would include many strands, from offensive action against terrorists with global reach to measures to stop nuclear smuggling. But the most crucial element of such a strategy is to lock down every nuclear weapon and every kilogram of potential nuclear bomb material everywhere. Because nuclear weapons and their essential ingredients do not occur in nature and are too difficult for terrorists to plausibly produce on their own, if these stockpiles can be kept out of terrorist hands, nuclear terrorism can be reliably prevented.