Nuclear things

26Jan09

Today we touch on the state of nuclear matters in the US and Iran.

 

MSM-stalwart Time leads forth with an article suggesting that President Obama is at loggerheads with his Bush-holdover Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, as to whether to proceed with the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).  The Pentagon and the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons laboratories have been lobbying for years to replace what they consider an aging stockpile of nuclear warheads with more “safer” and “reliable” modern warheads.  The RRW has been nearly killed off several times in Congress but rises, lazarus-like, to haunt each new defense budget.  It is a favorite of the arms control establishment who argue that unless new warheads are designed and built (an activity principally conducted now at the weapons labs), we cannot meet our SORT treaty commitments to reduce to 2200 deployed warheads by 2012 without jeopardizing our “nuclear deterrent.”

 

The latest U.S. nuclear showdown doesn’t involve a foreign enemy. Instead it pits President Barack Obama against his Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and concerns the question of whether America needs a new generation of nuclear warheads. While serving under former President George W. Bush, Gates had repeatedly called for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program to be put into operation, because the nation’s current nukes — mostly produced in the 1970s and ’80s — are growing so old that their destructive power may be in question.

 

The Reliable Replacement Warhead is not about new capabilities but about safety, reliability and security,” Gates said in a speech in the week before last November’s election. In an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, released in early December after Gates was tapped by Obama to stay on at the Pentagon, Gates repeated that refrain. “Even though the days of hair-trigger superpower confrontation are over, as long as other nations possess the bomb and the means to deliver it, the United States must maintain a credible strategic deterrent,” he wrote. “Congress needs to do its part by funding the Reliable Replacement Warhead program — for safety, for security and for a more reliable deterrent.” RRW basically trades explosive force for greater assurance that new warheads would work predictably in the absence of tests, which the U.S. has refrained from conducting for nearly two decades to help advance nonproliferation goals.

 

But Obama doesn’t buy that logic. Shortly after taking the oath of office on Tuesday, he turned what had been a campaign promise into an official presidential commitment: the new Administration “will stop the development of new nuclear weapons,” the White House declared flatly on its website, with no equivocation, asterisks or caveats.

 

Obama and Gates are “at loggerheads on this,” says Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution who has specialized in nuclear issues. A senior Pentagon official says talk of a resolution is “premature” because he doesn’t believe Gates and Obama have discussed the matter.

 

O’Hanlon and other nuclear thinkers have suggested retooling existing weapons to improve reliability as an option. But the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which develops America’s nuclear weapons, has said it cannot meet the goals set for RRW by modifying existing weapons. Obama’s position has backing in Congress, which has repeatedly refused to fund the program.

 

Obama would have a difficult time reversing course on what is now a stated policy of his Administration instead of simply a campaign promise. And any move to produce new nuclear weapons will be read by other nations as a U.S. push for nuclear supremacy, even as Washington urges the rest of the world — Tehran, are you listening? — to do without the weapons. Russia would very likely respond by upgrading its own arsenal.

 

It’s easy to get too excited about this, since an enormous amount of momentum has developed behind “modernization” of the US nuclear force.  Tens of billions has been sunk into nuclear weapons research and infrastructure so that a breakout of new weapons could occur reasonably quickly.  Production has been upgraded, and these programs includes not only new warheads, but delivery systems (many dual use), guidance, and missions.  A victory over the RRW may simply be a victory over a three letter combination, since these matters have a habit of reappearing as something else.

 

Is Iran running low on nuclear fuel?

 

            Another nuclear story which cannot be deemed fully reliable is making the rounds, this time about Iran.  One indicator of its unreliability is that it originated with the Murdoch-owned London Times, which has, in recent years, published all sorts of nonsense about Iran and Israel.   As re-circulated by the Global Security “newswire”, Iran is running short of uranium yellowcake to process through its conversion and enrichment facilities.  The Times claimed that Iran has converted 70% of its stock of yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride, and is looking for more despite the Western embargo. 

 

            What caught my eye was an amazing statement:

 

Iran possesses enough uranium hexafluoride for up to 35 bombs, but it could use up its stocks of yellowcake uranium by the end of 2009, said David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security.

 

What? Albright said that??  Up until now the debate has been whether Iran can make a bomb, but not thirty-five.  To get from all of its UF6 to highly enriched uranium for that many bombs would require a fantastic engineering feat, recalling that to date, all of the enriched uranium produced at Bushehr has been inspected by the IAEA and is less than 5% enriched. 

 

Albright and Shire’s report for their Institute for Science and International Security dated 12 January 2009 advocates that Obama adopt a European-style approach to Iran involving direct negotiations, increased sanctions and incentives.  They otherwise warn that “The year 2009 will likely mark Iran’s development of a nuclear weapons capability.”   Albright if its existing centrifuges are run at full capacity, Iran could produce enough bomb-grade uranium for one to two devices a year.  What worries Albright is that the Iranian enrichment program is too small to support a civilian reactor, but more than enough for an indigenous weapons program.  As for thirty-five bombs, Albroght actually says:

 

From the perspective of nuclear weapons, its existing stock of uranium hexafluoride is enormous. Given that between five and ten tonnes of uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride are needed to feed into cascades to make enough HEU for a nuclear weapon, Iran has accumulated enough uranium hexafluoride for over 35 nuclear weapons. All of the uranium hexafluoride is safeguarded by the IAEA.

 

Well, that part about being safeguarded by the IAEA is a bit of a catch, isn’t it?

 

 

 

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