TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0531> <title> 1981: Trying To Contain The Genie </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1981 Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> June 22, 1981 WORLD Trying to Contain the Genie </hdr> <body> The industrialized nations must cooperate, not compete By John Kohan. Reported by Frank Melville/London and Roberto Suro/Washington Israel's attack on the Iraqi reactor last week on the grounds of self-defense dramatized the dilemma that has haunted the nuclear age since the U.S. exploded the first atomic bomb in a New Mexico desert 36 years ago: how to cope with the genie of nuclear power once released. After the first atomic blast, President Harry Truman said that control of the bomb was "the No. 1 problem of the world," adding confidently that "we would in time come to some intelligent solution." Truman was too optimistic. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are some 340 research reactors and 475 power reactors in operation or under construction in a total of 46 nations. Says the agency's deputy director, Hans Grumm: "Any really determined nation could now produce the bomb." The U.S. monopoly lasted just four years. In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb, followed three years later by Britain. France launched its force de frappe in 1960. By the time China entered the exclusive club in 1964, the three oldest members were already looking for ways to close the door on any more and ban nuclear testing. One solution was the 1968 nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The nuclear powers agreed to seek arms control and refrain from transferring nuclear weapons to nations without them. The nuclear powers were also obliged to share the peaceful uses of atomic energy with the nonnuclear bloc. From the start, the treaty was plagued with problems. France and China refused to sign. Even today, with 114 signatories, there are some notable holdouts, including such potential members of the nuclear club as Pakistan and South Africa. Israel, thought to have bombs already, also would not sign. For a decade after China's entry, the membership of the club remained unchanged, and the proliferation threat seemed to subside. But India jolted the world back to reality by exploding a "peaceful" nuclear device in 1974. The old anxiety about the spread of fissile materials had returned, but with a new dimension. India's blast proved that the peaceful atom used in experimental research reactors and as a power source could easily be diverted, whatever the safeguards, to build an atomic bomb. At about the same time, world oil prices began to rocket upward. To many nations, nuclear reactors seemed to be a ready panacea for energy ills. Japan and industrialized nations in Western Europe developed a brisk trade selling nuclear hardware to developing nations that needed new power sources. The nuclear menace had spread worldwide in the guise of "atoms for peace." After the Indian explosion, industrialized nations that traded in nuclear technology met secretly to try to control sensitive exports. But it took the Carter Administration to reinvigorate the faltering cause of nonproliferation. In 1977 the Administration called for strict limits on the manufacture and sale of fissile materials that could be used to build bombs. Western European nations that had moved ahead in atomic research objected, on the practical grounds that the plan hindered new technological advances that would make it possible to recycle nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. The Administration was unable to stop West Germany from selling sophisticated equipment to Brazil, and it also failed to argue France out of sending sensitive nuclear exports to Iraq. Secretary of State Alexander Haig has criticized the Carter plan for "using blackmail against Germany and France by using threats to cut off uranium shipments." But even Carter found it difficult to live within the letter of the law. Fearing that India might turn to the Soviet Union for nuclear fuel, the U.S. sold uranium to New Delhi last year. The Reagan Administration is still mulling over a policy of its own to decrease the spread of nuclear weapons as the doomsday clock ticks on. The number of nations that are close to mastering bomb technology is expected to increase fivefold by the end of the decade. With the help of sophisticated Western European reactors, Argentina could produce the first Latin American bomb. Taiwan and South Korea already have the skills to make their own, but have pulled out of the arms race because of intense U.S. pressure, a decision they may reverse if they are threatened some day by their Communist neighbors. Possessing both extensive uranium reserves and a home-grown process for enriching atomic fuel, South Africa is poised to become its continent's first nuclear power. Pakistan could produce what is known as the "Islamic bomb." Adding to the concern about the mushrooming nuclear club is the fear of a multiplier effect: nuclear know-how or weapons-grade fuel might eventually pass secondhand to nations in volatile regions of the world or to international terrorists. Princeton Physicist Theodore Taylor, onetime atom bomb designer, says the procedure for making the weapon is so widely known that a terrorist might be able to build one in a few weeks using purloined plutonium. To control the shipment of nuclear materials, the IAEA negotiated the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which provides security guidelines for the handling of fissile materials and sets forth methods of international cooperation to recover stolen nuclear fuel. But can anything really be done to stop nuclear proliferation? As the Carter Administration learned from the crisis over selling uranium to India, strategic and political concerns work mightily against shutting down the "plutonium economy." But it can still be checked. One approach might be to give international controls more power. In order to get laggards to subscribe to the nonproliferation treaty, nuclear suppliers could agree to give preferential treatment to nations willing to accept safeguards for the use of atomic