Billionaires Promise 50 Million Dollars for Nuclear Initiative

Billionaire investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nun and world-renown businessman Ted Turner issued a joint statement on Tuesday, in which they were announcing that they pledge the sum of 50 million dollars to fund the nuclear project designed by United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to this project, a permanent source of low-grade nuclear fuel would be established in order to counteract ambitions of countries such as Iran, to design weapons of mass destruction.

The Washington Nuclear Threat Initiative hopes that through this financial boost awarded to the IAEA, other countries would follow their example and governments would feel compelled to sponsor the project of the uranium stockpile. "Under international law and under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, countries have the right to enrich nuclear fuel", former senator Sam Nun was quoted as saying during a telephone interview from Vienna, where he and the other two had made the financial proposition.

"If we have a lot more countries that do that - and we're on the threshold of that now - then it's going to be an extremely dangerous world", Nun added, making a rather obvious reference to Iran and North Korea. "It's going to be very difficult to keep that weapons-grade material out of the hands of someone who might use it as a weapon, like a terrorist group", Nun also highlighted, warning that al-Qaeda may not be a stranger to such weapons and nuclear programs.

Even though he admitted that an international stockpile of nuclear material would not have prevented Iran from running its own programs in this department, Nun asserted that the existence of such a mechanism would significantly add more authority to the international community in dealing with such potential issues: "It would certainly be a powerful tool in the hands of the international community, saying, 'You don't need your own nuclear fuel supply. You have this available".