Of special concern to Lyman is the increased handling by personnel and multiple transportation risks of one of the "world's most dangerous substance and a usable nuclear weapon material traveling in unmarked trucks with weaken security safeguards than would otherwise be required for comparable toxic material".
There is also the serious matter of reducing the threat of Russian nuclear weapons, materials and expertise ending up in hostile hands.
The international news media have speculated that the Israeli attack was aimed at a Syrian effort to acquire nuclear weapons materials, possibly with the aid of North Korea.
What is needed now is a permanent solution, one in which Iran will permanently forgo efforts to produce nuclear weapons materials by enriching uranium or producing plutonium.
Doing so would make it more difficult for countries like Iran to justify building national enrichment plants that could be used to produce nuclear weapons materials.
We are urging the Russians to tighten cooperation with us to protect nuclear weapons materials and stop the transfer of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technologies to rogue states.
At the Energy Department, he led a major effort to determine how the nation would maintain its stockpile of nuclear weapons without test explosions; he was also the department's negotiator on the disposition of Russian nuclear weapons materials.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site, once a leading producer of nuclear weapons materials and now operating in a much-diminished capacity as a weapons materials processor, occupies much of the southeastern portion of the county.
That was partly a response to the end of the cold war and partly a desire by both governments to reduce the chances of unauthorized transfers of nuclear weapons materials.
They urge Mr. Obama to prescribe three explicit no-go zones for the Iranians: "no initiation of conventional warfare" against another nation; "no transfer of nuclear weapons, materials, or technologies"; no increase in support for terrorists.
We agree that it is urgent that we improve the physical protection and accounting of nuclear materials, and prevent illicit nuclear trafficking, and we will strengthen our efforts to cut off every possible source of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, materials and expertise...
