Japan will announce that it is turning over more than 320 Kilos of weapons-grade Plutonium and highly enriched Uranium to the United States.  Tokyo says the cache is from research a few decades ago.  It’s enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons.

This comes as nations gather at The Hague on Monday for a nuclear security summit meeting.  This will be the third since US President Barack Obama took office.  Two gatherings since then have been successful at getting 13 nations to eliminate their caches of nuclear materials, while scores more have improved security at their storage facilities to prevent theft by potential terrorists.

For years, Japan has kept those materials under questionable security.  A New York Times investigation in the 1990s found unarmed guards watching over a site that was less-well protected than many banks.  Japanese right-wingers wanted to keep the stockpile as a “deterrent”, relying on the nation’s famed technological acumen to put together a weapons program if need be.  Guess we’re all lucky that hasn’t happened.

Controlling and reducing nuclear stocks has been a major mission of Obama’s since before he was President.  Although there have been successes, there are problems ahead.  North Korea has resumed its program, Pakistan and India are modernizing their weapons, and conservatives in the US congress are holding up anti-nuclear treaties Obama once described as vital.  And now increased tensions with Moscow make it unlikely that the world’s two largest nuclear powers will reduce their weaponry anytime soon.