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From its inception, 50 years ago, the nuclear age has promised both
salvation and death. While some people say it has kept the peace, others
are equally convinced it threatens humanity’s destruction. It is entirely
consistent with this paradox that, a year ago, The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists put back its so-called ‘Doomsday’ clock, symbol of the threat
of global catastrophe, by seven minutes, to 17 minutes to midnight, just
when many people would consider the threat from nuclear weapons to have
increased enormously. This increase comes almost entirely from the proliferation
of nuclear arms.

Only six nations have openly tested nuclear weapons – the US, the Soviet
Union, Britain, China, France and India. Except for China, all these nuclear
weapons states, or their successors, are observing a moratorium on nuclear
tests. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the international
strictures on the spread of nuclear weapons have worked. There are at least
another 12 nations with open or covert weapons programmes. These are the
so-called threshold nations – those nations that will soon be capable of
producing a nuclear weapon (see Map).

While the nuclear weapons states want to stop the spread of nuclear
arms, many people in threshold nations openly admit they want more of them.
There are many reasons for threshold nations wanting to acquire the bomb,
of which a perceived increase in national security is but one. An important
dynamic is the level of perceived threat from neighbours or traditional
enemies: military inequalities cause more instabilities than absolute levels
of military might. Many strategists in the developing world say that the
way to military equality is first through nuclear proliferation in the Third
World countries, and later through denuclearisation for everybody.

The proliferation of weapons in threshold nations has been assisted
by the conflicts of interest that exist for the nuclear weapons states.
The very countries that say they want to stop the spread of nuclear weapons
are also those making most money from the sale of nuclear technologies.
Many sales have been of legal nuclear power technologies, which, because
they can be diverted to military programmes, is worrying enough. Too many
have been illegal sales of technologies with obvious and direct military
uses. For instance, earlier this month, a former British trade minister
admitted in the Central Criminal Court in London that, in 1988, he had encouraged
the sale of equipment to Iraq that could be used in Iraq’s war against Iran,
contrary to official government policy. Alan Clark had told Matrix Churchill,
an exporter of machine tools based in Coventry, that it should not emphasise
in its application for an export licence that its goods could have both
civilian and military uses. The company was charged with evading export
controls but, after Clark’s admission of the government’s complicity in
the trade, the court dismissed the prosecution.

To add insult to injury, as far as the threshold states are concerned,
the permanent members of the UN’s Security Council have, with Germany, headed
the league tables of those countries exporting sensitive technologies. And
they owe their place at the organisation’s ‘top table’ largely to their
experience and expertise in nuclear technology.

Nevertheless, the most visible international stricture on the spread
of nuclear weapons is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), drawn
up by the UN in 1968 and administered in large part by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). At the same time, the treaty is also the most
visible international agreement promoting nuclear technology – it facilitates
the development of nuclear power in exchange for the nuclear aspirants’
agreement not to acquire bombs . But to have nuclear power technology is
to have a source of fissile material with potential for bomb making. Though
the NPT has safeguards to deal with this, they have proved little more than
a sham. Enrico Tacchia, former Director of Safeguards at Euratom, the European
Community’s equivalent of the IAEA, believes that ‘the ways to cheat safeguards
are innumerable, like the ways of the Lord’.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

Critics of the treaty also complain that not all of its signatories
seem to have noticed the provision calling on them to work for multilateral
nuclear disarmament, which, for the nuclear weapons states, includes halting
tests. Russia’s moratorium is technically over – in fact, Boris Yeltsin,
the Russian president, signed a top secret memorandum to that effect early
this year – and a series of explosions is already being prepared for the
destruction of chemical and nuclear wastes. France has agreed to suspend
testing only for a few more months and then only while the other nuclear
states do so. Britain cannot test, as it uses the sites in Nevada currently
under the US moratorium, which itself lasts only while no other state tests.
Recent analysis by Imperial College in London of satellite and seismic data
revealed that China tested a nuclear device in September and is preparing
to test another. These breaches of the treaty breed resentment and accusations
of double standards, and may well mean the end of the NPT in 1995, when
it is due to be reviewed.

Threshold nations also complain of inequalities in the way the IAEA
treats the two groups. The agency’s verification procedures – which include
on-site inspection, perimeter monitoring, checking for diversion of nuclear
fuels, and seismic and satellite monitoring – are harder on threshold states
than on the nuclear weapons states themselves. Most inspectors are drawn
from the nuclear states and share an implicit trust not enjoyed by the threshold
states. Allegations of mutual back-scratching are rife. For example, over
the years, more than 4 tonnes of plutonium are estimated to have gone missing
from the British nuclear industry, apparently to the US weapons programme.
The threshold nations wonder why they too should not cheat.

Countries like India regard the NPT as ‘nuclear apartheid’, good only
for maintaining the status quo, and refuse to sign. Others pay lip service
to the treaty to obtain nuclear technologies and materials while covertly
breaking its provisions. If they want to test a nuclear device they can
simply give three months’ notice and withdraw from the NPT with no penalty.
No wonder critics claim that the treaty has merely legitimised the process
it was supposed to prevent.

TROUBLE IN STORE

As more countries acquire nuclear technologies and fissile materials,
the possibility of sub-national proliferation, particularly to terrorist
groups, is a very real threat. This problem is likely to emerge within the
next five years. Recent sales of Soviet weapons-grade uranium in Munich
and plutonium in Bulgaria, the stories of warheads for sale – these are
the tip of an iceberg. On the one hand, Russian weapons scientists are eating
in soup kitchens and hundreds of tonnes of fissile materials lie in potentially
leaky stockpiles, while on the other, threshold countries and no doubt terrorist
organisations are hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons. Clearly, we have
got a problem.

Leakage of fissile material is an inevitable and foreseeable consequence
of the massive build-up of arms in the 1980s, when hundreds of tonnes of
weapons-grade materials were stockpiled. The West should not boast that
it won the Cold War until all the chickens are home to roost.

To build a bomb a threshold state requires a source of weapons-grade
fissionable material, manufacturing capacity to make the device, and a delivery
system. The mechanical engineering of a bomb is easy for any country advanced
enough to have an oil industry. The delivery system need not be a ballistic
missile, which has been a bit of a red herring. A truck packed with refugees
would do the job with far fewer engineering prob-lems, and a tugboat up
the Thames would have a negligible ‘circular error probable’, the characteristic
aiming error of a missile.

Nuclear technology transfer is easily disguised by other technological
needs. Technological inexperience need not be a problem if a country is
willing to buy people from abroad. Furthermore, those countries wishing
to curtail nuclear proliferation are finding it increasingly difficult because
of the activities of third-tier suppliers. For example, the US has a hold
over potential nuclear powers only as long as they need to buy US technologies,
or through military or diplomatic pressure. But as the technologies spread,
there are new suppliers of nuclear hardware. Argentina, for example, has
sold a 10-megawatt research reactor to Peru, and other sensitive technologies
to Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia. Spain has sold
a reactor to Ecuador. India’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear device used Canadian technology
with heavy water from the US.

If technological bottlenecks cannot stop the spread of nuclear weapons,
the only hope lies in the detection of fissile material – weapons cannot
be built without it – and there are tell-tale signs when a country tries
to acquire it. It is here that the IAEA’s dual role hinders nonproliferation.
Nuclear power programmes, which the agency promotes, can also help a threshold
state produce a bomb. India produced 15 kilograms of plutonium for weapons
from its reactors in the years from 1964 to 1974.

Enrichment and reprocessing technologies can also be abused. Normal
reactor-grade uranium is enriched to 3 per cent uranium-235. It takes just
20 per cent more energy to enrich this to 90 per cent uranium-235 – which
is weapons-grade material.

