to fuel research reactor applications raise similar policy questions and should also be blocked. These are the most important points. I will be happy to discuss what else we should be doing to check proliferation in places like Iran and North Korea during the question and answer period. IRAN: BREAKING OUT WITHOUT QUITE BREAKING THE RULES? A NONPROLIFERATION POLICY EDUCATION CENTER ANALYSIS Most analyses of Iran's nuclear program are riveted on Iran's covert efforts and the question of when Iran might get its first bomb. While interesting, this question tends to downplay a much more important point and that is that Iran can come within weeks of acquiring a large arsenal of weapons without breaking the rules of the NPT or IAEA at about the same time or even sooner than when it might get its first covert bomb. In fact, Iran's could get a large arsenal of nuclear weapons50 to 75 bombs by the end of 2005 or the start of 2006-by operating its LWR at Busheir for 12 to 15 months. It could then chemically separate the plutonium (approximately 300 kgs of 85 percent 239 isotopic content plutonium, i.e., near weapons-grade) from the spent fuel and, then, convert it into metal. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), all of this is legal. This and the chemical separation of the plutonium from the spent fuel might take a total of 12-16 additional weeks. It also is legal for Iran to make as many implosion devices (sans fissile cores) as it might want and have them on the ready to receive metal plutonium cores. At this point, some time as early as the end of 2005 or the start of 2006, Iran then could break out of the NPT and have a large arsenal of weapons in a matter of days or weeks. In contrast, if Iran uses its centrifuges to enrich natural uranium to weapons grade, Iran can only make 2 to 6 bombs a year by the middle or end of 2006. Why, then, would Iran bother with building slower bomb material-making centrifuges? First, Iran might be thinking that a bomb's a bomb, and that the more ways it has to make them, the merrier. Second, it also is easier to evade IAEA inspection accounting with the centrifuges than with the LWRS. Third, Tehran may be interested in making plutonium bombs and power and wants to protect its investment by making sure that when and if it kicks out the IAEA inspectors, it will still be able to supply its LWR with fresh fuel to produce more power and bombs. Finally, fresh LWR fuel, if it is used as fresh feed for the enrichement plant, could (see below) dramatically increase the speed or number of bombs that otherwise could be produced. Of course, Iran may choose to develop covert nuclear capabilities (e.g., a heavy water reactor program) in addition. These covert programs could produce uranium and plutonium bombs more slowly without access to lightly enrich uranium reactor fuel. But the key point is that Iran will soon have the ability to breakout not with one, but a large arsenal's worth of bombs with its declared programs and do so without breaking either the NPT or IAEA rules. ROUGH ESTIMATES ON IRAN'S PLANNED CENTRIFUGE ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES Kilograms, pounds, and long tons Number of kgs of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) required to make a nominal 20 kiloton-yield weapon 5 kilograms if there is no wastage and you have a high technology weapons design 20 kilograms if you have large amount of wastage and a very low-technology weapons design Rough Number of Separative Work Units (SWUs) required for a variety of nuclear tasks Approximate number of SWUs needed to make 1 kg of HEU Reported number of Pakistani centrifuges required to make 100 kgs. HEU/ year = 3,000 Number of SWUs needed to produce 100 kgs. of HEU = 20,000 (i.e., 200 swus x 100 kgs of HEU) SWUs/year/number of Pakistani-type centrifuges = 6.7 SWUS Adjusted SWU performance accounting for Iranian aluminum vice steel centrifuge design = 2-4 SWUS Estimated SWU/Iranian-designed centrifuge requirements to maintain the fueling of a two one-gigawatt Light Water Reactor (i.e., Iran's projected enrichement requirements) Approximate annual fuel reload requirement for a 1-gigawatt LWR = 20,000 kgs of 3.5 % low enrichment uranium = 80,000 SWUS Approximate SWUs needed to meet this requirement SWUS needed to meet this annual requirement for two one-gigawatt LWRs = 160,000 SWUS Approximate number of Pakistani-type centrifuges needed to meet this requirement = ~ 50,000 Centrifuge and related bomb making capacity of planned Iranian centrifuge facilities Floor space for at least 50,000 centrifuges needed to enrich fuel for two reactors. Possible kgs of HEU/yr from 24,000 Pakistani-type centrifuges = 160,000 SWU/200 SWU per kg HEU = 800 kgs or 40 bombs' worth (assuming 20 kgs per bomb). Enrichment requirements for making a large number of bombs starting with low enrichment uranium as feed for the HEU line To give an idea of how much better one can do starting with LEU as feed consider the following: To make 20 kg of HEU (90%) starting with natural uranium takes about 20×200 = 4,000 SWU. But starting with 3.5% LEU it can take only a little over 700 SWU if you “skim the cream"-reject the tails at an assay of 2%. In other words, in terms of separative work, the 3.5% material is already most of the way to 90%. The 700 SWUS entail using about 200 Iranian-type centrifuges. This small cascade of machines would take a feed of a little over a ton of the LEU. In this way, by diverting the LEU from two LWR reload of 20 tons-for a total of 40 tons-you could produce nearly 40 bomb quantities of HEU with an input of a little over 40×700 SWU, or