5 posts tagged “nuclear proliferation”

Some information is finally beginning to leak out about why Israel bombed a certain place in Syria recently. Some in the U.S. government led by Vice President Dick Cheney believe Israeli intelligence when they claim that the work was nuclear related. Others led by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and Defense Secretary Bill Gates say the evidence is not conclusive. The New York Times article is here. (this is the best one I have seen on the subject so far)

It has long been known that North Korean scientists have aided Damascus in developing sophisticated ballistic missile technology, and there appears to be little debate that North Koreans frequently visited a site in the Syrian desert that Israeli jets attacked Sept. 6. Where officials disagree is whether the accumulated evidence points to a Syrian nuclear program that poses a significant threat to the Middle East.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst in Washington. The analyst said that Syrian officials vigorously denied the intelligence and said that what the Israelis hit was a storage depot for strategic missiles.

That denial followed a similar denial from North Korea. Mr. Hill, the State Department’s assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs, raised the Syria issue with his North Korean counterparts in talks in Beijing in late September. The North Koreans denied providing any nuclear material to Syria.

Publicly, Syrian officials have said Israeli jets hit an empty warehouse.

Still, Mr. Riedel said Israel would not have launched the strike in Syria if it believed Damascus was merely developing more sophisticated ballistic missiles or chemical weapons.

“Those red lines were crossed 20 years ago,” he said. “You don’t risk general war in the Middle East over an extra 100 kilometers’ range on a missile system.”

Another former intelligence official said Syria was attempting to develop so-called airburst capability for its ballistic missiles. Such technology would allow Syria to detonate warheads in the air to disperse the warhead’s material more widely.

I find it very hard to believe Syria was attempting to make a nuclear bomb since that attempt would have been detected earlier but this airburst comment suggests that they might be seeking to make a large dirty bomb to put on top of a missile. If so that would be scary.

All analyzes I have seen on dirty bombs assume some terrorist gets a hold of some small amount of reactor produced radioactive material and put that in a small bomb (10 to 20 pounds). None have considered the effect of what a large amount of radioactive material would have if a 500 pound airburst bomb goes off.

For a fine analysis of small dirty bombs see here.

The very good Wikipedia article explaning that dirty bomb material only comes from nuclear reactors is found here.

With all the concern about Iran's nuclear program and its potential for nuclear proliferation and war I though I had better start tracking developments more closely in an attempt to cut through the political posturing.

A good article on the history behind Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant and the recent deal to prevent Iran from getting plutonium out of it can be found here.

"On 13 February 2004 a Russian Energy Ministry official said that Iran and Russia might sign the protocol on exporting Russian nuclear fuel to Iran`s Bushehr Nuclear Plant and return of the use fuel to Russia within the next two weeks. The official said "The controversial protocol, that would pave the way for making functional Iran`s Bushehr Nuclear Plant, and Russia`s access to the major part of its money for completing the said plant, would be signed very soon, and no later than a fortnight from now." He emphasized"

The deal was eventually signed February 7, 2005 so there must have been some resistance from Iran.

A listing of all Iran's nuclear facilities built or under construction as of 2003 can be found here. Interestingly only one power plant (Bushehr) is listed.

There remain significant such open question related to Iran's enrichment program. The 26 August 2003 IAEA report provides information making clear Iran has consistently misled the Agency about its enrichment program. First, as paragraph 30 reveals, Iran's centrifuge enrichment program did not begin in 1997, as Iran initially told the Agency, but in 1985,

This New York Times article from Feb 2007 gives a brief history of international inspections of Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program based upon centrifuges.

At first, inspectors from the international atomic agency in Vienna had wide latitude to travel through Iran in an effort to comprehend the depth and breadth of the enrichment project — and assess its true nature, whether for war or peace. They toured centrifuge factories, found a hidden centrifuge factory behind a false wall in a small electric facility in downtown Tehran and hunted for signs of weapons-grade enrichment. They visited the cavernous hall at Natanz, until recently a huge, empty basement.

By the atomic agency’s estimates, Iran could produce upwards of 100 centrifuges a month, and was stockpiling them.

