ISIS warns of Middle East nuclear growth

The Middle East is in danger of accumulating large stocks of nuclear material over the next decade that could be used to produce over 1,700 nuclear bombs, say David Albright and Andrea Scheel of the Ploughshares-funded Instiitute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in a new report released today.  Noting plans by ten countries to build new nuclear power plants over the next ten years, Albright and Scheel called for urgent measures to ensure that the plutonium generated by those plants is not diverted to nuclear weapons.  Among other recommendations, they called on the Obama administration to "persuade Israel to join the negotiations for a universal, verified treaty that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives."  Read the ISIS report here.