Monitoring Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Chemical and Biological Weapons Convention Compliance:
A Summary of Some Problems

Introduction

George Soros
The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power

"The most powerful country on earth cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make war on terrorism the centerpiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation of the world. The United States is the only country that can take the lead in addressing problems that require collective action: preserving peace, assuring economic progress, protecting the environment, and so on. Fighting terrorism and controlling weapons of mass destruction also fall into this category.

The United States cannot do whatever it wants, but nothing much can be done in the way of international cooperation without the leadership or at least active participation of our nation. The United States has a greater degree of discretion in deciding what shape the world should take than anybody else. Other countries have to respond to U.S. policy, but we can choose the policy to which other states have to respond. This imposes a unique responsibility on the United States: Our nation must concern itself with the well being of the world. We will be the greatest beneficiaries if we do so."

I. Nuclear Technology

I. 1 Ephraim Asculai
Verification Revisited: The Nuclear Case

• "The historical application of verification has been uneven. It is evident that the verification regimes established to date are imperfect, and that states can cheat on their obligations without being caught. On the other hand, the lessons of failure can inform efforts to improve verification. For example, Iraq's successful ability to cheat on its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations and evade full-scope safeguards led to the improvement of the safeguards regime.
  Some verification regimes have yet to be fully tested. The strengthened International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards regime is not in force in many countries where cheating is suspected.
• "The use of national technical means (NTM) -which played a major role in convincing the IAEA to be persistent in the North Korean case- will complicate a cheater's efforts to hide its activities."
• "The lesson of these experiences is that verification organizations must understand and clearly communicate their own limitations. The Agency [IAEA], in particular, has had difficulty historically in admitting its own problems."
• "Even when a state is transparent, it may be difficult to draw conclusions. For example, there was little doubt about the honesty, openness, transparency, and cooperation shown by South African officials and nuclear weapon scientists towards special IAEA investigators. However, it took a long time and a team of highly skilled and knowledgeable inspectors to arrive at a positive conclusion that South Africa had fully dismantled its nuclear weapons and accounted for its nuclear-explosive materials. Where a state is not transparent, it is appropriate for the verification agency to be skeptical. When North Korea refused to allow the IAEA to conduct a special inspection, the Agency -correctly- pronounced North Korea to be in noncompliance with its safeguards obligations. By extension, North Korea's compliance with its NPT obligations was cast in doubt."
• "Political Support for Verification Activities is Imperative: The history of verification shows that, even under the most technically rigorous verification regime, political support by the international community is vital. If a verification regime lacks support, it will fail."

I. 2 David Albright¹ and Kevin O'Neill² (eds.)

(full report in cache, January 2011)

Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency And World Nuclear Order, Problems Facing the IAEA Safeguards supporters have also criticized the goals, but for different reasons. They contend that detection goals, even when understood, are in some instances unattainable, and their continued use weakens confidence in safeguards generally. The detection goal of one explosive-significant quantity (SQ) is considered unrealistic because in certain facilities (such as large-scale bulk handling plants) measurement error alone theoretically could exceed the proposed detection goal by an order of magnitude. From this point of view, and even if that theoretical high is not reached, the notion of allocating limited safeguards resources to try to bring diversion detection down to one significant quantity could cause a very severe drain on those resources and still not give absolute assurance over a long period of time that a significant quantity of material has not been diverted without detection, since there will always be some measurement error. Henry D. Sokolski (ed.) Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom, full report (pdf, 355 pages), Strategic Studies Institute - United States Army War College, February 27, 2008 (in cache, February 3, 2011). Chapter 1: Henry D. Sokolski "Assessing the IAEA's Abiity to Verify the NPT" A Report of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center on the International Atomic Energy Agency's Nuclear Safeguards System Currently, the IAEA is unable to provide timely warning of diversions from nuclear fuel-making plants (enrichment, reprocessing, and fuel processing plants utilizing nuclear materials directly useable to make bombs). For some of these plants, the agency loses track of many nuclear weapons-worth of material every year. Meanwhile, the IAEA is unable to prevent the overnight conversion of centrifuge enrichment and plutonium reprocessing plants into nuclear bomb-material factories. As the number of these facilities increases, the ability of the agency to fulfill its material accountancy mission dangerously erodes. The IAEA has yet to concede these points by admitting that although it can monitor these dangerous nuclear activities, it cannot actually do so in a manner that can assure timely detection of a possible military diversion - the key to an inspection procedure being a safeguard against military diversions. Chapter 5: Edwin S. Lyman "Can Nuclear Fuel Production in Iran and Elsewhere be Safeguarded Against Diversion?" [Significant Quantity (SQ)] [Dr. Marvin] Miller [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in "Are IAEA Safeguards on Bulk-Handling Facilities Effective?", Nuclear Control Institute, Washington, DC, USA, 1990] observed that for large bulk handling facilities, such as the 800 metric ton heavy metal (MTHM)/year Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (RRP) now undergoing startup testing in Japan, it was not possible with the technologies and practices available at the time to detect the diversion of 8 kilograms of plutonium (1 significant quantity, SQ) - about 0.1 percent of the annual plutonium throughput - with a high degree of confidence. This is because the errors in material accountancy measurements at reprocessing plants were typically on the order of 1 percent -that is, a factor of 10 greater than an SQ. If after taking a physical inventory, the value of plutonium measured was less than expected (on the basis of operator records) by an amount on the order of 1 SQ, it would be difficult to state with high confidence that this shortfall, known as "material unaccounted for" or MUF, was due to an actual diversion and not merely measurement error. [Accountancy Verification Goal - Expected Accountancy Capability (E)] In the past, the IAEA acknowledged that the 1 SQ detection goal could not be met in practice, and instead adopted a relaxed standard known as the "accountancy verification goal" (AVG), which was "based on a realistic assessment of what then-current measurement techniques applied to a given facility could actually detect." The AVG was based on a quantity defined as the "expected accountancy capability," E, which is defined as the "minimum loss of nuclear material which can be expected to be detected by material accountancy," and is given by the formula E = 3.29 sigma A, in which sigma is the relative uncertainty in measurements of the plant's inputs and outputs, and A is the facility's plutonium throughput in between periodic physical inventories. This formula is derived from a requirement that the alarm threshold for diversion be set at a confidence level of 95 percent and a false alarm rate of 5 percent. Miller estimated that for the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, based on an input uncertainty of ±1 percent (which was the IAEA's value at the time for the international standard for the expected measurement uncertainty at reprocessing plants), the value of E would be 246 kilograms of plutonium, or more than 30 SQs, if physical inventories were carried out on an annual basis, as was (and is) standard practice. E = 246 kg Pu = 30 SQ This means that a diversion of plutonium would have to exceed this value before one could conclude with 95 percent certainty that a diversion had occurred, and that the measured shortfall was not due to measurement error. Joachim Gruber, Reactor plutonium bomb: Pu generation in a LWR. A Light Water Reactor power economy lacks proliferation resistence.

