Readout of Vice President Biden's Meeting with Nuclear Industry Leaders

Today, the Vice President hosted a group of leaders from the American and international nuclear industry to encourage them to adopt and promote higher nuclear security standards.  One day after the President hosted the historic Nuclear Security Summit, over 20 industry leaders from the United States, Argentina, China, France, Japan, South Africa, Russia, South Korea met with the Vice President to discuss how industry could help advance the President's goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years.

"We have a chance to build a public-private partnership to ensure Americans and citizens all over the world are safe from a very real nuclear danger," the Vice President said.  "We have said from the beginning that the big problems we face cannot be solved by the United States alone.  Equally, they cannot be solved by governments alone.  We all have to work together." 

The Vice President made clear that since roughly half of the world’s nuclear materials are in the hands of industry, public-private cooperation is essential to preventing the spread of nuclear materials to terrorists. The Vice President also challenged the nuclear industry to prepare a set of best practices to be delivered at the Nuclear Security Summit in South Korea in 2012.