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United nations nuclear watchdog poorly funded

Nuclear Watchdog Group Struggles to Keep Up « Liveshots November 28, 2010 by: Amy Kellogg Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director of the IAEA, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, is sounding alarm bells.

He worries the agency is underfunded, something that could lead to a proliferation disaster no one saw coming, such as North Korea’s recent centrifuge stunt. He compares the situation to the sudden collapse of financial institutions in 2008.Heinonen says, “Everyone thought the banking system was alright. We were pouring our money and investments and it didn’t work. Here is the same. So one day there might be a proliferator we never thought was there. We are taken off guard. And it is too late.”……
The other big issue for the IAEA to confront is the cyber aspect of proliferation. There is a debate about the whether the IAEA should create a quasi-espionage branch, to track financial records and dig into computer files. At the end of the day however, the IAEA is only as good as the cooperation it gets from countries it is investigating……

Nuclear Watchdog Group Struggles to Keep Up « Liveshots

November 30, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war