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In August, the German government reported seizing samples °f Russian weapons-grade uranium and plutonium en route through Germany. Although this was the outcome of a sting operation, the availability of the material was widely seen as an indication that Russian stockpiles are insecure; one Russian Weapons scientist said that anything—bombs or material—could be bought for the proper price.
To the U.S. government, that is a terrifying possibility. Much of the barrier to a government that wants nuclear weapons ls the sheer cost and difficulty of obtaining the necessary purified uranium or plutonium. Without that barrier, it may be relatively inexpensive to turn the material into a bomb, particularly a renegade scientist is available. The Iraqi bomb program destroyed by United Nations inspectors was largely a program to produce bomb material; presumably no one thought the next step would be particularly challenging.
Unfortunately, near weapons-grade material is likely to be available outside a country’s weapons programs.
Most nuclear submarines (current French ones are an exception) use highly enriched uranium to provide sufficient power in a small package. During the early years of the U.S. nuclear submarine program, the Navy competed With the Air Force for fuel; the Air Force wanted the material for bombs; apparently the prospect of submarine- launched strategic weapons clinched the Navy’s case.
As for plutonium, the Russians have active programs both for power-producing breeder reactors, which use plutonium fuel, and for reactors using a combination of Uranium and plutonium. Their military reactors, which are intended primarily to produce plutonium for bombs, generate vital civilian power—electricity and steam. The rector that exploded at Chernobyl fell into this category.
It seems likely that some or all of the samples the Germans have seized come from Russian naval power plants °r from laboratories outside the weapons establishment.
If so, the Russian government has probably managed to toaintain tight controls over weapons, and leakage may be less of a problem than some might imagine.
The U.S. government is trying to help solve the problem by buying up 500 tons of surplus Russian weapons- grade uranium over the next 20 years for use as reactor fuel. The Department of Energy is looking for ways to turn existing U.S. stocks of plutonium into relatively harmless waste, too diffuse to be usable in bombs. Although the plutonium can be burned in reactors, the Department currently argues that any Use of this substance invites seizure by potential bomb-makers.
The Russians see things differently. Much of their national Wealth went into making their plutonium stockpile and much of their environment was squandered in the process. To reach anything resembling prosperity, they badly need relatively inexpensive energy and the Russian nuclear ministry is very interested in using weapons-grade material in power plants. Plutonium offers the interesting possibility (already rejected in the United States) of breeding additional fuel, using unrefined (non-weapons grade) uranium. The nuclear ministry argues that the price of uranium, now relatively low, will not always re
main low, and that breeders are the key to relatively affordable power for the next century. They are not alone; the Japanese government espoused a similar policy.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed that proliferation was in neither nation’s interest because, among other things, the spread of nuclear weapons would have diluted their superpower status. Quite aside from fears of nuclear attacks against them, both would have lost valuable freedom of action. Intervention in Third World countries might have become difficult or even impossible. China at the time considered nuclear proliferation acceptable, precisely in hopes of containing a very serious Soviet threat. China reportedly provided Pakistan with a bomb design, in hopes of threatening the Soviets, and, perhaps, containing India.
Now the United States is the sole superpower. However unthreatening we consider ourselves, other countries must be painfully aware of our ability to project power. A Russian may well have ambivalent feelings about nuclear proliferation. On the one hand, he must fear that such weapons will fall into the hands of those in the “near abroad” who dislike Russian power, and who will try to resist Russian forces. The ultimate fear must be that a future civil war would be fought partly with the nuclear arsenal built up by the Soviet Union. Some modest proliferation, however, might well help clip the wings of the United States, compensating for the Russian military collapse.
The German sting operation has other implications. Current German policy is to press the nuclear powers to declare their inventories, both of bombs and of bomb material, under the next Non-Proliferation Treaty (which is due in 1995). Such inventorying would make it far more difficult for the major powers
to manufacture more bombs. The German government does not plan to seek bombs of its own, but, if European integration continues, it presumably hopes to have a growing say in the British and French nuclear forces. Any measure that drastically cuts American and Russian stockpiles will increase the relative value of the European deterrent.
The effect of the sting is to emphasize the need to control all nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. Since that would include very small samples in laboratories, the inventory might be prohibitively expensive. Also, such operations may raise the potential value of smuggled material (the stings’ proponents would say that the price offered is already quite high).
. . . and Scams Galore
There is considerable evidence that governments see nuclear weapons as invaluable equalizers. A Saudi ambassador to the United Nations recently defected. Among his revelations was a claim that the Saudi government had tried hard to acquire nuclear weapons, helping to finance the Iraqi program in the 1980s. The Saudis had no nuclear physicists of their own, so they could not readily judge the progress the Iraqis were making; the ambassador’s statements can be read to show that the Saudi government was the victim of Iraqi fraud. The Saudis must have seen the bomb as the ultimate defense of their wealthy but very sparsely populated kingdom. Acquiring more conventional defense—against, say, Iraq—would have required manpower beyond their resources. The U.S. rejoinder would be that the United States would gladly protect its desert ally. To the Saudis, however, the bomb would have represented true independence rather than any sort of benevolent protectorate (which might well eventually have created demands for human rights).
