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According to an article set to appear next month in the journal Science and Global Security, Israeli engineers have developed a technique to render nuclear plutonium unusable for weapons of mass destruction.

According to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, engineers there have found that adding americium (Am 241) -- a synthetic radioactive metallic element often used in commercial smoke detectors -- to plutonium created in large nuclear reactors "denatures" the plutonium, making it fit only for peaceful purposes.

In a release, the university claimed that if the United States, Russia, Germany, France, and Japan agree to the denaturing process during their production of nuclear reactors, any country looking to buy nuclear reactors from those five countries would be getting "safe" reactors.

"When you purchase a nuclear reactor from one of the five countries, it also provides the nuclear fuel for the reactor," Yigal Ronen, professor in Ben-Gurion's Department of Nuclear Engineering, who headed the project, said in a statement. "Thus, if the five agree to insert the additive into fuel for countries now developing nuclear power -- such as Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen -- they will have to use it for peaceful purposes rather than warfare."

The school said Ronen first researched using neptunium 237 for the denaturing process, later replacing it with americium.

"Countries that purchase nuclear reactors usually give the spent fuel back to the producer," Ronen said. "They wouldn't be able to get new plutonium for weapons if it is denatured, but countries that make nuclear fuel could decide not to denature it for themselves."

Ronen told the Jerusalem Post that the discovery alone would probably not "declaw" Iran, which has two other nuclear options: using centrifuges, such as those Iraq had, and using small plutonium reactors.

"Our work could solve only one part of the problem," Ronen told the Post. "The reality is more complicated, and denaturing is not relevant for Iran's other options. Iran would be able to continue to threaten the world with the other two options if the world doesn't stop it."

The search for denatured plutonium has been ongoing since at least the 1940s. A Time magazine dispatch from April 8, 1946 begins: "Uranium 235 and plutonium can be denatured; such denatured materials do not readily lend themselves to the making of atomic explosives, but... can be used for the peaceful applications of atomic energy."

The article was quoting the above from what it called a "cryptic statement" at the center of a State Department report on atomic energy. The report mentioned the ease with which uranium 235 is denatured, but the real mystery was denaturing plutonium. Time reported that scientists thought the denaturing additive would have to be a nonexplosive isotope of plutonium, since it was believed that a different chemical element could be easily separated from the plutonium, thus rendering it just as easy (or easier) to remove the denaturing ingredient than to add it in the first place.

That seems to have no longer been the conventional wisdom on denaturing plutonium, but if the Ben-Gurion engineers are correct, it would be put finally to rest. Fans of Albert Einstein may believe the news would settle another point: Einstein is quoted as having written, commenting on the ethics of national leaders, "It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man."