The New Nuclear Threat

John Deutch

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

Article preview: first 500 of 5,011 words total.

Summary:  The stopping of nuclear proliferation should be a prime US foreign policy objective. Suggests various measures, including enhanced intelligence-gathering and more stringent export controls.

John M. Deutch is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The threat of nuclear weapons spread across the world has displaced the fear of superpower nuclear conflict on the international agenda. Diplomatic and export control efforts arising from the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have succeeded in some measure in reducing diffusion of nuclear capability over the past two decades. In that time only India detonated a nuclear device (1974), although experts agree that Israel, Pakistan and South Africa also have a nuclear weapons capability. Several other nations have demonstrated interest in obtaining one.

The world now knows, however, that even though Iraq signed the NPT it managed to mount a massive covert program to acquire nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Governments and international organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), were largely ignorant of Iraqi intentions and capabilities. While aspects of the Iraqi case are unique, it is widely acknowledged that several states in the Middle East, notably Algeria, Iran and Libya, are moving toward nuclear weapons capability, as is North Korea.

A new element of the proliferation problem is the collapse of the Soviet Union, which removes the influence of a strong central government that was relatively responsible in its control of nuclear weapons and technology. The present fluid situation in the former U.S.S.R. increases the risk that significant nuclear expertise, material and technology might be made available to proliferators. Most former Soviet states lack effective policy mechanisms to address the various aspects of proliferation control.

The experience of the United Nations and IAEA in carrying out sanctions against Iraq, alongside the challenge of mounting effective inspections, has sharpened interest in the roles of international mechanisms for enforcing nonproliferation agreements.

II

Two heavy metal elements are suitable for making a nuclear fission explosive device. The first, uranium, occurs naturally in ore in two isotopic forms: uranium 235 (U?235) and the more common U?238 isotope. The rare U?235 isotope must be enriched to greater than approximately 90 percent to make a useful explosive device. Because isotopes of the same element have identical chemical behavior, the enrichment process requires special physical separation techniques.

These separation technologies include gaseous diffusion, long in use by the United States, France and the Soviet Union; centrifugation, the choice of the European consortium URENCO and Pakistan; and electromagnetic, under development by Iraq. South Africa has pursued an aerodynamic technique, and the United States has developed laser isotope separation, which is more economical in terms of cost, space and time but requires greater technical sophistication. All enrichment techniques must rely on separating isotopes based on their different masses. The selection of the technique used depends on several factors: the intended scale, level of knowledge and the cost in terms of energy and money. For all techniques, however, considerable engineering sophistication is required to achieve the high enrichments needed for nuclear explosives.

The United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union began with gaseous diffusion in the 1940s, when there was considerably less knowledge about other techniques, contemplating large scale operation. Today a ...

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