Nuclear Proliferation

Abstract

Supporters of nuclear power expansion resist the notion that nuclear power is connected to nuclear weapons proliferation. However, nuclear power is a necessary precondition, albeit insufficient by itself, for developing nuclear weapons. Plutonium, which is produced by all nuclear reactors in their waste stream, is a primary concern because it can be, and has been, purified in large quantities, small amounts of which are needed for a bomb.

Doug Brugge is the primary author of this chapter.

On March 29, 1976, former US Government officials who had worked on nuclear weapons released statements jointly under the headline, “The Peaceful Atom Goes to War”. The officials were:

• Dr. George Kistiakowsky, Head of Explosives Division for the Manhattan Project and Special Assistant to President Eisenhower;

• Dr. Theodore Taylor who had been a nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos Laboratories and Deputy Director of the Defense Department's Atomic Support Agency;

• Herbert Scoville, formerly Technical Director of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and Head of Scientific Intelligence at the CIA;

• Dr. George Rathjens, previously Director of Weapons System Evaluation and former Chief Scientist, Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense; and

• Dr. Bernard Feld, Assistant Leader of the Critical Assembly Group, WW II Atom Bomb Project, Former Secretary General, Pugwash International Scientific Conferences, Vice-President of the American Academy of Science Editor in Chief, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Scoville went first, laying out the overall theme of their mission:

The four of us are assembled here today at Princeton in the office which was being used by Professor Albert Einstein when the awesome potentialities of a nuclear explosion were first recognized. As a result of discussions in this very office, Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt urging a programme to ensure that this dangerous weapon did not fall into Nazi hands. This was the genesis of the atomic bomb.

Now some thirty years later we are gathered here because we are concerned that these weapons will soon fall into many hands in many corners of the world – into the hands of unstable national governments, aggressive military cliques or irresponsible terrorist groups, with incalculable consequences for us all. This danger is the direct result of the uncontrolled growth of the nuclear power industry, which is making widely available the materials needed for such weapons” (CCNR, 1976)

What is remarkable in that quote is the unambiguous link to nuclear power that was evident to this highly knowledgeable expert in the field of nuclear technology and his colleagues over 40 years ago. Despite the certainty of this connection through the interceding decades, there continues today to be attempts to obfuscate and blur the issue in the public eye.

Writing in the New York Times, Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist, authors of “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow” along with Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, claim nuclear power has, “not contributed to weapons proliferation, thanks to robust international controls: 24 countries have nuclear power but not weapons, while Israel and North Korea have nuclear weapons but not power” (Goldstein et al., 2019).

The authors make this claim by including 16 countries that developed nuclear power while under the umbrella of either NATO or the Soviet Union. They also claim that North Korea and Israel developed nuclear weapons without nuclear power, but that is also deceptive because both have nuclear reactors, just not commercial use of nuclear power to generate electricity.

With the five major nuclear powers (US, UK, Russia, France and China) that leaves a number of countries that either were in the past, are or could become threats of gaining nuclear weapons. These countries are: South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. It also leaves aside India and Pakistan, who developed nuclear weapons outside the non-proliferation agreement (Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.1

Maps of countries (a) possessing, or having sought, nuclear weapons and (b) the location of nuclear power plants largely coincide, with the notable exception of Japan and Germany, both of which were demilitarized after World War II and effectively operate under the protection of US nuclear weapons. ((a) Source: Our World in Data (n.d.), (b) Source: Carbon Brief (2016))

The primary challenge to making a nuclear weapon is obtaining fissionable material. There are two types of fissionable material that can be used, either highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Natural uranium comes in two “isotopes” that have different molecular weights of 235 and 238. Only uranium 235 can be used in a nuclear reactor or bomb.

Uranium 235 is present in only tiny quantities in natural uranium. There are several industrial processes that enrich uranium 235. These are gaseous diffusion, gas centrifugation and use of lasers. Low level enrichment of uranium to 3.5–5.0% uranium 235 is necessary to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. Greater than 90% uranium 235, or highly enriched uranium, is required for use in bombs.