about 30,000 SWU, which is a lot less than the 160,000 that it takes starting with natural uranium. GETTING SANE NONPROLIFERATION BY HENRY D. SOKOLSKI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE NONPROLIFERATION POLICY EDUCATION CENTER MAY 11-13, 2003-ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA With America's departure from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty late in 2002, Bush officials have claimed that America has begun to lead the world away from security policies based on mutual assured destruction (MAD). The Administration's decision to deploy a national missile defense system in Alaska certainly is a clear refutation of MAD opposition to such protection. What's less clear, however, is how America's rejection of MAD might impact U.S. nuclear weapons policies beyond missile defense. In specific, it still is unclear how America's plans to stem the spread of nuclear weapons or to use nuclear weapons might be effected by its repudiation of MAD. MAD and The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty To an extent not generally appreciated, U.S. and international nonproliferation policies have had a fairly tight relation to MAD. During the Cold War, the most popular view concerning nuclear weapons reflected the MAD view that having a nuclear force capable of killing large numbers of civilians afforded nations basic security against attack. There also was a MAD fear that any attempt by nations to go beyond the finite force levels needed to attack undefended cities would lead to warprone arms races. These views certainly were common during the mid 1960s and were quite prevalent among those negotiating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thus, by the late 1960s, most of those crafting the NPT argued that the real proliferation danger emanated not so much the spread of nuclear weapons to more nations so much as from as the Superpowers' own never ending arms race. This rivalry, these diplomats argued, was even more likely to result in world-wide destruction than smaller states' "independent manufacture" of nuclear weapons.1 They agreed that all nations had a right to acquire nuclear weapons to defend themselves (not only against possible nuclear neighbors, but as a hedge against the Superpowers if they refused to curb their own nuclear arming). But if "because of higher considerations of the interests of mankind" non-weapons states decided not to exercise this right, they were equally convinced that these states deserved to be compensated.2 Under the NPT, this compensation consisted of 1. non-weapons states having an "inalienable right" to acquire all forms nuclear energy technology (Article IV); 2. the demand that the Superpowers engage in good faith negotiations on "effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race" (Article VI); and 3. the right of non-weapons states to withdraw from the NPT and develop nuclear weapons "if extraordinary events . . . have jeopardized the[ir] supreme interests (Article X).” For nearly 30 years, this "grand bargain” was interpreted in a manner that focused greatest attention on the need for the Superpowers to end the arms racei.e., to stop nuclear innovation through nuclear testing and to reduce the size of their arsenals to levels (a few hundred weapons) no larger than that needed to absorb an attack and yet be able to target other countries' undefended cities. Thus, the NPT's preamble calls for "the cessation of the arms race” and of further nuclear weapons production and testing. The treaty's negotiating record, meanwhile, speaks approvingly of restraints on national missile defenses (later to become the ABM Treaty) and on nuclear missile delivery systems (later to become SALT and START). As such, the various NPT review conferences that have been held on almost an annual basis since the NPT came into force have focused on these issues almost exclusively. Finally, throughout the last three decades, members of the NPT have pushed for ever freer access to civilian nuclear energy technology. The view here has been almost identical to that voiced at the time of the NPT's signing: So long as a state fore swears exercising its right to acquire nuclear weapons, it should be allowed access to all forms of nuclear technology. This includes the ability to stockpile large quantities of nuclear weapons usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium and even to develop nuclear weapons implosion and gun assembly devices (so long as these don't have nuclear weapons material cores). All that was required of non-weapons states to engage in these activities, besides signing the NPT, was to afford NPT's nuclear watch dog agency or its equivalent in EURATOM occasional access to monitor declared nuclear facilities to assure that no special nuclear materials was unaccounted for. If a nation's amount of special nuclear material (including even large amounts of nuclear weapons usable material) was what it should be, the IAEA would give them a clean bill of health and protect whatever it knew about the amounts of these nuclear weapons usable materials from being sought or shared.3 Thus, it was understood that members of the NPT could bring themselves develop a nuclear weapons breakout capability under the treaty. As the U.S. State Department's own Policy Planning Staff explained in an internal study in 1968: After the NPT, many nations can be expected to take advantage of the terms of the treaty to produce quantities of fissionable material. Plutonium separation plants will be built; fast breeder reactors developed. It is possible that experimentation with conventional explosives that might be relevant to detonating a nuclear bomb core may take place. In this way, various nations will attain a well-developed option on a bomb. A number of nations will be able to detonate 1See, e.g., "Statement by the Indian Representative (Trivedi) to the First Committee of the General Assembly: Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, October 31,1966," in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament, 1966 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), p. 679. 