The Inextricable Link: Nuclear Energy and the Bomb
Regina Hagen
“Nuclear power powers the bomb!” This slogan is spread across a huge inflatable nuclear power plant that has often been used for nuclear-related street events around the world.
“Nuclear power powers the bomb” means that nuclear energy makes the nuclear bomb possible in many ways. Know-how and skills, materials, technologies, processes, and methods. What is suitable for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy can also create the foundation for military uses, for building the bomb. The difference lies only in the intention.
This close link is nothing new. In its very first resolution of January 24, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly decided to install a “Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy.” The resolution demonstrates that just five months after the use of a uranium and a plutonium bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, the world community cherished the illusion that the (then) promising nuclear energy could be exploited while the terrible nuclear bomb could somehow be disposed of once and for all.
The Commission was tasked with drawing up proposals “for extending between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends” and at the same time “for control of nuclear energy … to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes.” Furthermore, the body was to make suggestions “for the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons” as well as “for effective safeguards.” At that time, nuclear weapons were in the exclusive possession of the United States. The Soviet Union built its first nuclear weapons in 1949.
The inability – or the lack of will – of scientists, governments, and diplomats to acknowledge the inextricable link between the civil and military utility of nuclear energy and the danger that nuclear weapons technology can be proliferated by means of “civil” nuclear know-how and technology plagues us to this day. According to the Swedish Peace Research Institute SIPRI, six decades after UN Resolution 1, the official and unofficial nuclear weapon states keep 26,500 nuclear warheads in their arsenals.
“The problem of nuclear energy is complicated by the fact that there is no such thing as non-weapon-grade plutonium. … The reality is [that] it is possible to make nuclear weapons out of almost any kind of plutonium at all. Every state that has a nuclear power plant produces plutonium…,” says nuclear expert Zia Mian. And nuclear power or research reactors are now operated by more than fifty countries.
Civil-military dual use, however, is not limited to plutonium. Enrichment facilities used to enrich uranium to the reactor-grade level of 5-7% can easily be reconfigured for 20-90% enrichment. In addition, dozens of research reactors run on nuclear-weapons-usable highly enriched uranium, and not all of them are located in countries that are above suspicion.
Thus, what distinguishes a country with strictly civil intentions from one that fosters (secret) military ambitions is less the availability of the means rather than the will – and comprehensive safeguards that leave no loophole. The effectiveness of controls and safeguards was also presumed when the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was negotiated almost two decades after UN Resolution 1. The treaty, which entered into force in 1970, not only grants each State party the “inalienable right … to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination”, but the members to the treaty “undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” And that is not all. The treaty also states that “Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.”
Facilitation of nuclear energy became the explicit task of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which was founded in the context of the US Atoms for Peace program in 1957. It was only with Article III of the NPT that the IAEA was additionally tasked with safeguarding nuclear activities “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” This dual role demands a challenging balancing act from the IAEA.
Since then, awareness has increased that it is important to take “appropriate steps to ensure an effective separation between the functions of the regulatory body and those of any other body or organization concerned with the promotion or utilization of nuclear energy”, as stated in the 1994 Convention on Nuclear Safety. The convention, however, completely disregards the threat from international proliferation and makes “effective separation” a requirement only on a national basis, i.e. within a country. And even this organizational effort is required only by the minority of countries that have actually ratified the convention.
On the international level, pushed by the US and other self-declared non-proliferation guardians, and under the impression of more or less hidden and advanced nuclear weapons programs that were uncovered in the past (e.g. in Brazil, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, or South Africa), the IAEA attempts to prevent any breakout from the non-proliferation regime by ever more sophisticated and intrusive Safeguards Agreements and mechanisms. However, the debate about Iran shows that the world community does not trust even these strengthened safeguarding precautions. The way out of this dilemma is now seen to be a complete prohibition of certain nuclear activities by certain “suspected” states.
But even without a full nuclear fuel cycle – from uranium mining, milling, enrichment, and power production to “reprocessing” (with the separation of weapons-usable plutonium) and final waste disposal – and the associated risk of diversion of nuclear-weapons-usable materials, there remain considerable military nuclear dangers – dangers that are not restricted to state actors only.
Since the terror attacks on the Pentagon and the New York Twin Towers in September 2001, numerous administrative bodies have agonized over the question of just how nuclear power plants can be protected against accidents or deliberate attacks with large passenger airplanes or military jets.
To give an example: according to expert organizations, e.g. the Munich Environmental Institute, it is doubtful that any (even latest generation) German nuclear power plant would withstand the crash of a large passenger plane with sufficient fuel on board – or even an attack with a larger armor-piercing weapon. “According to the Reactor Security Commission, this scenario has so far not been considered. After all, nuclear power plants are not explicitly designed to withstand a crash by a civilian passenger plane.”
The same is true for other nuclear facilities in Germany like the industrial-scale uranium enrichment plant in Gronau; the interim storage facilities in Ahaus, Gorleben, and Greifswald; or research facilities like the one in Karlsruhe or the Garching research reactor, to name just a few.
It is true that the effects of such a deliberately provoked accident would be different from the damage caused by a nuclear bomb. The aftermath of Chernobyl, however, gives a realistic idea of the long-lasting and serious consequences of any such scenario.
Although more limited with respect to the region affected, a so-called “dirty bomb” or radiological weapon would also make an effective terror weapon. It could disperse radioactive waste, medical isotopes, or other radioactive material in a huge explosion and cause not only drastic health and environmental damage but also uncontrollable panic reactions by the population involved.
This list of nuclear technology-related security dangers is far from complete yet. Expert circles discuss the theft or unauthorized transfer of fissile materials to technologically sophisticated terror groups, which would allow them to build and use a “primitive” nuclear bomb; the theft or transfer of complete nuclear warheads; the unauthorized launch of operational missiles; nuclear blackmail; etc.
The only safeguard against such horror is consistent and complete nuclear disarmament, codified under international law in a Nuclear Weapons Convention. A further requirement is the speedy and global phasing out of civil nuclear energy, combined with the search for intelligent and sustainable solutions for the unimaginably huge masses of nuclear waste that exist already. This is truly a difficult endeavor and a dangerous heritage.
We must, however, not ignore the voice of the “next generation”, which addressed the delegates at the 2005 NPT Review Conference as follows: “If you fail to take concrete steps towards a nuclear-weapon free world, how will you answer for burdening us with such a horrifying menace? You are charged with making this decision. If you fail to act, how will you look into your own mirror?“ I have no doubt that this question is not only directed to the United Nations delegates, but to us all.
This article was written for the special edition of the INES Newsletter, issued on the occasion of the Chornobyl+20 conference held in Kiev, Ukraine, in April 2006.
