The Belgravia Dispatch: The Specter of Nuclear Terror

September 14, 2006

The Specter of Nuclear Terror

Graham Allison, writing about the specter of nuclear terror, in an excellent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

In sum, my best judgment is that based on current trends, a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States is more likely than not in the decade ahead. Developments in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea leave Americans more vulnerable to a nuclear 9/11 today than we were five years ago. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has said that he thinks that I underestimate the risk. In the judgment of most people in the national security community, including former Sen. Sam Nunn, the risk of a terrorist detonating a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil is higher today than was the risk of nuclear war at the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Reviewing the evidence, Warren Buffett, the world's most successful investor and a legendary oddsmaker in pricing insurance policies for unlikely but catastrophic events like earthquakes, has concluded: "It's inevitable. I don't see any way that it won't happen."
It is difficult to disagree with Buffet. Nonetheless, I believe that the largely unrecognized good news is that this ultimate catastrophe is, in fact, preventable. There exists a feasible, affordable checklist of actions that, if taken, would shrink the risk of nuclear terrorism to nearly zero. The strategic narrow in this challenge is to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons or the materials from which weapons could be made. If this choke point can be squeezed tightly enough, we can deny terrorists the means necessary for the most deadly of all terror acts. As a fact of physics: No HEU or plutonium, no nuclear explosion, no nuclear terrorism.

My book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, proposes a strategy for pursuing that agenda, organized under a "Doctrine of Three Nos":

No loose nukes requires securing all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material, as quickly as possible. The United States and Russia have proven themselves adept at locking up valuable or dangerous items: Gold is not stolen from Fort Knox, nor treasures from the Kremlin Armory.

No new nascent nukes means no new domestic capabilities to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) contains a loophole that allows nations to develop these capacities as civilian programs, withdraw from the NPT, utilize equipment and know-how received as a beneficiary of the NPT, and proceed to build nuclear weapons. The proposition of no new nascent nukes acknowledges what the national security community has belatedly come to realize: HEU and plutonium are bombs about to hatch.

No new nuclear weapon states unambiguously declares the nuclear club will not expand beyond its current eight members. Without endorsing the behavior of current nuclear powers, this principle recognizes that the most urgent task is to stop the bleeding before the problem gets worse. The urgent test of this principle is North Korea, which now stands three-quarters of the way across that line. In February 2006, North Korea declared itself a nuclear weapon state, but it has not yet conducted a nuclear test to gain forced entry into the group of nuclear nations. Preventing Pyongyang from becoming a "Nukes 'R' Us" for terrorists is the biggest challenge the international community faces in the Asian arena.

But what has been done on these fronts to combat nuclear terrorism? Are we any safer from a nuclear terrorist attack than we were on 9/11?

After the Trade Center towers fell, President George W. Bush declared war on terrorism; toppled the Taliban, eliminating Al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan; and articulated a new doctrine in which the United States would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." The Bush administration made an important conceptual advance in recognizing that the gravest danger lies in what Vice President Dick Cheney termed the "nexus between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction." To minimize that threat, the United States successfully sponsored U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, which requires states to criminalize proliferation; promoted a new Proliferation Security Initiative, which expands upon existing legal frameworks to allow the interception of WMD-related cargo; and persuaded other members of the G-8 Global Partnership to match a U.S. commitment of $1 billion annually over the next decade to secure and eliminate former Soviet nuclear weapons. Furthermore, in February 2005 Bush leveraged his personal friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach an agreement at Bratislava that each leader would make securing loose nuclear material his personal responsibility and that their respective energy ministers should meet and report regularly on progress toward that goal.

On the other hand, in combating what Bush has rightly identified as "the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States" and the only terrorist attack that could kill a million Americans in one blow, the Bush administration has demonstrated a puzzling absence of focus, energy, and urgency. Indeed, some of the administration's actions have, in fact, made U.S. citizens more vulnerable.

September 11, 2001 demonstrated terrorists' capacity for mega-terrorism. As former CIA Director Porter Goss told Congress last year, "There is sufficient [Russian] material unaccounted for so that it would be possible for those with know-how to construct [a] nuclear weapon." But as of 2005, as the most comprehensive review of what has and has not been done on this agenda concludes, only 54 percent of the buildings in the former Soviet Union holding nuclear material had received comprehensive security upgrades.

Before 9/11, North Korea had, at most, two nuclear weapons worth of plutonium (acquired during the presidency of George H. W. Bush). Today, North Korea has reprocessed enough plutonium for eight additional nuclear bombs and restarted its Yongbyon reactor, where it is producing enough plutonium for two additional bombs a year. In 2003, Tehran offered to negotiate with the United States over Iran's nuclear program and even halt its support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. In the period since the United States rejected that proposal, Iran has defied the U.N. Security Council's demand that it suspend uranium enrichment-related activity at Isfahan and Natanz, accelerated its program, and elected a new president who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

