jimm@amc.com (Jim McElroy) (01/18/91)
From: jimm@amc.com (Jim McElroy)
Iraq's Nuclear Threat
I just received my February issue of Scientific American
magazine. In the "Science and the Citizen" section it has an
article concerning Iraq's nuclear threat.
The basic premise of the article is that Iraq may be much
further along in producing the bomb than we think. Some points
are:
- Intelligence information is incomplete.
- Iraq salvaged 12 kilograms of 93 percent pure uranium 235
after the Israeli air attack on the reactor in 1981.
- Iraq holds several kilograms of uranium 235 in a reactor
supplied by the Soviets.
- In November of 1990, the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) inspected the Iraq nuclear facilities.
(Iraq is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty and must therefore allow inspections.) Using
"foolproof" methods, the IAEA verified that materials had
not been diverted for use in a weapon.
- IAEA safeguards are not much comfort to some experts
because it is possible for Iraq to fashion the materials
into a weapon "in a matter of weeks" if it has a detonator
and machine tools to shape highly enriched uranium.
- Published reports say that the Al Qaqaa Military Research
and Development Institure is creating the chemical
explosives required for a nuclear detonator.
- Three employees of the Al Qaqaa institute have attempted
to import krytrons, capacitors that are used to trigger
nuclear weapons. They were caught on March 29, 1990 by
the U.S. Customs.
- Experts infer from these events that Iraq is attempting to
build implosion weapons similar to the bomb that the U.S.
dropped on Japan in World War II. Chemical explosives
surround a core of nuclear material and the krytrons
provide a detonation signal to the chemical explosives;
the chemical explosives then rapidly and uniformly
compress the nuclear material until fission takes over.
- A conventional implosion bomb can be made from 25
kilograms of 90 percent pure uranium. Such a weapon can
yield more than 15 kilotons. Using only 12.5 kilograms of
enriched uranium requires constructing a "sophisticated"
implosion bomb needing advanced detonators and reflectors
that increase the efficiency of the chain reaction.
- If Iraq has already obtained enough weapon-grade
material, the simple design will suffice.
[ Aside: Does anyone know if Kuwait has (or had) enriched
uranium sufficient to put Iraq above the 25 kilogram
quantity? ]
- In 1982, Iraq tried to obtain 33 kilograms of plutonium
from Italian arms smugglers. (The smugglers could not
provide samples, and no deal was made.)
- Iraq may be able to produce its own weapon-grade material
even now without diverting material from reactors.
Companies in France, Germany and Switzerland have provided
Iraq with technologies that may be used for constructing
gas centrifuges that concentrate uranium 235 as a
component of uranium hexafluoride gas. A system of 1000
centrifuges can concentrate uranium 235 from 71 percent to
90 percent purity. Several kilograms per year can be
produced this way.
- On July 15, 1990, the Germans captured a shipment of
Swiss-made machinery built of corrosion-resistant steel
suitable for handling the uranium hexafluoride gas.
- Brazil, Niger and Portugal have provided Iraq with
*hundreds of tons* of uranium ore concentrate.
- Polish engineers who were recently held hostage in
Iraq say that the gas conversion process is being
developed at the Al Qaim chemical plant.
- The Bush administration believes that the embargo
cannot be airtight. The _Scientific American_ article
quotes Leonard S. Spector of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace: "It will still be possible
for Saddam Hussein to obtain bit by bit the hardware
he needs for the infrastructure for the bomb."
My own editorial: I think it best that we fight this war now,
while Iraq has no nuclear bomb (or perhaps one or two untested
ones) rather than to wait until he has twenty or a hundred.
Saddam Hussein has sufficiently demonstrated his way of
dealing with the world to convince me that we will have to
battle him sooner or later.
Cheers --
Jim McElroy