Over 50 Heads of State gathered in The Netherlands, are trying to make the world a safer place.

The Dutch city of The Hague yesterday, March 24, 2014, welcomed 58 world leaders, 5,000 delegates and 3,000 journalists to the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS), the largest gathering of its kind ever held in the country, agency reports said. Russian President, Vladimir Putin, stayed away, choosing to send his Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, the BBC said.

Other notable absentees from the summit are North Korea and Iran that were excluded by mutual consent. Lavrov is however expected to hold talks with US Secretary of State, John Kerry. Though nuclear terrorism is officially the main topic for the summit, the Ukraine crisis will overshadow talks. Delegations from 53 countries, including the leaders of the US, China and Japan, are negotiating how to reduce, secure nuclear supplies and keep them out of terrorists’ hands.

As the meeting opened, Japan announced plans to turn over to the United States over 315 kilogrammes of weapons-grade plutonium and a supply of highly-enriched uranium. US Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, described the deal as "a very significant nuclear security pledge." Yosuke Isozaki, a senior adviser to Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, said the hand over of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium was part of Japan's efforts to prevent proliferation and possible abuse of nuclear material by terrorists.

The summit is the third since US President, Barack Obama, launched the series in 2009, saying that reducing the risk of terrorist attacks with either nuclear weapons or ‘dirty bombs’ was one of his most important international policy goals. Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, told reporters before the opening that 146 nuclear ‘incidents’ were reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in 2013, The Washington Post reported. Although the incidents were mainly about material that temporarily went missing, “the possibility of a serious incident continues to hang over us,” he warned.

The number of countries that possess enough highly-enriched uranium or plutonium to make bombs has fallen steadily from 39 before the first conference in Washington in 2010 to 25 at the start of The Hague summit, sources said. More than 120 countries today exchange information on cases of theft, unauthorised access to sites where radioactive material is held, and illegal transfers.