This new age is characterised by attempts by the established nuclear powers
to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons technology, while emerging
ones exploit the existing technology. At a time when the risk of a nuclear
exchange between the established powers is at an all-time low, these
developments threaten to destabilise the nuclear weapons non-proliferation
regime (NPR), a consensus built on the 1968 treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons, and stimulate new arms races involving the next generation of
nuclear powers.

The message for the international community is now clear—nothing will
restrain an ideologically driven state from exercising the nuclear weapons
option. North Korea has threatened to resume its nuclear programme. South Korea
and Japan could follow suit, and both are capable of doing so quickly, should
they choose to leave the non-proliferation treaty. Pakistan may transfer
technology to its allies (particularly Iran) to create an “Islamic bomb”.
Similarly, Israel may be drawn towards nuclear testing if other states in the
Middle East get closer to developing nuclear weapons. The main concern now is
that states such as Syria, Iran and Libya will disengage from the
non-proliferation treaties, leading to a breakdown of the whole NPR.

The American programme to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons
technology could also undermine the credibility of the NPR, because it runs
contrary to the obligations of nuclear powers to engage in steps towards
disarmament. These weapons are pure fusion devices which use lasers to fuse
hydrogen isotopes. Militarily, they are more attractive than existing fusion
designs because they generate lower levels of fallout, and the deuterium and
tritium used in their explosive cores are easier to acquire than plutonium and
highly enriched uranium, which are used in current designs. Significantly, these
devices can be tested under laboratory conditions, and do not require full-scale
testing. So the American programme could draw other nuclear powers into a race
to develop this technology.

The Indian and Pakistani tests have placed an even greater burden on the NPR,
but the system remains flawed. Agents of emerging nuclear states are scouring
the world for the equipment and technologies they require to complete their
programmes, and they are finding what they need. The NPR has always had a degree
of success in slowing proliferation, but the ability of rogue states to breach
the international export controls on nuclear technology suggests that, in the
long term, nothing short of pre-emptive military action can stop other states
following the example of India and Pakistan. The continued development of
nuclear weapons technology will also encourage these states.

The 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has survived the crisis, but its
shortcomings have been exposed (but see This Week, 13 July, p 18). While
seismological readings around the world confirmed that the treaty can be
verified, smaller tests were not picked up. It was known that sub-kiloton tests
would be impossible to verify seismologically, but this has always been
considered an acceptable risk. Now that this loophole has been exploited,
confidence in the treaty could be undermined.

But perhaps the greatest concern was the failure of intelligence agencies to
warn of the tests. By the time a test has occurred the treaty is already in
crisis, so early warning is essential to provide the international community
with time to apply economic and diplomatic pressure. This can no longer be
guaranteed. Add to this the fact that pure fusion weapons can be developed
without technically breaching the treaty, and you have a serious erosion of
international support for it.

The NPR has entered a period of crisis. It can be patched up, but the
long-term prognosis isn’t good. India and Pakistan may be the first of the next
generation of nuclear powers.

IS THE world slipping back to the dangerous state it was in at the height of
the Cold War? The old controls have gone and near anarchy reigns in the former
Soviet Union. What is most worrying is that the nuclear arsenals, once secure in
state hands, are now scattered over hundreds of sites under the control of
several countries. Worse still, they have been privatised and are prey to gangs
of criminals as likely to traffic in uranium and plutonium as heroin and
cocaine.

Currently the former republics own some 130 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium
and uranium between them. They produce fissile material for nuclear and civilian
research programmes, and have uranium-enrichment plants producing low-enriched
uranium for commercial sale. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, millions of
dollars have been spent, mainly by the US and other G7 countries, on programmes
to dispose of fissile material safely.

Yet for all the effort, nuclear security remains a problem. The authority of
the central government in Russia has been eroded, and its nuclear regulatory
agency, GAN, no longer has the resources to run a good accounting system for the
country’s stockpiles. The same is true in the other republics. None is able to
determine the exact whereabouts, quantity or condition of fissile material that
it owns. Enough fissile material is on the loose to make many hundreds of
nuclear weapons.

Against this backdrop, incidents of nuclear smuggling are inevitable—or
rumours of them. Many media accounts have turned out to be untrue—there
are even claims in academic circles that German journalists fabricated the idea
of a black market for fissile material. Even so, a number of reports have turned
out to be true. They have tended to involve entrepreneurs, impoverished
employees of the decaying nuclear industry or organised criminal networks.

For example, in 1992, 1.7 kilograms of 90 per cent pure highly enriched
uranium (HEU) was stolen from the Luch Scientific Production Association in
Russia; on 27 November 1993, three pieces of a reactor core containing 4.5
kilograms of 20 per cent HEU were stolen from a shipyard near Murmansk in
Russia; and on 10 May 1994 in Tengen, Germany, 6 grams of plutonium-239 was
uncovered; and on 14 December 1994, 2.7 kilograms of 87 per cent pure HEU was
seized in Prague. A number of industries in the former Soviet Union produce
nuclear materials that are suitable both for commercial use and for making
nuclear weapons. These “dual-use items” include beryllium, caesium-137 and
lithium. In 1993, 4 tonnes of beryllium was illegally exported from Ukraine to
Germany and thence to the US.

The black market has tended to smuggle fissile materials such as uranium and
plutonium along particular routes. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are the major
transit states for materials originating from Russia. Dual-use materials often
leave former republics by way of the Baltic states, too. And the smugglers also
use exit routes through Eastern Europe and into Germany.

However, when smugglers are caught using these routes they tend to be in
possession of “insignificant” amounts of nonweapons-grade fissile material. Is
the route a smoke screen to protect some other shadowy trade in larger amounts
of fissile material which are being shipped around central Asia? Frank Barnaby,
the nuclear weapons expert, suggests that given the lack of adequate border
controls, Turkey provides an important exit route, and Vladivostok another
into China and beyond.

The international community has tried to respond to the threat. Examples of
its efforts include the Nunn-Lugar Program (backed by $1 billion from the
US government) to convert former Soviet nuclear defence industries to civilian
use, the US-led Laboratory to Laboratory Program to help former Soviet
scientists now forced to live on the breadline, and the moneys contributed after
the Moscow G7 Nuclear Safety Summit.

But too little attention is being paid to the intrinsically criminal
character of this lethal traffic. Unless the crime-busting skills normally
ranged against other Mafia-like organisations are deployed, the progress will
continue to be slow.

Partial solutions and half-hearted attempts to solve the problem mean that
fissile material continues to fall into the wrong hands. If this trade is not
tackled head-on, the risk of nuclear terrorism—both individual and
state-sponsored—in the next decade will be unprecedented.