Then, last February (that would be Feb. 2006 , SS), after three years of unusual openness, Iran reacted to the growing pressure from Washington and Europe to suspend its enrichment — or face sanctions — by drastically reducing the access of international inspectors to Natanz and dozens of other atomic sites, programs and personnel.

Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program was secret until 2002 according to this article until an opposition group revealed its existence. Until recently Iran tended to downplay its commitment to the enrichment process.

The agency has repeatedly asked Iran for information, but Iran has insisted that it abandoned work on the P-2 centrifuge three years ago. Then in April, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Tehran was “presently conducting research” on the P-2 and boasted that it would quadruple Iran’s enrichment powers.

The Iranians seem to be researching pure plutonium which is only used in nuclear bombs and not for power production according to this NY Times article. Plutonium is only produced in a nuclear power plant.

The report also documents a number of contradictions between claims by Iranian authorities and the inspectors' evidence.

An example of the serious discrepancies found by the atomic agency center on Iranian research on plutonium, one of the main fuels of nuclear arms. The report said the agency took a number of Iranian plutonium disks to Vienna for analysis of their makeup.

The investigators found a major disagreement between the disks and what was said to be the solution from which they were made. The analysis revealed that eight of the disks had "significantly lower" amounts of plutonium 240. That finding is important because plutonium 240 is considered a pollutant in the making of nuclear arms, and nuclear engineers work hard to limit its presence.

The report made no link between the plutonium 240 finding and its potential usefulness for making nuclear arms. Rather, in the agency's usual understated style, it simply noted the discrepancy.

"The story is not as straight as it has been presented to us," said a senior official with knowledge of the agency's investigation.

After a short period of shutting down their uranium enrichment program the Iranians broke the U.N. inspector's seals on the equipment in January 2006 according to this article here.

Iran received nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan just like North Korea according to this August 2005 NY Times article.

Dr. Khan publicly confessed in January 2004 to having provided nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, but he gave few details. General Musharraf pardoned him, citing his status as a national hero. Pakistani officials are investigating Dr. Khan, but General Musharraf has barred American or United Nations investigators from directly questioning him.

From this initial review of the evidence I think the odds favor the idea that Iran is seeking to develop plutonium nuclear weapons.

The key facts are:

1. Iran does not have plans for a large number of nuclear power plants for the purpose of generating electricity. It is only building one nuclear reactor. So why is it spending tons of money to enrich uranium in a quantities for a whole electrical generation industry for only one nuclear plant?
   
2. The uranium enrichment program began in 1985 during the Iran - Iraq war meaning that it was started as a military program and then never completely stopped.
3. The Iranian uranium enrichment program only re-started again in January 2006 after the Russians refused to allow Iran to get plutonium from the spent fuel of their one nuclear reactor (in February 2005).  Even only enriching uranium to fuel levels will allow Iran to fuel their own nuclear power plant and that will get them the plutonium which is need to make lightweight nuclear bombs suitable for placement on missiles. See this link and this link for nuclear bomb information.

The last few months has seen significant progress with North Korea. Yesterday North Korea agreed to begin dismantling its key nuclear facilities. A good report on that is from the Washington Post here . Today North and South Korea agreed to work towards a formal peace agreement ending the Korean War. A report on that in USA Today here.

Given North Korea's past behavior there will be setbacks on this road but the trend is clear.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deserves most of the credit on the U.S. side for showing flexibility.

The goal of world peace needs to pursued in layers with the greatest threats given the most priority. In my opinion the spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat we face since the consequences of a nuclear war are so devastating and long term.

So now only Iran remains to worry the world.

350 kiloton MOHAWK Nuclear Bomb Test - 1956

1 comment

Perhaps the most compelling reason why Shiite Iran should not develop nuclear weapons and why Iran should realize that going down that road is not in its best interest is the high probability of an accidental nuclear war between Iran and its neighbors. That other nations beyond Israel would become involved is evidenced by the sudden interest Sunni Arab states have in acquiring nuclear power plants in order to gain some national expertise in the area. This New York Times article explains it well.

During the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States the time for land based nuclear missiles to reach each nation was a half hour when flying over the North Pole. This gave each side some time to double check for errors. The flight time of a missile between Israel and Iran or a Sunni Arab nation and Iran is about 10 minutes which leaves very little time for double checking early warning data.

