Sweden has sent the last of its separated plutonium to the United States under the U.S. Global Threat Reduction Initiative. The final shipment was sent on Sunday 25th March 2012 and ended the use of highly enriched uranium in Swedish research reactors.
In a speech at the Nuclear summit in Seoul, Korea, on 27th March 2012, the Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Bildt, went further than the members of the UN Security Council in denouncing nuclear weapons and their place in world affairs:
“Our objective is a world without nuclear weapons. Securing vulnerable nuclear material is one step towards that goal.
“We should also make every effort to see to it that the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty enters into force and that negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty can commence.
“Building on the successful New START Agreement, nuclear arms control efforts need to continue, also including non-strategic, tactical nuclear weapons.
“And we must implement the action plan agreed at the NPT Review Conference in 2010 and advance in all three pillars of the non-proliferation regime: nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
The summit, which has now come to a close, ended with the publication of a communiqué emphasising nuclear terrorism and proliferation as the greatest risks to global security.