2 See, e.g., "Statement by the Brazilian Representative [Azeredo d Silveria] to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee: Draft Nonproliferation Treaty, August 31,1967," in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament, 1967 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), p. 370. 3 See, e.g., "Statement by the Dutch Representative (Eschauzier) to the First Committee of the General Assembly: Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons [Extract], May 6, 1968," in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament, 1968 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 295-96 and "Statement by ACDA Director Forster to the First Committee of the General Assembly: Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, November 9, 1966," in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament, 1966 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), p. 271. a bomb within a year following withdrawal from the treaty; others may even shorten this period.4 Under this interpretation of the NPT, adherence to the treaty required only minimal enforcement or monitoring. The key protection against proliferation, after all, was the willingness of nations to foreswear exercising their natural right to acquire nuclear weapons in a legally binding treaty. This also meant that the nonproliferation secured by the treaty was potentially quite fragile. The NPT After the Cold War Despite these shortcomings, the NPT, until recently, was heralded as a clear success. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, achievement of the NPT's ultimate goals actually seemed within reach. South Africa and Ukraine renounced their possession of nuclear weapons and joined the NPT. Similarly, Brazil and Argentina gave up their nuclear weapons programs and became NPT members. In 1995, the NPT, which was up for a 25-year review, was extended indefinitely. Also, Russia and the United States began to reduce their deployment of nuclear weapons systems dramatically. By the year 2001, both had agreed to reduce their strategic nuclear weapons deployments to less than 4,400 weapons whereas at the height of the Cold War both had deployed a total of well over 60,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. Since the mid-1990s, though, the NPT and its MAD-inspired interpretation began to falter. First, whatever limited utility MAD thinking may have had to describe or channel the Cold War competition between the Soviet and US-led alliances, it was only a tolerable view so long as these two blocks actively kept nations under their influence from acquiring nuclear weapons of their own. During the Cold War, to great extent, this worked. The Soviets kept Eastern Europe from going nuclear and the US and NATO curbed the nuclear ambitions of most of Western Europe and much of Middle East and Asia. With the end of the Cold War competition, though, nations had a greater incentive to go their own way and MAD and finite deterrence arguments only tended to make this impulse stronger. Indeed, if acquisition of a relatively few nuclear weapons targeted against an adversary's undefended cities was a sure guarantee against being attacked by a neighbor or a larger outside power, why wouldn't most nations choose to go nuclear? In 1998, India and Pakistan's nuclear tests seemed to validate this view. Both nations essentially affirmed that they felt more secure with bombs of their own than they did with any military, political or economic support they might get from others. Second, after the Cold War several NPT members exploited the generous nuclear compensation that a MAD-inspired view of the NPT required. North Korea, who became a member of the NPT in 1985, managed to secure all the nuclear assistance it needed to generate and separate plutonium for bombs and launch a covert uranium enrichment program. Although it only allowed the IAEA to inspect its facilities in 1992, Pyongyang was able to remain a member of the NPT even after it was found in violation of its safeguards agreement in 1993 and, indeed, even after it first claimed it had already withdrawn in early 2003. Iran, meanwhile, acquired virtually the entire fuel cycle-fuel fabrication plants, uranium enrichment facilities, a large light water reactor, a heavy water production facility (and probably a heavy water reactor and chemical separation plant as well) without being found in violation of either the NPT or its IAEA safeguards agree ment. The concern now is that Tehran in little more than 30 months could come within weeks of having a nuclear arsenal of 50-75 weapons and still be a member of the NPT in good standing. Third, after the Cold War, enforcement of the NPT was tested and found wanting. In the case of Iraq, it was only after its defeat in Desert Storm that UN voted to restrict its full access to nuclear energy technology. At no time prior to the war was it ever found in violation of its IAEA safeguards obligations. North Korea, meanwhile, was able to evade the NPT requirement that it permit IAEA inspections of its facilities 18 months after signature and did