Some examples of such false alarms is very illustrative of what can happen

The most recent big scare occurred in January 1995 when Russian radars detected a missile launch out of the Norwegian Sea not giving them much time to decide even though thus was the time of Boris Yeltsin and warm relations between the two nations. The Russians came very close to launching, a fact which scared the U.S. enough so that the U.S. paid for some Russian early warning improvements.

See the CNN article Nuclear Close Calls and this one from the San Francisco Chronical.

The most complete listing of known nuclear false alarms can be found here. Most of these are from the U.S. records. The true amount of Soviet era false alarms may never be known although one interesting case is reported here.

Some more information on the scariest incidents can be found in this PBS article.

I believe in the phrase "Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it" so an accurate analysis of events that led to the war in Iraq is important for a better future. What follows is from my memory without supporting documentation (I leave that for historian book writers)

It all began with President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech in which he labeled Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an Axix of Evil due to their perceived intent to both develop nuclear weapons and support terrorism. This was way ahead of any real evidence. True Iraq had built a nuclear reactor that was destroyed by the Israel in 1981 and Iran was supplying Hezbolla with weapons in their fight against Israel but that was about it.

Donald Rumsfield, the new secretary of Defense seems to have been one of those pushing the idea that intent is what should govern defense policy. He kept saying that North Korea had or would soon have nuclear weapons while the CIA was saying North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. Rumsfield turned out to be right and that gave the perceived intent group a lot of power. The CIA was cowed and I am sure a lot of CIA managers were replaced. This also seems to have affected the British Intelligence service as well. Now intent became the dominant factor in determining which nations had nuclear weapons. The two intelligence services seem to feed off each other in a vicious circle forming a bad case of "group think". Later I was amazed at how many mid-level people in all these government agencies involved in intelligence really, sincerely believed that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.

Meanwhile Iraq was under economic sanctions which was causing real hardship to the Iraqi people not a part of Saddam's clique. This was made much worse by the corruption in the program in which aid meant for those people was siphoned off by Saddam for his own purposes. Still the United States was getting blamed for it and it was causing the sanctions to break down. It was obvious to most that either Saddam had to be let free or he had to be overthrown by war. That was the real question facing the international community before the 9-11 World Trade Center attack.

So should Saddam be set free? This was his past history.

He attacked and succeeded in conquering the nation of Kuwait triggering the first Iraq war. Prior to that he had attacked Iran and gassed a Kurdish village and Iranian soldiers. He had sent and was sending death squads against the Shiites. During the sanctions period Saddam was committing an ecological form of genocide against the Marsh Arabs.

If Saddam was set free he would certainly follow his old pattern and use the oil wealth to build up his army instead of building up the nation and helping the Iraqi people. This would cause an arms race with Iran and certainly the development of more poison gas weapons on both sides. After that what is there to stop them from developing biological and nuclear weapons as they competed with each other? This line of thought seems to be what triggered Iran's nuclear program and gave the Bushies their perceived intent excuse. In contrast the Arab states would either cozy up to Iraq to prevent an attack or depend more on the United States for defense.

Iraq would easily have been able to get nuclear technology from Pakistan just like Iran and North Korea. CNN has a great time line for this here. Only after the second Iraq war was this underground nuclear technology transfer stopped with the result that Libya gave up its aim of developing a bomb. Saddam also seems to have contracted with North Korea for better missile technology to improve their short range missiles shortly before he was toppled.

The Bushies decided that war was needed but instead of an honest international discussion of the issue they treated the citizens of the world and the United States as stupid cows not worthy of participating in a democracy.

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center late in 2001 give the Bushies a simple emotional excuse to attack Iraq. By artificially and incorrectly linking terrorists to Iraq they hoped to use emotion to get the war in Iraq that they wanted. Yet when this did not work they came up with the idea that because Saddam would have the intent to develop nuclear weapons sometime in the future that he was doing so now! This was the argument that was presented to the United Nations by then secretary of State Colin Powell. Since he was not a Bushie his words carried a lot of weight but it turns out he was fooled as well.

So the road to war was not as simple as many claim it to be.