Nuclear genie blasts out of the
bottle By Marc Erikson
US presidential candidates George W
Bush and Senator John Kerry don't see eye to eye on much
of anything, but in their first debate they found one
point of agreement: that the single greatest danger to
national (and global, we presume) security was the
prospect of nuclear weapons
in the hands of terrorists and detonated in a major
population center.
Well, guys, just in case it's
news to you (though it shouldn't be), the chances of
that happening sooner rather than later are pretty close
to a hundred percent and you'd better get ready for it -
and I don't mean get ready for a "dirty bomb" filled
with radioactive waste. That sort of bomb might kill
someone if it dropped right on his head, some more
people might be killed in the ensuing panic, and the
cleanup would be a pain and take a while. But it would
fall into Senator Kerry's "nuisance" category. The real
threat is the real thing - a nuclear-fission device in
the kiloton range capable of killing tens if not
hundreds of thousands.
Bush's and Kerry's one
and only time-worn prescription for how to keep nukes
away from terrorists was enforcement of a strict
non-proliferation regime. But that hasn't worked
particularly well in the past and will prove even less
efficient in the future. A recent reminder of that was
the August 23 admission by South Korea that in 2000 it
had enriched uranium in the course of atomic vapor laser
isotope separation (AVLIS) experiments that had not been
declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA).
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) was opened for signature on July 1, 1968, and came
into force on March 5, 1970. After that, at least five
nations - Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa, North
Korea - engaged in clandestine nuclear-weapons programs
and actually succeeded in developing nukes. Many others
tried - Taiwan, South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, Iraq,
Iran, Libya, to name just the best-known cases. Still
others - Japan, Germany, Canada, Sweden, and so on -
have the certain capability and have proliferated
nuclear or dual-use technology. Beyond that, there are
thousands of eminently capable nuclear scientists of the
nations of the former Soviet Union and other countries
who are for hire at the right price, not to speak of the
tons of nuclear materials that vanished when the Soviet
Union collapsed.
All this makes for a noxious
mix. The long and the short of it is that 60 years after
the detonation of the first nuclear device by the US
Manhattan project in World War II, nuclear-weapons
know-how, technology and materials are widespread,
relatively inexpensive, and largely uncontrollable. Vast
technological advances and the spread of civilian
nuclear technology (some 450 reactors in 31 countries)
make control and detection of diversion of dual-use
technologies to weapons development virtually
impossible.
The recent revelation of South
Korean AVLIS experiments is a case in point. Laser
isotope separation for uranium enrichment (first tried
in 1973 at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California,
the United States' premier weapons lab) is a
higher-tech, lower-cost, more difficult to detect way of
enriching uranium from 3-5% enriched reactor fuel to
90%-plus weapons-grade uranium. The Koreans say it was
an experiment by a "rogue" scientist unknown to
higher-ups and the government. Nonsense! You don't set
up and carry out million-dollar experiments on the sly
in the government's main nuclear energy research
facility, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute
(KAERI).
Taiwan,
similarly, has been in pursuit of nuclear weapons since
the late 1960s. And as late as 1995, president Lee
Teng-hui told the National Assembly: "We should re-study
the question of nuclear weapons from a long-term point
of view," adding, "Everyone knows we had had the plan
before." Indeed, they had. A few years after mainland
China exploded its first nuclear device in 1964, a
Taiwanese program was set up. Siemens of West Germany
was to supply reactors and reprocessing facilities.
Eventually, a Canadian Candu "research reactor" was
purchased - the same type of reactor delivered to India
and used there to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
Japan, for what it's worth, has had a laser
isotope enrichment program since 1980 and, of course,
has all the facilities for producing weapons-grade
materials for more than 20 years. "Eighteen months" was
the answer of a top Japanese nuclear scientist when
asked a few years back about how long it would take for
Japan to build a nuke.
Iraq? After the Israelis
destroyed a French-supplied plutonium-capable nuclear
reactor (Osirak) in 1981 on the orders of prime minister
Menachem Begin, Saddam Hussein started an
electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) program to get
highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear-weapons
production. Technically, it's easy and copies the first
US enrichment program developed by Lawrence Livermore
Labs. It's unknown how far it advanced. Recent news is
that all traces of the technology developed in the 1980s
and '90s has vanished.
Iran? Russian officials
said in September 2000 that they would freeze shipment
of a laser isotope separator to Iran, after repeated
requests by the US administration of president Bill
Clinton. Was the program actually suspended? No one
knows for sure. But it would take up a whole lot less of
space to conduct AVLIS enrichment than the widely
publicized centrifuge enrichment now in contention.
What is clear is this: there now exist
technological capabilities and know-how to make nukes
anywhere, with little chance of detection. The US found
out about the Taiwanese program in 1988 when a top
Taiwanese weapons scientist defected after having
supplied information to the Central Intelligence Agency
for nearly 20 years. The CIA hasn't been that lucky with
its human intelligence efforts elsewhere. The
Vienna-based NPT watchdog agency, the IAEA, has nowhere
near the already suspect and insufficient capabilities
of the CIA.
Could a weapon made in Iran be
passed on to terrorists? Did weapons information get
passed from Pakistan to terrorists? We don't know. All
we have is the testimony of Abdul Qadeer Khan,
Pakistan's premier bomb maker, that information and
technology were passed to North Korea in return for
missile technology.
It would probably take at
least the blind eye of a state favoring terrorists' aims
for a period of a few years in order for nuke makers to
get a bomb ready for delivery to the US or elsewhere in
the West. But there are several such states that would
turn a blind eye and there are several states that don't
have sufficient control over their own territory for
them to take notice.
As for delivery itself,
it's not a big deal. I'm not talking about the Tom
Clancy scenario of delivery via container ship to
Baltimore. I'm calling attention to the delivery of tons
of marijuana on fishing vessels from Mexico and
elsewhere in Latin America to the US west coast. A bunch
of guys in Bangkok (onetime bar owners there) did that
on several occasions. On one final run, they got caught.
They served a few years in a federal penitentiary and
have since retired on their loot and proceeds.
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prospect of nuclear weapons
in the hands of terrorists and detonated in a major
population center. 
