By John Hallam
Claiming that Iraq is hiding materials that could fashion a nuclear weapon, the US government is threatening a resumption of bombing unless the materials are handed over. But how close is Saddam Hussein's government to producing a bomb? JOHN HALLAM of Friends of the Earth (Sydney) considers the evidence.
To produce even a crude nuclear device, you need a lot more than just 25 kg of 100% U235 (known to the International Atomic Energy Agency as a "significant quantity") of highly enriched uranium (HEU).
Even a primitive nuclear device is quite complicated, requiring sophisticated explosive charges to force precise pieces of uranium into one another, with an exactly timed burst of neutrons. The shape of the pieces is classified and has to be discovered by experiment — a process that requires a lot more uranium than that for one weapon.
In order to make a nuclear explosive, you need:
Fissile material. This is said to be the most difficult thing to get hold of, but Iraq did have enough to make a single weapon provided it was prepared to break IAEA safeguards. According to IAEA reports, Iraq has 25 to 33 kg of HEU — just enough. But according to an Iraqi defector, they may have as much as 84 kg. If Iraq had as much as the IAEA thought, the likely losses in weapons fabrication (about 20% in advanced weapons countries) would probably have left it with too little. But 84 kg is plenty.
Tamper/reflector. This confines the nuclear material long enough for the chain reaction to take full hold before the explosion disperses the material. Tamper/reflectors are often of beryllium or tungsten. Iraq had tried to get hold of such material.
High explosives. These are shaped charges which compress the uranium to begin the nuclear reaction.
Fuzing system. This ensures that the uranium will be forced into just the right configuration. Perfect timing is needed. Simple fuzing systems need a detonation capacitor and high-speed switches known as krytrons. Iraq had tried to get hold of krytrons, notably from US sources, and had tried to obtain, as well as make, its own detonation capacitors. In March 1990, five people were arrested trying to smuggle detonation capacitors from California to the Al Quaquaa State Establishment in Iraq.
Neutron source. A precisely timed burst of neutrons is
required, from a beryllium-polonium source, or an electronic neutron generator.
The form in which Iraq's current HEU exists (semi-irradiated reactor fuel) makes fabrication difficult without a reprocessing facility, and reprocessing would involve substantial losses.
In developing a nuclear weapon, extensive testing of the conventional explosive apparatus is needed to be sure it will implode as it's supposed to. This means rigging up a dummy device with depleted uranium, setting off the shaped charges and analysing the results in great detail. To catch the action, you need all sorts of high-speed flash X-ray machines and ultra-high-speed cameras, which Iraq may or may not have.
Ambitions
Iraq made no secret of its weapons ambitions. On July 10, 1990, before the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein said: "We would see no problem in a Western nation helping us to develop nuclear arms to help compensate for those owned by Israel".
In March 1989, US authorities seized 27 cases of vacuum
pumps that were about to be exported to Iraq. Baghdad said the pumps were to be used to produce vegetable oil, but the US Department of Commerce said they were "better used" to enrich uranium.
Iraq has been getting centrifuge know-how from Brazil, which has a cascade of several thousand unreliable centrifuges at Ipero. The Brazilians have produced uranium of 70% U235, but in minute quantities.
In August 1990, German officials confirmed that the US government had questioned the export of high-temperature smelting furnaces to a military complex near Baghdad. In 1988, Iraq had obtained a "flow-turn machine", which can be used to produce either missile nose cones or centrifuge bodies.
German officials had investigated a shipment of 50 tons of specialised steel to Iraq by Export Union GmbH. Iraq had also managed to get hold of "pre forms" that could be used for the manufacture of centrifuge bodies.
Two Swiss high-tech firms, one 18% owned by an Iraqi government agency, were investigated for attempts to export centrifuge "end caps" to Iraq. End caps are complicated components for the injection of fresh uranium hexafluoride (UF6) and removal of depleted UF6 and enriched UF6.
Two days before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Interatom GmbH was blocked from exporting a complete workshop to the Industrial Project
Company of Baghdad. Interatom's project director for research reactors was in Baghdad in early December 1990.
Abilities
According to Bruno Stemmler, a former centrifuge engineer of MAN Technologien GmbH, which makes centrifuges for Urenco, Iraq had gotten hold of blueprints that "strongly resembled" early Urenco designs.
Stemmler was shown Iraqi design blueprints in Baghdad in 1988. The German government thinks Stemmler and another MAN ex-employee, Walther Busse, may have diverted the know-how themselves. Stemmler and Busse deny this.
Busse says, "I have never seen any centrifuge components in Iraq. I am not convinced Iraq is capable of making whole centrifuges, and I saw no equipment in Iraq which led me to believe they could."
According to Stemmler, the test rig he saw could not have been used to enrich uranium. The operating speed of the centrifuge could be reached "only after whole teams of experts had performed mountains of diagnostic tests to balance the rotor and optimise the performance of the centrifuge.
"To reach estimated design velocity, five years of mechanical balance testing would be necessary ..."
Two additional years of hot testing with UF6 would be needed to optimise the machine's output. According to Stemmler, in 1988-89 Iraq had 5-15 centrifuge designers whose expertise was of high quality, but few technical support staff. In 1988-89, Iraq had no UF6 to play around with.
In 1990, according to US intelligence, "Iraq might be spinning a rotor on a test bench, and playing around with designs, but they aren't manufacturing centrifuges".
