[NukeNet] THE MYTH OF ATOMS FOR PEACE - Chicago Tribune

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THE MYTH OF ATOMS FOR PEACE

The new nuclear nightmare

Published August 29, 2004, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0408290527aug29,1,1922164.story?coll=chi-techtopheds-hed

About half a century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower and 
his aides had what seemed to be a brilliant idea to avert a 
nuclear arms race. It came to be called "Atoms for Peace." 
Those who had nuclear weapons, mainly the Soviet Union and 
the United States, would help those who didn't have such 
weapons develop peaceful nuclear energy projects, like power 
reactors. In return, those nations were expected not to 
divert uranium to build a bomb.

The idea backfired disastrously. It hastened the spread of 
nuclear technology--and weapons--around the world. Moreover, 
it stoked a lucrative private competition to supply such 
technology to more and more countries and demolished any 
attempts even to partially stuff the nuclear genie back in 
the bottle.

Now the world faces a looming threat. Osama bin Laden has 
spoken of acquiring nuclear weapons as a "religious duty." 
North Korea may have as many as eight bombs, and has 
reportedly begun selling key ingredients for making bombs to 
other countries. Iran is playing a cat-and-mouse game with 
the United Nations' nuclear inspectors while it continues 
work that will enable it to build its own bomb.

Earlier this year, a vast nuclear black market was exposed, 
its tendrils leading no one knows exactly where. But this is 
certain: All the nuclear technology and know-how needed to 
make a bomb was for sale, short of the actual fissile 
material, to the highest bidders. The market, led by 
Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, was thriving, 
dramatically accelerating the capability of North Korea, 
Iran and Libya to build bombs.

That black market--dubbed the "nuclear Wal-Mart"--has 
exploded years of assumptions and presumptions about how 
effective efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation have been.

Even the normally cautious director of the International 
Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has been speaking 
bluntly about the need for urgent reform in the treaties and 
agreements that are supposed to limit the spread of nuclear 
weapons.

"If the world does not change course," he wrote, "we risk 
self-destruction."

That is not hyperbole. A bomb far more powerful than those 
exploded at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II can now 
fit into a car trunk.


On July 1, 1968, the U.S. and dozens of other countries 
signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It sought to 
freeze the number of nuclear nations at five--the U.S., 
France, Britain, the Soviet Union and China--while helping 
nations that forswore nuclear weapons to build peaceful 
nuclear reactors.

The non-proliferation treaty and the International Atomic 
Energy Agency (IAEA), which was empowered to monitor treaty 
compliance, have failed to halt the spread of the bomb. 
Determined cheaters could, and did, develop weapons in 
secret, capitalizing on the expertise gained legitimately 
from nuclear nations. A map of the known and suspected 
nuclear nations appears on today's Commentary page.

The current web of international treaties and controls on 
nuclear weapons and power reactors was set up for a far 
different world. For one thing, these agreements were 
targeted at nations. They were not designed to deal with the 
likelihood that a terrorist group would, at some point, 
attempt to buy, steal or build a bomb, or detonate 
radioactive material in a so-called dirty bomb. All those 
frightful possibilities are more likely now.

In June 2003, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of Britain's 
domestic intelligence service, MI5, told a London think tank 
that renegade scientists have helped Al Qaeda in its effort 
to develop chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear 
weapons (CBRN). "Sadly, given the widespread proliferation 
of the technical knowledge to construct these weapons, it 
will only be a matter of time before a crude version of a 
CBRN attack is launched at a major Western city and only a 
matter of time before that crude version becomes something 
more sophisticated," she said.

The U.S. seems to agree. The federal government reportedly 
is resurrecting a scientific art that had faded since the 
cold war: fallout analysis. That's the ability to quickly 
trace the roots of a nuclear explosion to who detonated it 
and where the nuclear material originated.

There is no way to rid the world of this threat. It can be 
reduced, but not eliminated. It would be simpler if it were 
only a matter of dismantling nuclear weapons, but it's not. 
There are hundreds of tons of the materials needed to build 
bombs--highly enriched uranium or plutonium--all over the 
world. Some of it is well guarded, some not. Some is used in 
hundreds of civilian reactors, often located on university 
campuses, used for research, training and medicine.

By one estimate, there's enough highly enriched uranium and 
plutonium already in the world to fuel at least 100,000 
nuclear weapons. There are plants in several countries 
churning out even more enriched material.

Ever since Atoms for Peace, there has been talk of banning 
the manufacture of more bomb-grade materials for weapons and 
even for peaceful uses. Unfortunately, that has come to 
nothing. And even if a ban were enacted tomorrow, the threat 
would still be immense. Because the threat is so diverse, 
there is no magic bullet, no single approach, to thwart it.