The desire for nuclear weapons makes for a fertile market for confidence schemes. The Saudis themselves were apparently the most recent victims of a Russian scam called Red Mercury. According to its salesmen, Red Mercury is a new nuclear explosive of fantastic potency; a fountain pen might hold the equivalent of several kilotons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). Even better no elaborate bomb design is needed: all the buyer need do is pack conventional explosive around the Red Mercury. Salesmen generally offer to supply Red Mercury in bulk; the Saudis were asked to ante up about $75 million for a few tons.
The scams work because few of those in charge of money have any real idea of how modem technology works. They know the Russians invested very heavily, and that they achieved some remarkable results. Years ago, a prominent science fiction writer pointed out that advanced technology often seems—to one much less advanced like magic. He did not realize how often that applies to those not educated in the technology around them. That the Russians achieved what seemed like magical results in some areas blinds some to the possibility that other forms of claimed military magic would indeed violate laws of physics— which governments cannot repeal.
In the case of Red Mercury, it is difficult to imagine how the material could be stable in bulk, yet explode under relatively light compression (merely packing explosive around it would not generate the sort of intense shock waves need to detonate plutonium, for example).
One wonders what other Russian scams depended on scientific ignorance. In the old Soviet Union, political skill could often preserve a program despite its failure to deliver promised results; remember that Mikhail Gorbachev was Minister of Agriculture before he became head of state. Lying was a major Russian governmental art form. That is why, for example, the current Russian government trusts virtually none of the production statistics its Soviet predecessor collected. The problem was not merely that the government lied for propaganda purposes; far from it. It was that bonuses won at every level of society de
pended upon whether production targets were met or exceeded. The society was corrupt and claims were very rarely checked, j
When they were, the results were sometimes shocking. In a | celebrated case, the Soviets decided to test a new reconnaissance satellite by using it to photograph cotton laid out to dry in Uzbekistan. The usual reports told them how much there was- The satellite detected far less—a clear failure, it seemed. But an investigation showed that the satellite, not the official report, was correct. Several local officials were shot and replaced by Muscovites, which later contributed to unrest in Uzbekistan.
And the laws of physics? If a top secret Soviet report, which we had purloined at great cost, claimed that some astounding success had been achieved, surely it could not be completely false. We thought, after all, that we knew where the Soviet government was trying to deceive us. We probably thought much less about deception within the Soviet system, the goal of which was simple financial gain, rather than victory over the West.
Some Soviet claims concerning nonacoustic submarine detection—though probably not all—surely fall into this category- We could never dismiss such claims, particularly if we became aware of them by covert means; the penalty for failing to counter real threats would have been very severe. There was always a nagging fear that the Russians had succeeded where we had not, because they had followed different approaches, including some we had rejected in order to concentrate on, for example, passive acoustics. Often enough we saw objects on board Soviet ships and submarines the function of which was not altogether clear; and we often lacked human sources to explain them.
When the Reagan administration entered office, it began to develop new hardware under specially compartmented—black— classifications such as the stealthy F-117.
At the same time, there were allegations that some black programs involved violations of physical law. That raises an interesting possibility. The Russians were—and remain—very adept at intelligence and they almost certainly targeted these programs. Suppose they found evidence of achievements which in fact were impossible. They were probably at least as credulous as were American intelligence analysts; to them, we were technological supermen. Trying hard to make a weapon that cannot possibly work must be rather expensive; the scientific talent concentrated on such a program cannot be used elsewhere.
There is an interesting precedent. In 1945, both Russians and Americans saw the Germans as technological supermen. If the Germans drew a blueprint, it had to represent an entirely practicable design. For example, the victorious navies thought the Germans had perfected the closed-cycle Walter Untersee (U)- boat, which promised revolutionary effects in naval warfare. The British went so far as to order a big Type XXVI from a German builder, Blohm + Voss, in the summer of 1945; they seized a sunken Type XVII, a smaller coastal version, in the mistaken hope that it could be brought into service within a year.
In fact, the Walter boat was anything but perfected. Although several Type XVIIs were built, they never approached operational status. The 24-knot Type XXVI, the great prize, was no more than a series of drawings. After the war, it turned out that not only had the Germans failed to make the engine work, but they had not even understood problems of underwater stability that would have crippled any such boat. It took the U.S. Navy nearly a decade to do so, using models at first, and then the spectacular experimental submarine Albacore (AGSS-569). As for the Walter plant, none of the allied navies found it particularly practical. Two British experimental boats encountered serious difficulties, and the Russian boat, Project 617, nearly exploded at a depth of 80 meters (250 feet).
By 1945, how much of Type XXVI was in effect a technological scam to keep its designers out of the meat-grinder on the Eastern Front?