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.