Diplomacy alone won't do it. Some nuclear nations--notably 
India, Pakistan and Israel--haven't even signed the 
non-proliferation treaty. There's no way to stop the nuclear 
trade without international law enforcement and an enhanced 
global intelligence effort. A U.S.-led effort, known as the 
Proliferation Security Initiative, scored a huge coup in 
recent months, helping force the shutdown of Libya's nuclear 
weapons program and exposing the underground nuclear bazaar.

Earlier this year, Russia joined the effort, another 
positive development. The U.S. and Russia must accelerate 
programs to dismantle weapons and secure weapons-grade 
materials in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Behind 
that must be a credible allied military threat against any 
nation that seeks to secretly develop nuclear weapons.


Diplomatic efforts have not been entirely feckless. Over the 
years, those efforts have helped to restrain many nations 
from developing weapons and spreading nuclear technology. 
More nations have abandoned nascent efforts to acquire or 
develop nuclear weapons than now possess them. Egypt, 
Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Japan, 
Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Libya, Argentina and Brazil 
have considered and abandoned the goal of going nuclear.

Sweden and Switzerland, however, are not Iran and Iraq. The 
difficulty that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had in trying to build 
the bomb was not a testament to the IAEA, which was 
completely bamboozled.

Iraq came perilously close to succeeding. David Albright, 
who worked as an IAEA weapons inspector there, says the 
Iraqis were hampered by inexperience, poor management and 
technical mistakes. One example: A technical error in the 
melting of uranium metal caused so much to be wasted that 
there wasn't enough left for a bomb. The world can't rely on 
such luck to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

The first step to controlling nuclear proliferation has to 
be the creation of a potent IAEA, empowered to focus on 
blowing the whistle early on countries such as Iran and 
North Korea. The idea should be to alert the world to 
nuclear outlaws more quickly than is accomplished now--and 
to act on that information. As it is, the IAEA is so bound 
by its narrow rules, it still hasn't declared Iran is 
seeking to build nuclear weapons.

Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms 
Control rightly has called the IAEA's response "the blunder 
of the century."


For many years the world assumed that the horrific 
consequences of a nuclear explosion, and the threat of 
nuclear retaliation, were deterrent enough. That's no longer 
the case. Terrorists, living in their shadowy worlds, cannot 
be deterred in the way that nations can. There are no 
economic or political capitals of terrorism to target for 
retaliation.

The task, then, is evident: to make it as difficult as 
possible for terrorists or rogue states to buy, steal or 
develop nuclear weapons. As the world's only superpower, the 
U.S. can set a nuclear agenda for the world. With its 
economic and diplomatic clout, it can make things happen.

It won't be easy. Many countries with nuclear capabilities 
shun more international controls, often because they're 
costly to enforce and threaten to cut into lucrative nuclear 
markets.

Treaties alone won't do it. A treaty is still just a piece 
of paper. Terrorists don't sign treaties. Those nations that 
would help them often don't abide by treaties.

The world is a far different place than was envisioned by 
Atoms for Peace. In the 1950s, some officials, including 
some top Soviets, apparently protested to Ike that his Atoms 
for Peace idea could easily spread weapons-grade 
materials--and the potential to build bombs--worldwide, 
writes Paul Leventhal, founding president of the Nuclear 
Control Institute. The U.S. response? "Ways will be found" 
to prevent that.

Fifty-one years later, it's obvious that those ways never 
were found. That doesn't mean a nuclear holocaust is 
inevitable. But it does mean that the world cannot afford to 
believe in serendipity to protect itself from the most 
devastating weapons ever devised.

At the dawn of the nuclear age, Eisenhower's aides comforted 
themselves with one myth. As the 21st Century nuclear threat 
grows and evolves, world leaders have been clinging to 
another: That the world's most dangerous weapons could be 
kept out of the hands of terrorists through diplomacy and 
good intentions.

We cling to that myth at our peril.

Worldwide nuclear stockpiles 2004

Total estimated warheads: 28,185

NPT* nuclear weapon states

*Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

  1. Russia 17,000
  2. United States 10,000
  3. China 410
  4. France 350
  5. United Kingdom 185
  Non-NPT weapon states
  6. Israel 100
  7. India 50-90
  8. Pakistan 30-50
  Suspected weapons or weapons program
  9. Iran
  10. N. Korea

Source: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Chicago Tribune

This is the first in a series of editorials on the modern 
nuclear danger. On Wednesday: How to thwart terrorists.

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