More than 53 heads of state and representatives from four international organizations will attend the second Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul on Monday and Tuesday. They will take stock of the progress they have made in implementing the communiqu and work plan agreed at the first summit in Washington D.C. in April 2010 and endeavor to agree on substantial new measures that will be reflected in the communiqu released at the end of this summit.
But the original aim of these summits, strengthening global nuclear material security through national and cooperative measures, seems to have taken a back seat to a new focus on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear safety.
While the mandate of the first summit was to evolve national mechanisms to secure or dispose of nuclear and radioactive materials and prevent their trafficking, the attention of participants at the second summit has already shifted to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Iran, thanks to its staging in Seoul,
Although neither the DPRK nor Iran has been invited to attend, various comments in the lead-up to the summit have been frontloading the challenge of the DPRK and Iran's nuclear issues, and some of the leaders will be tempted to raise these issues, even if only on the sidelines of the summit. Particularly the United States, as President Barack Obama will no doubt want to play to the media with the presidential election on the horizon.
In addition, given the backdrop of the crisis at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the tsunami in Japan last March, the focus of the summit has shifted from the security of nuclear materials to the safety of nuclear installations. The Republic of Korea is an emerging exporter of nuclear technologies and this is likely to see the summit deliberating on the need to ensure the safety of nuclear power facilities. Several other influential leaders will also be carrying this message from their powerful domestic lobbies. The US has recently revived - after a freeze of three decades - its nuclear reactor manufacturing with a new project now sanctioned for Georgia. More
