NSOI is a U.S. government effort to enhance international partnerships to combat smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The U.S. government encourages potential donors to consider the following reasons for supporting NSOI-developed projects:
- These projects address a critical global threat.
- For members of the G-8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (GP), contributions to any of these projects in former Soviet states count against that donor’s overall financial commitment to the GP.
- For participants in the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GI), contributions to any of these projects are a means of implementing the GI principle of providing assistance to others to counter the nuclear terrorism threat.
- The projects involve relatively small costs, from a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars per project.
- They have already been approved by recipient governments.
- They do not require new bilateral agreements with recipient governments.
Fissile material -- highly-enriched uranium (HEU) or weapon-grade plutonium -- is the critical ingredient in building a nuclear weapon. Most experts agree that terrorists are not able to produce fissile material, but a reasonably sophisticated terrorist organization could make a crude nuclear weapon, or improvised nuclear device (IND), if it stole or acquired a sufficient quantity and quality of such material. Therefore, combating smuggling of weapons-usable nuclear materials is vital to preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons.