\"THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS MANAGEMENT IN POLICING A NON-PROLIFERATION AGREEMENT\"

I am pleased to be with you tonight on the occasion of the 7th annual conference of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management. In the less than eight years your organization has been functioning, you have made important contributions to the science of nuclear materials control. In so doing you have helped greatly to advance atomic energy technology in general. In the last year or so, increasing attention has been given to the problems of safeguards and nuclear materials management, as they relate to the growth of the civilian atomic power industry in the United States and abroad. The interest has grown so intense of late that I imagine some of you who have been laboring in this field for years, and attempting to cope with the complex problems it presents, are a bit surprised by the extent to which the national and international spotlight is now being focussed on your activities. Perhaps your choice of Columbus as the host city for this meeting was particularly appropriate in this respect, because you may be thinking that the attitude expressed by some who are coming to a fuller realization of the significance of these problems is akin to that of the great Italian explorer when he landed in America. You who have been living with nuclear materials management over the years, like the original inhabitants of the New World, knew of the existence of these shores for some time'.