I. 3 David Kay

• "Saddam Hussein turned to the individual who eventually became the scientific head of the Iraqi program, Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, and said, "Dr. Jaffar, if we stay in the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA], will it in any way hinder the clandestine nuclear program?" Jaffar says his answer was an immediate and unequivocal no; he said it would have absolutely no effect upon Iraq's program. That is one of the most important lessons to learn. If anything has to make tomorrow different from today, and all other days previous, it has to be that governments that are trying to make a similar decision (that is, if we stay in the NPT, will it make a difference) have to not be able to reach such an absolute conclusion with such assurance. The Iraqis did reach this conclusion, and Iraq went ahead and developed an enormous program."
• "... The Iraqis also had in place three major uranium enrichment programs: a calutron program (the original method used by the US, which was also used by the Soviet Union, Britain, Japan and the PRC); a gas centrifuge program, which acquired or built enough parts for at least 10,000 gas centrifuges, which is a huge number; and a chemical enrichment program. They also did a significant amount of research on gaseous diffusion, laser enrichment and jet nozzle enrichment as well. "
• "... A team of modern weapons designers that looked at them remarked on how primitive they were, but we had the people who had worked in the US and British programs in the early days of the programs look at them as well. We asked them to baseline the Iraqi codes against codes that were used in the 1950s and 1960s. The codes that the Iraqis used are freely available - they run on PCs - and they are much, much better than the codes that were available to weapons scientists then."
• "... there is a rising level of technological wealth and managerial skill. Let me stress the last part, managerial skill. The Iraqis defeated the export control regimes, not because of the ineptness of the regimes or because of corruption, but because they learned that they did not have to buy a final assembled instrument with everything they wanted. If they could buy it in parts from three different countries and had the proper project management skills, they could put it together themselves. In fact, if you want to look at scientific talent in developing countries, the most important talent for a nuclear program is not physicists. In fact, the Iraqi program would have gone a lot better is they had locked the physicists up (because they spent too much time thinking about better ways to do things). It is the mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, project management types that make a difference. Even in countries that we look at as being poor and disorganized, these types of engineers are there in large numbers, and there may be some sectors that are very, very advanced."
• "... they [the Iraqis] had learned to defeat national technical means (NTM), i.e., signal and satellite intelligence.
• "... The photo interpreters had looked at it and didn't believe that it was a major site because it had no security fences around it, no anti-aircraft around it, and no electrical power going into it. It looked like another one of the industrial complexes you find a lot around Baghdad.
• "... People do not have to get on a plane and fly to point A. All they have to do is plug a Macintosh in with a modem and they can work any place in the world. A lot of the data exchange on the centrifuge program into Iraq did not come from people going to Iraq. It was done in other places. This also makes it much harder to track and identify, since people aren't necessarily flying into countries where they shouldn't be. "
• "... Don't tell me you can't rat on people who have been your friends. They charge you, you pay a risk premium, and everyone knows that you pay a risk premium because there's a risk that the supplier will be exposed. Go ahead and tell us." Instead, Jaffar pulled out the invoice (without the supplier's name on it) and, sure enough, they had only paid a couple of cents per pound over the world market price for maraging steel. That tells you that for a lot of commodities there is, in fact, not much of a risk. And, maraging steel is one of the more strictly controlled. That is something you have really got to worry about. Material does get out and will continue to get out. "
• "... The material presents another risk. Somewhere in the order of 4 kg to 12 kg of plutonium is sufficient for a nuclear device. That is an amount that is smaller than an American softball, if it were in a single source. If you look at how drugs are moved around the world, you realize the problem of preventing the transfer of small amounts of material. There are ways to smuggle this material that are not technically difficult. "
• "... If Iraq had not invaded Kuwait when it did in 1990, but if it had waited until 1994, not only would Iraq have had a nuclear weapon,..."
• "... I'm afraid that unless steps are taken in 1995 at the NPT Review Conference, and unless other steps are taken soon, we will see a number of states start exploring the nuclear weapon option again, and this time it is going to be different. They can do all the non-nuclear work essentially out in the open. And they only have to worry about the acquisition of special nuclear material at the very last stage and that, for a series of technical reasons, is not going to be very difficult to do. Those things working together, in addition to what Iraq already taught us, mean that for proliferation we are entering a period far more dangerous than anything we have seen before, at least in the last thirty years. And that is really an optimistic view to conclude all of this. "

I. 4 Graham Allison
Loose nukes: The Eight spoke loudly, and did little

1. Fewer former Soviet "near-nukes" - lumps of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from which a terrorist could make a nuclear weapon - have been secured in the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, than in the two years before that date.
2. Only one-fifth of Russia's weapons-usable fissile material has been adequately secured.
3. Of Russia's fissile material stockpile, 57 percent - enough for more than 20,000 nuclear weapons - has not received the most basic security upgrades.
4. Hundreds of potential nuclear weapons of highly enriched uranium will remain at risk in developing and transitional countries for the next 10 years.

In 2000, for instance, the United States and Russia signed an agreement to remove the threat of 68 tons of Russian weapons-grade plutonium. In the three years since the agreement, how many tons have been destroyed? Zero. Liability and access disputes continue to hold up the project, and less than half of the $2 billion required to do the job has been pledged.

At the current rate, the global partnership will not secure Russia's loose nukes until 2017. If the material for the terrorist bomb that blows up in Paris or Moscow or New York in 2005 is scheduled to be secured in 2008, voters will look back at the elegant language of multiple G-8 summit meetings and wonder why it was so hard to translate those words into action.

Graham Allison is author of "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophy".

Book Description - editorial review
"A leading strategist opens our eyes to the greatest terrorist threat of all -and how to prevent it before it's too late:

In this urgent call to action, Graham Allison, one of America's leading experts on nuclear weapons and national security, presents the evidence for two provocative, compelling conclusions.

1. If policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade. And if one lengthens the time frame, a nuclear strike is inevitable.
2. The surprising and largely unrecognized good news is that nuclear terrorism is, in fact, preventable.

In these pages, Allison offers an ambitious but feasible blueprint for eliminating the possibility of nuclear terrorist attacks."
(more details about the book).

II. Chemical and Biological Technologies

III. Further Reading