(FORTUNE Magazine) – Weighing just a few grams, the plutonium intercepted in mid-August by German police is far less than the nine pounds experts say are needed to construct a nuclear weapon. But no one knows how much more may have escaped from the Soviet nuclear arsenal. This great postCold War risk should be at the top of the agenda when President Clinton meets with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in September. The two governments must work with greater urgency to safeguard the 500 metric tons (1.1 million pounds) of highly enriched uranium and plutonium that will be extracted from Russian warheads to be dismantled. The U.S. has agreed to buy the low-grade reactor fuel the Russians generate when they reprocess the warhead material. But the conversion of so much essence de bombe will take some 20 years. The German seizures should persuade Congress and the Clinton Administration to press the Russians to soon accept monitoring technology and nuclear inventory accounting procedures that would bring their security up to western standards. Congress has appropriated $1.6 billion for that task, but so far only a quarter of the money budgeted has been committed in signed agreements. --L.S.R.