so for nearly an additional 5 years with no repercussions. Then, when the UN, in 1993, did finally find North Korea to be in violation of its safeguards agreement no action was taken. Rather than sanction North Korea, the US, its allies, and the UN allowed Pyongyang to evade its NPT obligation to allow IAEA inspectors for yet another decade. The reason was a US-formulated a deal to give North Korea two large, modern 4 See U.S. Department of State, Policy Planning Council, "After NPT, What?" May 25, 1968, NSF, Box 26, LBJL, as cited in Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 299. light water reactors in exchange for its eventual compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement. Even after Pyongyang made it clear that it had violated this agreement and withdrew from the NPT, no enforcement action was taken against it. The promised reactors are still being built. North Korean officials recently suggested that they might export the nuclear weapons they had made to other states. As a state that has withdrawn from the NPT, this would be perfectly legal for North Korea to do. It could even export warheads to an NPT non-weapons state member: So long as the warheads remained under North Korean control-as the U.S. currently maintains control of its nuclear weapons in Germany-no provision of the NPT would be violated. What's MAD that Remains Given this worrisome review of the NPT's current implementation, one only can hope that the popularity of MAD-inspired views of the treaty might finally give way to a safer set of policies. This is conceivable but only if the U.S. and its allies are willing to drop their attachment to MAD thinking and MAD-inspired nonproliferation-steps that will require much more than the U.S. merely backing out of the ABM Treaty. What else would it require? First, the U.S. and its allies would have to further reduce their security reliance on forms of nuclear retaliation that still entail the killing of large numbers of people. US officials are now openly raising doubts about the deterrent value of our nuclear forces against rouge states and terrorist organizations. Yet, they still claim that retention of 1,700-2,200 nuclear weapons is needed to deter "mature" or "advanced" states (e.g., Russia and China). Use of large numbers of these weapons to target Russia's weapons capabilities, however, could kill several million civilians. How well retaining such an "option" accords with moving away from MAD is unclear. Also, the threatened use of such weapons is presented publicly as a possible means to deal with smaller, badly behaving states (i.e., those that might threaten use of chemical or biological weapons). U.S. officials are particularly interested in being able to surgically disarm hostile states with nuclear bunker buster warheads. Yet, many command bunkers are located in or near these states' largest cities (e.g., Baghdad, Tehran, etc.) as are a fair number of the weapons of mass destruction storage and production facilities that might be targeted. Attacking these targets could easily entail the slaughter of large numbers of people. It is not clear what can be done about this. Perhaps non-nuclear technologies, such as kinetic ballistic missile warheads could be developed to put hardened bunkers at risk. Perhaps targets could be selected that would keep potential collateral damage to a minimum or that would obviate the need to destroy the bunkers in question. Perhaps not. What is clear, however, is that relying heavily on nuclear targeting that entails heavy casualties will undermine the credibility of U.S. efforts to move away from MAD and to get other nations to do so as well. Second, the U.S. and its allies would have to actively contest the notion that all states have a natural right to acquire nuclear weapons. Certainly, the notion that if a nation's security is threatened it has a right to break out of the NPT needs to be challenged. If it is not, North Korea's recent accumulation of nuclear technology under false "peaceful" pretenses and its withdrawal from the treaty is sure to be only the first of many such frauds. Any credible challenge to similar abrogations, however, would require the U.S. and its allies to take a much firmer line against states outside the ÑPT's five recognized nuclear weapons. This would require disciple that has yet to be demonstrated. In fact, the U.S. and its allies have all too frequently done the opposite, excusing Israel's, India's and Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons as being "understandable". Recently, the Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission visited two of India's nuclear weapons production reactors and extended U.S. nuclear "safety" cooperation to New Delhi. Earlier, the U.S. government did all it could to waive and bend mandatory sanctions laws directed against India's and Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998.5 More recently, the U.S. refused to identify Pakistan as a nuclear proliferator despite repeated reports of Pakistani nuclear assistance to North Korea and Iran. As for Israel, the U.S. did far too little to stop their nuclear weapons program and has done nothing publicly to get it to stop production of plutonium at its weapons plant at Dimona. Such proliferation "realism" is not limited to friendly nuclear weapons states outside of the NPT. Nor is it confined to how the U.S. relates to friendly non-weapon state members to the NPT. The U.S. has protested North Korea's violation of the 5 See Mark Hibbs, "U.S. Confirms It Has Intelligence Pointing to DAE Planning Arms Tests," Nuclear Fuel, April 14, 2003. |