Reprocessing is simpler still, especially on small scales – and accounting
for the material passing through a reprocessing plant is very difficult.
Contrary to their proponents’ claims, there is no economic reason for reprocessing
plants, as natural uranium to fuel nuclear reactors is in plentiful supply.
Reprocessing only exacerbates the problems of proliferation. It results
in the stockpiling of plutonium, which has no use other than in nuclear
weapons. Japan, for example, will soon have more plutonium than the combined
military arsenals of the US and Russia. No one would doubt Japan’s aversion
to nuclear arms, but there is no doubt either that, if pushed, Japan could
put together a nuclear bomb in less than a month. Is it any wonder then
that North Korea wants nuclear arms?

The nuclear industry and the IAEA are exploring ways of making nuclear
technologies more ‘transparent’ by, for instance, designing reactors to
use fissionable material containing highly radioactive contaminants that
would inhibit handling. Reactors could be built to ensure that any diversion
of material is detectable. Highly acclaimed new verification techniques
use measurements across the electromagnetic and particle spectra to show
the amount and type of material present. But unscrupulous nations could
use ‘suicide squads’ to handle radioactive material and modify the reactors.

In the end, it seems that as quickly as new detection methods can be
developed, would-be proliferators will find ways round them. The plain fact
is that nations, such as the present nuclear weapons states, and treaties,
such as the NPT, which both legitimise possession of nuclear weapons, also
legitimise and make inevitable their spread.

When we exclude all the possible strategies that, sooner or later, must
fail because they allow the spread and use of nuclear weapons, we are left
with only one solution: to rid the world of nuclear arms. If multilateral
disarmament were agreed, the production of militarily significant arsenals
would be detectable, as would the covert retention of such arsenals. The
risks are minimal, argue advocates of a total weapons ban, because any present
nuclear weapons state and many threshold states would be able to reintroduce
weapons within weeks of known violations by perceived enemies. So the rather
shallow claim against multilateral disarmament, that weapons cannot be disinvented,
actually argues in its favour.

Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister, devised a formal three-stage
set of proposals in 1988. Incredibly, his timetable could still be met.

Stage 1, beginning in 1988 and running through to 1994, calls for an
end to production of nuclear weapons, fissile materials or nuclear technology
with proliferation potential, and for a moratorium on all testing. It calls
on Russia and the US to reduce their strategic arsenals by 50 per cent
and to phase out short-range battlefield and air-launched missiles, while
the threshold nations must guarantee not to acquire nuclear weapons. All
land-based short and medium-range missiles are to be destroyed, and a new
inde-pendent verification agency is to be established, answerable to the
UN and with no role in the promotion of nuclear energy.

Stage 2, running to 2000, would see the completion of Stage 1 reductions
for the US and Russia, and the inclusion of the other nuclear weapons states
in the process. There would be elimination of all medium-range and short-range
missiles and all tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, together with a ban
on space weapons. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would take effect and
there would be a renewal and upgrade of the NPT.

Stage 3, in the first decade of the 21st century, would see the elimination
of all nuclear weapons. Whether we get rid of all weapons or have some international
agency keep a few hundred does not actually have to be decided right now.
Even movement towards these goals would be immensely stabilising.

Do not automatically say ‘Utopian’. Instead, consider the faith needed
to believe that any alternative plan, which allows the spread of nuclear
weapons, could work in our lifetimes, or those of our children or grandchildren.

John Hassard is a lecturer in the physics department at Imperial College,
London. He also advises VERTIC, the Verification Technology Information
Centre.

* * *

The ambiguous role of the world’s nuclear watchdog

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) grew out of the idealism
boosted by the ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech of US President Eisenhower on 8
December 1953. It was founded in 1957, and is based in Vienna.

The agency’s statute requires it to promote the peaceful use of nuclear
energy, and prevent its destructive use. Member states are obliged to submit
their nuclear fuel cycles and manufacturing to verification techniques designed
to detect any build-up of weapons capability.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was proposed
on 1 July 1968. It grew out of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament,
which was established in 1962 under the auspices of the UN General Assembly,
sat in Geneva until 1968 and was succeeded by the Conference of the Committee
on Disarmament. This ran until 1978 when the Committee on Disarmament was
established.

The NPT was ratified in 1970 by Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and
40 non-nuclear states. Currently more than 140 nations have signed. Significant
non-signers include Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and,
until recently France, China and South Africa.