Leo Szilard Lectureship Award: Fissile Materials: A Global Threat

The world has built up a huge glut of Fissile Materials, posing a potentially devastating threat. While specialists in the field have been aware of this danger for a long time, it was only after President Obama organized the Nuclear Security Summit in 2010 that the attention of the world's political leadership was drawn to it. We will present here an introductory overview of Fissile materials-- their definition, significance and their production facilities and stocks in different parts of the world. We will also mention some of the efforts being made to verifiably cap and reduce their stocks as well as the technical and political complications involved in the process.