Posted on 09/15/2002 5:26:55 PM PDT by knak
Saddam Hussein is developing nuclear capability, using pirated centrifuges to refine uranium
IRAQ is using pirated copies of German equipment to process nuclear material in an assembly line that will regularly produce nuclear weapons, an Iraqi scientist who led a section of the Iraqi nuclear bomb programme before his defection in 1994 claims.
President Saddam Hussein may need only months more to put together up to three nuclear cores, if he has not already done so while his programme has not been monitored, the defector says.
Dr Khidir Hamza also said that, even if given unfettered access, UN inspectors would find it far more difficult to detect the nuclear assembly line. “The beauty of the present system is that the units are each very small and in the four years since the inspectors left they will have been concealed underground or in basements or buildings that outwardly seem normal,” he said.
In an interview with The Times Dr Hamza painted a more alarming picture than had been laid out in a report last week by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. It concluded that Saddam’s regime could make a bomb within months as Iraq had almost all the hardware and technology needed to build it, but only if it succeeded in smuggling in the necessary uranium or radioactive material.
The Iraqi defector claimed that the necessary uranium was already being processed inside Iraq. The material, he said, comprises 1.3 tonnes of low-enriched material bought many years ago from Brazil.
He said that Iraq had also been processing many tonnes of yellow-cake uranium, which has been extracted from large supplies of phosphates dotted around the country. Nuclear inspectors had been shown 162 tonnes of the material, but Dr Hamza said there were several other phosphate sites that were not inspected.
“The amount of uranium it already has — conservatively estimated in a German intelligence report at ten tonnes of natural uranium and 1.3 tonnes of low-enriched uranium — is enough for three nuclear weapons,” Dr Hamza said.
Before their expulsion, the inspectors dismantled an illegally imported German centrifuge installation that had been used to refine progressively natural or low-enriched uranium until it becomes suitable for weapons.
But Dr Hamza said that by then the “cat was out the bag”.
The key was provided, he said, when the German Karl Schaab smuggled in the centrifuge in 1989 and later helped Iraq to build a second. “We videoed as it was put up, so we could build identical ones. Then he also provided 130 classified documents and charts detailing every aspect of the construction. When the inspectors took away the original centrifuge, we already had the know-how. I believe there are probably hundreds of copies today,” said Dr Hamza, who now lives in the United States. “They are easy to hide — undetectable from satellites if built within or under other buildings.”
The problem for Iraq, he said, is simply to keep reprocessing the material so that after each run it gets more and more enriched, until it reaches the 90 per cent needed for nuclear weapons explosion. Having 1.3 tonnes of low-enriched uranium (3 to 4 per cent enriched) rather than only natural uranium (0.7 per cent enriched) meant that the process was speeded up.
For a really efficient nuclear weapons programme, thousands of such centrifuges were needed because each had a very small output of uranium, he said. The centrifuges spin at very high speeds and the joints are held together by magnets at top and bottom. The centrifuge tubes are made either of steel or aluminium.
The United States said this month that a shipment to Iraq of such highly refined aluminium tubes had been intercepted. Last week Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, disclosed that Saddam has been secretly attempting to buy aluminium tubes.
For every intercepted shipment of either small motors or precision tubes for the centrifuges, several would probably get through, Dr Hamza said, pointing out that a container could hold thousands. Orders would be placed for the tubes with a Western company via a third country at relatively low precision, and then a later order would suddenly specify far more precise production, costing four or five times as much and giving the factory far higher profits, he said.
“The whole centrifuge method of getting to a bomb is much easier for Iraq than, for example, it was for Pakistan, which took 17 years in going the same route. They had to steal bits and pieces, whereas we got a whole centrifuge and all the plans,” Dr Hamza said.
Experts suggest that the method used by Iraq can take between four and seven years, depending on the number of centrifuges, and the process would have begun in earnest again as soon as the inspectors left in 1998 and possibly even earlier, Dr Hamza said. “This means, unless he’s stopped soon, Saddam will have set up a whole nuclear bomb industry, not just have made a couple of bombs,” he added.
Dr Hamza said that it would be suicidal for the West to wait much longer before eliminating Saddam’s regime. “Inspectors going in now will have an almost impossible task to discover what’s going on in the nuclear field,” he said. “Since the inspectors left, Saddam has had four years at least to hide what needs to be hidden. Now he’s well on the road, his game will be to stall and stall — if America lets him.”
Also, notice his "hypothesis" about "switching" the precision required? Implausible. Lower precision centrifuges can't be spun as fast. But they are adequate for most civilian uses. But to make U-235 behave differently from U-238 - a tiny weight difference per atom in a dense material - you need the enourmous forces only available at high speeds, only available with very close to perfect alignment. If an importer changes the spec to extreme levels "at the last minute", it is a red flag about the intended use.
We know such shipments are attempted, but also that they are intercepted. And recently. The balance of the evidence, as opposed to this guy's sheer speculation, is that they do not yet have working high tolerance centrifuges in any quantity, but are trying to get them abroad by hook or by crook. It is therefore quite unlikely they have succeeded in enriching their uranium - the hardest step by far in making a bomb. Left alone for long enough, would they succeed? Yes, of course. Have they probably done so already? No.
I think it may be time to start getting scared, Mr. Daschle.
Regarding low and high precision specs. Hazma spoke about aluminum tubes only, not centrifuges. Meaning that original orders for tubes were low spec so as to not alarm inspectors eyc, only later afer shipments or tubes became "everyday" would the high spec tubes start arriving..thus not alarming the powers that be...
Just my observation from the information in the article. But according to my reading, high spec tubes have gotten in, centrifuges have been built and stuff is being made.
What!!!! the Germans have the capability to make nuclear bombs!!!!
I say we have a dire need to invade immediately. We should set up bases there and occupy the country for at least 50 years.
Well for one thing access to certain seamless tubings, maraging steels, etc. might raise a few eyebrows.
Then, a little too late for Germany, their scientists started to process the necesiary uranium from mines in the Hartz Mountains. In the April of 1945 a U boat was sent to Japan with the uranium and two representatives of Japan. When the captain of the U boat heard that Germany had surrendered he decided to go to the US and turn over his ship. The two Japs killed themselves. The U boat surrendered in Boston, I believe. But don't hold me to that last detail.
Yes, someone knows.
I wonder if the prospect of finding German, French, Chinese, etc. equipment in use in Iraqi nuke/WMD production operations has anything to do with the reluctance of these countries to back the USA in the upcoming assault. Whistling past the graveyard?
It was also in National Geographic.
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