Minimising nuclear risks, rationally

Source: PAKOBSERVER

Syed Muhammad Ali

US expert David Albright’s latest book, ‘Peddling Peril’ warns that theft of nuclear material by terrorists pose a serious risk to international peace and security. The effort to cope with this enormous global challenge needs not only international co-operation but also appropriate re-direction, proportionate to the risk and relevant to the locations of large nuclear stockpile storage sites and major nuclear technology sources spread in well over 40 countries. At their 2002 summit, G-8 leaders committed to spend $20 billion over a decade to secure weapons of mass destruction. But that effort, the researchers said, appears to have lost its way and only $3.5 billion has been spent, said Robert Einhorn, co-author of a CSIS report and a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation

According to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB), more than 250 incidents involving unauthorized possession and related criminal activities, theft or loss of nuclear or other radioactive materials, and other activities such as unauthorized disposal of radioactive materials were reported to the UN till 2008.The majority of these incidents involved sealed radioactive sources and the materials included natural uranium, depleted Uranium, and Thorium. With 20 of the 28 Indian states already ablaze with Naxalites insurgency across the length and breadth of the nuclear-armed India, last December, Maharashtra police arrested three people for stealing around 5 kg of Uranium from Mumbai. Earlier, In November last year, according to daily Indian Express, an incident of Tritium leak at the Kaiga Nuclear Plant in Karnataka’s north Kannada district had left 55 employees in its maintenance unit with radiation poisoning. The sick employees are being treated for increased level of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen in their bodies, after they drank water from a water cooler in the operations area. Tritium is used in thermo-nuclear weapons. Whereas, back in Europe, Georgia reported to the ITDB an incident that occurred in February 2006 and involved the seizure of 79.5 grams of 89 per cent-enriched Uranium. The US Department of Energy’s Intelligence office Chief, Rolf Mowatt Larssen during his testimony before the US Congress in April 2008 stated, “ Beyond some basics, we do not know what a terrorist nuclear plot might look like.”

Its unfortunate that Mr. Albright’s book, despite the hype that it has received, is not devoid of technical inaccuracies and reflect either a personal bias or a motivated agenda of maligning Pakistan’s nuclear programme in particular. The author has expressed the concern that the terrorists are more likely to use implosion device as compared to a gun-type nuclear weapon. Most nuclear design experts are well aware that implosion type nuclear weapon design is extremely sophisticated and requires complete mastery over more than dozen different high-tech and diverse technologies such as theoretical physics, chemical engineering, diagnostics testing, solid-state physics, metallurgy, radio-isotopes, geology, enrichment and reprocessing techniques, electrical and mechanical engineering, high-speed electronics, computers, advanced explosives design, machining and manufacturing facilities.

Notwithstanding the availability of these highly sophisticated, complex and large-scale facilities and processes, only highly-trained and professional manpower involving hundreds of scientists and thousands of technicians working over many years can put together a system, which so far among the 192 UN member states has been mastered by merely 9 countries in the past 7 decades of the history of nuclear weapon technology. The fact that even countries like Iraq and Libya despite massive investment, have not been able to produce nuclear weapons, makes it extremely improbable for a non-state actor to acquire or develop the manpower, massive infra-structure, technology, and also have the money and the luxury of time to put together a nuclear weapon.

Although terrorism continues to be a major challenge to the stability of this region, nonetheless, its threat and capability should be viewed from an objective and realistic perspective. If sovereign states with enormous financial, technological and human resources like Iran and Israel, despite sustained denial of military application of their nuclear programmes, cannot hide their nuclear infrastructure in an age of Google Earth, independent media and remote sensing satellites, it is extremely unlikely that thousands of scientists and dozens of large-scale plants and laboratories working for years, could be hidden like Al-Qaeda terrorists in the caves of Afghanistan or the deserts of Yemen. Many writers who continue to talk about the risk of AQ Khan episode being repeated, need to realize, that individual act was possible only in an era prior to the employment of strict legal, physical, financial and personnel based control mechanism introduced by Pakistan, enviable for even the US Department of Energy.

Since the employment of complex and multi-layered physical, technical, legal and personnel based safety, security and reliability protocol based systems, which Pakistan has evolved boasts such an immaculate safety record over the past few years that even the senior officials of US Department of Energy, the US authority charged with the custodial control and maintenance of American nuclear weapons, consider the Pakistani security and safety procedures and systems worth emulating, even for the US government. It is a historic irony that despite President Obama’s desire for a Nuclear Zero and end of cold war, the fact remains that notwithstanding tons of weapon-grade fissile material stockpiles, the US continues to maintain the most massive and deadly nuclear weapon arsenal in various parts of the world including Turkey, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and various parts of Asia including US aircraft carriers afloat in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. According to International Panel on fissile Materials (IPFM), in July 2009, the U.S. declared that, “as of May 2009, the United States had 2126 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads, which meets the limits set by the [2002 Moscow] Treaty for 2012.” In addition, the United States currently has an estimated 500 non-strategic weapons and more than 6500 in-active weapons in reserve or awaiting dismantlement, bringing the total U.S. inventory to about 9400 warheads.

But what will really be shocking for most readers is the news that according to publicly available information, during the past 6 decades, only US and Russia have lost at least 92 nuclear weapons in 15 different parts of the world, which still remain unaccounted for. With a safety record like this and availability of a massive nuclear arsenal clearly disproportionate to the current global security architecture; availability of sensitive and dual-use technology and materials in over 40 countries, raising alarm over the possibility of terrorists choosing only Pakistani nuclear weapons for attacks, does not seem a very convincing argument. In the forthcoming much talked-about Nuclear security summit and at Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Pakistan must present a confident, composed and responsible posture, consistent with its commitment to international non-proliferation, its resolve to fight terrorism and desire to pursue international co-operation for the peaceful use of nuclear energy to meet its economic, industrial and domestic use, but most importantly express the clear determination not to be browbeaten by those states, whose own nuclear safety record needs major improvement, and which aspire to regional or global hegemony.