Preventing nuclear proliferation

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established 1957, by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Apart from promoting civil nuclear power, the IAEA is also charged with stopping the diversion of civilian nuclear materials into weapons programmes. IAEA has has helped minimize the threat of nuclear proliferation by inspecting civil nuclear reactors in 90 countries to ensure that nuclear materials are not diverted for military purposes. However, up to three percent of plutonium a year in a large reprocessing plant could be unaccounted for.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) came into force in March 1970, when the USA, the former Soviet Union and 59 other states signed as well as ratifying it in their parliaments. The five nuclear weapons states officially recognized by the Treaty were China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA. By 1995 some 167 countries had signed the Treaty, among them Iran, Iraq and Jordan, but not Israel. The purpose of the Treaty is to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weaponry in the world and to encourage uses of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and not for producing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. However since NPT came into force, more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests have occurred and more than 127,000 nuclear weapons have been produced.