The same processes can be used to enrich to levels for use in nuclear power plants or for production of bomb grade material. Therein lies a problem with extending nuclear technology for peaceful, power generating purposes to countries that might want to make weapons. They can claim, as has Iran in recent years, that they are enriching uranium for peaceful purposes even if they are probably aiming to enrich to a higher grade for use in weapons (Crowley et al., 2023).

Most people assume uranium and plutonium are hazardous. However, their fear is often focused on the health consequences of exposure to radiation, which is not the main concern they should have, as both elements release only low levels of radiation. Rather, the serious risk is that very small quantities of enriched uranium and even smaller amounts of plutonium, can initiate a nuclear fission chain reaction. An unintentional event of this nature is called a criticality.

An historical example that is not well known outside of those with deep knowledge of nuclear events in the US serves to illustrate this danger. Karl Z Morgan was a physicist and a founder of the field of health physics. Toward the end of his life he became critical of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. In his autobiography, “The Angry Genie: One Man’s Walk Through the Nuclear Age”, he retells the story of a criticality at the Union Carbide Nuclear Company, Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee (Crowley et al., 2023).

Because of the risk of a criticality, the facility had a prohibition against bringing in even relatively small containers that might somehow end up with enough enriched uranium in them to start a chain reaction. While most of the people working there had been trained, they apparently did not think to train the janitor, a Black man, who might also have been neglected due to his race.

Morgan writes:

One morning the janitor commenced his early morning tasks in the Y-12 building before the operators arrived. Annoyed that a puddle of dirty yellowish solution had repeatedly collected on the floor, he ‘solved’ the problem. He retrieved a 55-gallon rain barrel from outside the building and placed it under the pipe where it would catch the slowly dripping fluid. Day after day and week after week this barrel remained in an inconspicuous place behind some machinery.

Until finally, in Morgan’s words:

I was in my office at X-10 that morning when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver to hear someone shouting, ‘We have a criticality accident at Y-12 and thousands of employees are evacuating the plant!’

I reached for my emergency kit and rushed for the door. My assistant, Hubert Yockey, grabbed his kit as well, and we ran out to a company car. I drove the ten-mile distance over a rough sandy road to Y-12 in eight minutes. Hundreds of persons milled outside the gate. Only our car was permitted past the guards and allowed to enter the area where minutes before thousands of people had been at work. When Yockey and I entered the windowless building that contained the problem, darkness engulfed us. I muttered to myself, ‘My kingdom for a flashlight.’ …. A faint light shone from a battery operated emergency lamp in the far end of the building, and we ‘homed in’ on the life-threatening barrel as best we could. Unable to read the scales on the Geiger counter, we could hear the clicks sounding faster and faster as we approached the far end of the building.

Each time the Geiger counter needle banged the end of the scale, we changed to a higher scale as we approached the radioactive source. Most important, we listened for clicks on our Hurst neutron dosimeter. Fortunately, we heard none. The presence of neutrons would mean a life-threatening critical assembly still existed.

The clicks from our Geiger counter saturated or ran together on the highest scale, so the counter stopped clicking. …. We ran from the building.” After they reported out, a team “put on protective clothing and masks, rushed into the building, and poured into the barrel a high concentration of borax, which absorbs neutrons and “kills” any possibility of a critical assembly of the fluid.

Blood samples taken promptly afterward revealed that many employees had received “impermissibly high neutron and associated gamma dose[s].” “Five of the Y-12 workers experienced radiation sickness and [loss of hair]. Those who received [high doses] of radiation experienced some [bleeding] …. Even the individual who received [a lower dose] showed some symptoms of radiation injury.” (Crowley et al., 2023).

The point is that fissionable materials are very dangerous, in even tiny amounts.

The other source of fissionable material is plutonium. However, the source of plutonium is different than fissionable uranium. Plutonium exists in only trace quantities in natural uranium deposits, but it is produced by fission in nuclear reactors. To obtain enough for use in nuclear power or weapons, it must be chemically removed from the other highly radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission.

