"In this day and age, no one should be allowed to possess nuclear-weapons-usable material without providing an armed defense of that material, " said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The order invoked the authority, inter alia, of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) and declared a national emergency to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the risk of nuclear proliferation created by the accumulation of a large volume of weapons-usable fissile material in the territory of the Russian Federation.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said there was a "sophisticated worldwide network that can deliver systems for producing materialusable in weapons".