energy. Such a step would require more resolve than the major nuclear powers have shown so far. Said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger last week: "The first group that has to get together [is composed of] those who spread nuclear technology--the industrialized countries." Kissinger argued that these nations should stop competing with one another for nuclear sales. Whatever else it did, Israel last week violently underscored that point to the world. The ABCs of A-Bombmaking Can anyone with the money master the subject? By Frederic Golden Suppose a small nation with limited technological skills wants to build an atomic bomb. Could it succeed? Yes, most nuclear experts think the answer is yes, especially if the country already possesses a nuclear reactor and the know-how to run it. One of the unhappy facts of the nuclear age is that the same reactors used in peaceful nuclear research and in the production of electricity can also serve as the starting points for fabricating A-bombs. Building its own reactor would be extremely difficult for a Third World country. But buying one would not be much of a problem, particularly for a nation like Iraq, flush with petrodollars. At least 15 countries are now offering nuclear technology on the international market. (In addition to the U.S. these include the Soviet Union and three of its allies--Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland--Britain, France, West Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Canada and Japan.) Their wares include not only a variety of reactors and fuels, along with the necessary technicians, but also reprocessing machinery that could be used for recovering the lethal ingredients for bombmaking from the spent reactor materials. A tidy set of such equipment that would be suitable for conversion to weapon construction would cost upwards of $250 million. A nation that had signed the 1968 nonproliferation treaty, only to decide that it wanted a nuclear weapon after all, would have to conceal its operations from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a Vienna-based affiliate of the U.N. The agency's inspectors are often on hand when nuclear fuel is loaded into a reactor. They install sealed closed circuit TV cameras for continuous on-site monitoring, and they return periodically to check this equipment. Still, the IAEA's inspectors do not always get to see what they would like in member countries. For a time during the Iraq-Iran fighting, for example, Baghdad refused to allow IAEA officials into the area. A bigger problem is that more and more people around the world know how to build bombs. Even U.S. college students, poring through declassified Government technical papers, have put together designs for rudimentary A-bombs. Articles have been written about the subject. The key ingredient for both the bombs and the reactors is the same: fissile material such as uranium or plutonium, whose atoms can readily split, scattering tiny, fast-moving particles called neutrons. When neutrons score bull's-eyes on the nuclei of neighboring atoms, they split them as well, unleashing still more neutrons, which in turn cause more break-ups, all of which release energy. In a nuclear reactor, such a chain reaction is kept under control by "absorbers"--usually boron or cadmium rods. These capture neutrons that might otherwise split more atoms. But if the fissile material is pure enough, and sufficiently compressed, as in a bomb, the chain reaction speeds up. Heat accumulates, and the material blows apart to produce the nuclear age's familiar mushroom cloud. Most nuclear reactors and some nuclear weapons use a rare isotope of uranium called U-235. To explode, the U-235 must be relatively pure, preferably 90% or more. Commercial U.S. reactors, by comparison, usually run on a mix containing only 3% U-235. This hampers would-be bombsmiths, since enriching U-235 to a high level demands extremely complex separation techniques that are still beyond the capability of all but the most advanced industrial countries. Yet there are some relatively simple ways of overcoming this handicap. One would be to buy enriched uranium from a nuclear nation as part of a deal for a reactor designed to burn such weapons-grade fuel. The reactor Iraq acquired from France would have used 93% U-235. During the course of operation, some of this material might be skimmed off for nuclear weaponry, although that would be a risky proposition. The IAEA inspectors might spot the diversion, or some of the foreign technicians at the site might blow the whistle on the schemers. But diverting enriched U-235 is not the only option for the bombmaker. A-bombs can also be fashioned out of plutonium, which is a byproduct of the modern alchemy that occurs in reactors. Even relatively small reactors can produce several pounds a month of a type of plutonium that lends itself to bombmaking. Equally important, plutonium, unlike the nearly identical isotopes of uranium, is a separate element with its own distinctive characteristics. Thus it is relatively easy to pick out by ordinary chemical means from other radioactive material. After only a year or so of operation, enough plutonium (about 35 lbs.) could be generated in a small reactor to build two or three bombs of the type dropped on Nagasaki. The plutonium would be formed into a hollow sphere containing a small neutron source that might be made of radium and beryllium. The plutonium itself would be wrapped in a beryllium or uranium reflector, which helps contain neutrons and prolong the chain reaction. This shield would in turn be covered by a layer of TNT charges, the most critical aspect of the design. The charges would have to be so carefully shaped that the detonation would direct their force largely inward, crushing the plutonium into a solid, compact ball. The plutonium would quickly reach what bombmakers call supercritical density. As the chain reaction went out of control the material would explode. By today's superpower standards, a Nagasaki-type bomb would be puny--the equivalent of a mere 10,000 tons of TNT. But that might be more than enough to terrorize an enemy, or crush a nonnuclear neighbor. </body> </article> </text>