Extracting and purifying plutonium from high level nuclear reactor waste is a hazardous industrial operation (Fig. 4.2), but a country hoping to obtain nuclear weapons capability need not undertake the process itself if it can find another country willing to sell plutonium. A telling example is India. In 1974, India used plutonium from a Canadian reactor to build and detonate its first atomic bomb in an underground test.

Fig. 4.2

A reprocessing plant that extracts plutonium from high level nuclear waste from nuclear reactors. The resulting plutonium can be used in both nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. (Source: Aerial view Sellafield, Cumbria (2020), © Simon Ledingham: Geography Britain and Ireland)

Thus, the extension of nuclear weapons status to India was based on political and economic decisions. Obtaining enriched uranium or plutonium remains the largest barrier to building a nuclear explosive. The rest of the design and construction consists of straightforward engineering issues. Less than 5 kilograms of plutonium is enough for one bomb.

It is concerning that there may be 1000 tons of plutonium produced, stored or used in weapons today (Wikipedia, 2023b). While there is tight security, it would take release, misplacement, or sale of a tiny amount to give a non-nuclear country enough to gain nuclear weapons. It’s worth mentioning how much Pu and U-235 the US has lost, called, euphemistically, Material Unaccounted For (MUF). In 2012, the amount was 6 tons.

Canada is considered a peaceful country, however the potential for Canada to contribute to nuclear proliferation remains. Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition on Nuclear Responsibility, has taken an active role opposing Canadian proposals to develop a nuclear reactor that depends on producing and extracting plutonium as fuel (called “breeder” reactors because they increase plutonium). The intention is to sell those reactors to other countries around the world, spreading access to the very technology required to be able to produce nuclear weapons.

A Canadian House of Commons committee recommended that the government “work with international and scientific partners to examine nuclear waste reprocessing and its implications for waste management and [nuclear weapons] proliferation vulnerability.” The recommendation followed on a $50.5 million grant to the Moltex corporation awarded in March 2021 to “develop a plutonium reprocessing facility at the Point Lepreau nuclear site on the Bay of Fundy.” (CRED-NB, 2023).

Dr. Edwards said in a press release, “By supporting the implementation of reprocessing technology intended for export, in connection with a plutonium-fueled nuclear reactor, without regard for the weapons implications, Canada may be once again spreading the bomb abroad,” (CRED-NB, 2023).

When India achieved nuclear weapons status, it created the pressure for Pakistan, its arch enemy, to follow. That did not happen immediately though as the path to a nuclear weaponized Pakistan was convoluted and involved technology transfer from the US and China. According to the New York Times, China gave Pakistan the design for a nuclear weapon as well as highly enriched uranium (Weiner, 1998).

The US also helped Pakistan based on a geopolitical calculation that Pakistan was an enemy of India and India was closer to the Soviet Union, the strategic rival of the US. Following this logic, the US provided Pakistan with its first research nuclear reactor, giving them technologic skills necessary, but not sufficient, for building weapons. During the time when the US was backing Muslim rebels against the Soviet aligned Afghan government, the US, in the words of the NYTs, “turned a blind eye” to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program (Weiner, 1998).

Unlike Pakistan, for whom obtaining a nuclear reactor played a small part in developing nuclear weapons, building a nuclear reactor was central to the path by which Israel became a nuclear power. While Israel neither confirms nor denies its nuclear capacity, it is well established that they have hundreds of nuclear warheads, although the exact number and nature – tactical vs. full sized – and their delivery mechanisms remain unclear.

The inability to separate “Atoms for Peace”, the Eisenhower program to spread nuclear power without weaponization, is inherent in the Israeli nuclear program. Israel eagerly signed onto Atoms for Peace, while secretly using peaceful intent as a cover for developing nuclear weapons, an approach repeated by other would-be nuclear players in later years.

