Oslo, Norway ? Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, the risk of nuclear disaster is as great as ever with terrorists zealously pursuing atomic weapons, chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei said Saturday in accepting the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

ElBaradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency he leads received the coveted award in the Norwegian capital for their efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons – a job ElBaradei nearly lost because of a dispute with the United States over Iran and Iraq.

“We are in a race against time,” the 63-year-old Egyptian said about efforts to keep nuclear weapons away from terrorists. “In four years, we have completed perhaps 50 percent of the work. But this is not fast enough.”

To escape self-destruction, the world must make atomic weapons as much of a taboo as slavery or genocide, ElBaradei said in his acceptance speech. It has been 60 years since the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, yet the world is still deeply concerned over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea.

The Bush administration has bristled at ElBaradei’s positions on the nuclear threat posed by Iran and Iraq and unsuccessfully lobbied to block his appointment to a third and final four-year term this year.