Stemmler said that claims in the media that Iraq is "only a year away from a nuclear bomb" were "ridiculous".
Other facilities
The prospect now raised is that Iraq may have other facilities, originally considered to be non-nuclear.
Amongst the facilities are those associated with Iraq's attempt to manufacture calutrons as an alternative route to the enrichment of uranium.
The calutron is a 1943 technology, abandoned by the US in
1947 and declassified in 1949. When IAEA inspectors were fired on and prevented from inspecting a facility in June, they came away with photos of calutrons in crates.
The calutron is a type of heavy ion accelerator related to the cyclotron. It passes a beam of uranium ions through the poles of a powerful magnet, bending the beam in a circle. The slightly lighter U235 atoms take a different path to the U238 ions and end up at a different collector plate.
But only about 15% of the uranium makes it to the collector plates. The rest collects on internal surfaces of the apparatus and is lost.
Calutron technology isn't "sensitive", consisting of common industrial equipment. A large calutron program would nonetheless have shown up on satellite surveillance, with indications of its big power supply, heavy electromagnetic field and a thermal plume.
According to a submission by the UN team investigating Iraq's nuclear facilities, Iraq had 30 calutrons located at Tuwaitha (bombed by the US), Tarmiya and Badush. The main site was to be at Badush — and would have required 200 Mw of power, about 2% of Iraq's entire electrical grid capacity. The power station there was bombed by the US.
The defector from whom the US learned of the calutron program suggested that Iraq had enriched 40 to 80 kg of HEU with this technology. US sources suggest that Iraq had managed to enrich a mere 1-5 kg at a cost of $4 to 8 billion.
The Iraqi calutron program may have been aided by perfectly legal US technology exports. In 1989, Hiptronics of Brewster, NY, exported four power supplies to Iraq for "induction welding". The transaction was routinely approved. According to Hiptronics president Steve Peschel: "Iraq was a friendly power in the 1980s. They were beating up the bad guys in Iran."
Reactors
Iraq possesses, or possessed, two research reactors, the IRT-5000 research reactor, and the Tammuz-2 research reactor.
IRT-5000 was a 5 Mw reactor built by the Soviet Union in 1967 and upgraded from 2 Mw in 1978. Tammuz-2 was a 500 Kw reactor built by the French as a replacement for Tammuz-1, bombed by the Israelis in 1981.
The reactors, located at the Tuwaitha research centre just outside Baghdad, were virtually destroyed by US bombing.
At Tuwaitha, Iraq also had experimental fuel fabrication laboratories and annexes, radiochemical laboratories, "hot"
laboratories and a number of support facilities and workshops. These were largely destroyed by bombing.
The fuel laboratories were able to make fuel pellets and fuel assemblies for reactors, but not, apparently, to reprocess. The "hot cells" seem to have had a reprocessing capability suitable for weapons.
Iraq also had, before US planes bombed it, a research establishment at Taji, north of Baghdad, and the Al Quaquaa State Establishment 30 km south of Baghdad. These didn't contain nuclear material (or were not supposed to), so they were not subject to IAEA safeguards.
According to intelligence reports, the Nasser State Enterprise for Mechanical Industries in Taji is a multipurpose weapons development centre and is "responsible for the development and manufacture of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment", while Al Quaquaa "has experience with modern high explosives and high speed measurement technology, and is concerned with the development of the non nuclear components of a nuclear weapon".
According to a letter sent to the IAEA in April 1990, Iraq possessed only 12.3 kg of 93% enriched uranium fuel for the Tammuz-2 reactor and smaller amounts of 80% enriched fuel and 36% enriched fuel for the IRT-5000 reactor.
Strong doubts
US officials last November were saying there was no consensus about Iraqi weapons capabilities. There was no intelligence available to US officials indicating that Iraq was able to process HEU into shaped charges, that it could make neutron reflectors to minimise the amount of HEU needed or that it was able to do implosion package testing at all. Nor was there any evidence that Iraq could minimise the production losses in processing HEU into weapons components.
In February, an Israeli Defence Forces Report became public. According to the report, Iraq was at least two years away from even a "dirty" bomb, and had failed to develop an operable centrifuge capacity. The IDF said that reports that Iraq had 26 operating centrifuges were "disinformation".
According to Carson Mark of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, it was hard to see a rationale for the destruction of the two research reactors. If HEU were actually used for the purpose for which it was ostensibly intended and irradiated in these reactors, the effect would be to render it all but useless for weapons purposes.
Back in November, US officials had said, "If the 26 centrifuges Iraq is accused of building are of the same quality as
those developed by Brazil over the past 10 years, it will take Iraq 80 years to accumulate enough HEU for a weapon".
US officials told nuclear industry journal Nucleonics Week that administration warnings of an Iraqi nuclear threat "were not based on realistic scenarios", but were designed to rally public support for a war effort. Said one official source: "Bush is beating the drum based on a very speculative worst case scenario. While there may be good reasons for going to war with Iraq, Iraq's nuclear program isn't one of them."
Iraq's limited nuclear capabilities were hyped out of all proportion. Iraq remained at all times nominally within the IAEA framework — in stark contrast to South Africa, Israel, Pakistan, India, Argentina and Brazil, all of whom are much closer to weapons or are acknowledged "unofficial" weapons states. US planes have yet to bomb Valindaba in South Africa, or Dimona in Israel.