Under the guise of peaceful nuclear power to be used to desalinate seawater that would irrigate the desert, France helped Israel build its first nuclear reactor at Dimona (Fig. 4.3). For our purposes, the point is that this reactor was used to generate plutonium, separated from the rest of the waste at a reprocessing center and then used in nuclear weapons. To be clear, plutonium extracted from fuel rods in the reactor was critical, but it was not sufficient by itself. Additional technology and skills were also obtained, including heavy water secretly shipped from the UK through Norway and yellow cake, concentrated uranium from ore, provided by Argentina (Burr & Cohen, n.d.; Wikipedia, 2023a).

Fig. 4.3

A picture taken on March 8, 2014, shows a partial view of the Dimona. (News Photo – Getty Images)

As with other nuclear powers and those seeking to join the club, Israel sought nuclear weapons for strategic, geopolitical purposes, primarily to have a deterrent to attacks from neighboring states. That motivation remains compelling to many other countries, including others in the Middle East. Given its own trajectory, Israel understands better than most how nuclear power technology is a step toward having a bomb.

This is precisely why Israel destroyed nuclear reactors in Syria and Iraq and, together with US help, that damaged nuclear technology that Iran, not surprisingly, argues is for peaceful purposes (Burr & Battle, 2021; Farrel, 2018; News Wires, 2021; The Iran Primer, 2021). Inspections in Iran have centered around how highly they are enriching uranium, is it low grade for medical purposes, or high grade for bombs? Seeing through the veil of secrecy to discern which it is, is not so easy. Recently though, it has become apparent that Iran is very close to having the enriched uranium it needs for a weapon.

Many other countries started down the nuclear path before abandoning it. These included South Korea, Taiwan, Argentina, and Brazil. Only South Africa succeeded in developing nuclear weapons before abandoning them. At the core of the South Africa program, billed as developing “peaceful nuclear explosives”, was, as elsewhere, a nuclear reactor, in this case provided by the US (Albright, 2001).

Some have claimed that thorium reactors are a solution because this type of reactor is not a threat to proliferation. This is incorrect because thorium is not actually a nuclear fuel since it cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction. When thorium is mixed with plutonium, our old friend, the resulting “mixed fuel” can sustain a chain reaction thanks to the fissile plutonium. The resulting neutron bombardment converts a portion of the inert thorium into fissile uranium-233. (Gordon, 2023).

It should be particularly disturbing to anyone who supports non-proliferation that North Korea, a low-income, economically undeveloped, secretive and isolated country was able to obtain nuclear weapons. North Korea obtained its first, small, research grade reactor from the Soviet Union and subsequently had access to nuclear technology from Pakistan. While the country is shrouded in secrecy, at least some of its weapons use plutonium reprocessed from its nuclear reactors (NTI, 2021).

Today, other than North Korea and Iran, active attempts to circumvent non-proliferation are rare. Perhaps that reflects some success at convincing aspiring nations to forgo nuclear weapons or possibly some countries have begun to see the downsides of being a nuclear power. Whatever the reason, there is no certainty that the lull will continue. One wonders whether the possibility of extending nuclear power capacity to Saudi Arabia, an apparent component of negotiations underway as this is written, might open the door to a second nuclear power in the Middle East. (Murphy et al., 2023; Wilkins Brett, 2023).

It seems that possessing nuclear weapons remains a powerful incentive, especially in the Middle East. Nuclear power is a good cover for obtaining a start on the technology needed to build nuclear weapons. Do we want more and more states, even if they accumulate gradually, to possess these weapons? How many more pairs of enemies, like India and Pakistan, do we want to have staring each other down with nuclear weapons? Doesn’t the risk of nuclear war increase the more enemies the world has in poses of mutually assured destruction?

Summary Points

• 1. Nuclear power cannot be disentangled from the potential to develop nuclear weapons.

• 2. Pakistan and Israel utilized nuclear reactors to develop nuclear weapons.

• 3. Because only a small amount is required to create a weapon, plutonium is a particular concern.