On its current trajectory, Iran could join North Korea in becoming a nuclear weapon state before the end of the decade, triggering what the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change calls an "erosion of the nonproliferation regime" to a point that "could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." Having called for war against Iraq on false premises, the Bush administration has paradoxically increased the WMD threat. According to the CIA, while the good news is that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda command can no longer operate headquarters and training camps in Afghanistan, the bad news is that Iraq now provides "recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself." As jihadi networks strengthen in Iraq, on one hand, and Iran and North Korea accelerate their fissile material production, on the other, the likelihood of a deadly nexus between a terrorist buyer and nuclear seller increases. Reversing these trends will require a new strategic approach to the threat of nuclear terrorism. [my emphasis]

The entire article is worth reading. I'll have more on this soon, but in the meantime am opening this up to comments. Some of the issues worth discussing are quite obvious. Do people agree an act of nuclear terror is as probable as serious people like Warren Buffet and Graham Allison believe? How feasible is it, really, to effectuate Allison's so-called "three no's"? And has the Bush Administration's war in Iraq enhanced, rather than decreased, the chances of nuclear terror? There are many other issues embedded in Allison's article, but these are a few of them to kick off discussion. Somewhere here too, I suspect, our policy towards not only North Korea and Iran, but also India, is worth pondering in more detail. One dreams at times of some grand package deal creating a WMD-free zone in the Middle East and South Asia some day, with Israel, Pakistan and India giving up their nukes, and Iran forsaking development of same--so that the nuclear club remains just the core five, US, UK, France, Russia and China (thus greatly reducing proliferation risks), but alas, as I said, that's mostly a dream, I fear.

Posted by Gregory at September 14, 2006 04:56 AM

Comments

This is precisely what I was arguing in the comments space on this very blog, prior to the 2004 election: that George Bush and his Administration has shown an appalling ineptitude and curious lack of focus and energy when it comes to far more serious threats to our national security than Iraq ever was or could have been: the threat of nuclear weapons, from Iran and North Korea. To me, this was the singular disaster of the Iraq war, a foreign policy blunder of potentially immense proportions. The only thing that keeps this from being an unmitigated disaster is that fact that, crazy as they may be, North Korea and Iran are both state actors and thus are presumably deterred from using their weapons by the same logic that prevented all-out nuclear war from ever breaking out between us and our formerly implacable enemy, the Soviet Union. However --- it is far more dangerous to allow unstable states like North Korea and Iran to acquire nuclear weapons than it was to have the USSR possessing them. It boggles the mind to hear people still say that they think the current Republican Party is either serious or competent when it comes to matters of national defense. It's quite obvious they are neither, at this point.

Posted by: Mitsu at September 14, 2006 07:13 AM | Permalink to this comment

How is it that he never mentions Pakistan?

Posted by: Jon H at September 14, 2006 07:51 AM | Permalink to this comment

Nuclear terrorist attacks within the next ten years? A "dirty conventional bomb" enhanced by radioactive waste perhaps, but I am sceptical there is enough weapons-grade plutonium on the loose for terrorists to build a nuclear bomb.
---
Nonetheless, the trend is clearly that individuals can inflict more and more damage thanks to technological advances. The recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah (where the latter was able to effectly utilize modern anti tank weapons and communications technologies) suggests small groups of individuals *eventually* (decades from now perhaps) will have the capability to assemble WMDs "in their backyard".
When that day arrives, let's hope that the conflict between Israel and the Arab world already has been resolved peacefully...

MARCU$

Posted by: MARCU$ at September 14, 2006 09:26 AM | Permalink to this comment

I'm highly skeptical of the possibility of a terrorists building a working nuke should they get the necessary nuclear materials. While the knowledge on "how to make a nuke" is out there, a working weapon requires access to a host of other materials and equipment. In other words, should a terrorist organization actually get its hands on uranium or plutonium and try to fabricate a bomb, the odds are that much higher that it would be a dud or explode in transit than they are that it would explode in the US.

The threat of a "dirty bomb" is far greater. Sucessfully deploying a "dirty bomb" is far easier, and a "smart" terrorist will realize that he can terrorize the US simply by demonstrating that he has nuclear materials. Hence the key is securing the nuclear materials that could be used in a dirty bomb.

As to the other two recommendations, they are based on false premises (i.e. that any current regime in the world would provide access to terrorists to a nuclear weapon for them to do with as they wish. The greatest threat of this happening lies in Pakistan should the current regime be overthrown by Islamic radicals).

And while the possibility exists that, faced with an existential threat from the US, a nuclear regime like Iran or North Korea might use "terrorists" as a delivery vehicle to attack the US, the odds are far greater that they would rely on their own agents to accomplish the same goal. Moreover, even if the leaders of a nation wanted to give nukes to terrorists, the odds that not insane members of society would go along with that plan are miniscule in the absence of an existential threat.

Nor will the rest of the world agree to having its rights to the "peaceful" use of nuclear energy abrogated unless and until the nuclear club nations come up with a "cheaper" alternative for electricy generation.

This is why the Bush regime's approach to both foreign policy and energy policy is so stupid. Sword rattling and going around invading other nations on false premises is guaranteed to increase the will to create nukes. And the US failure to fully invest in "green" energy technology research not merely makes the US vulnerable to a cut-off in oil supplies, it means that today, the cheapest way for most countries to produce electricity is a (poorly designed) nuclear power plant. (Reliance upon "Green" energy research in the private sector, because the US needs to be able to transfer those technologies free to the developing world, and not rely on the "free market" which will sell those technologies at the highest price possible.)

The real threat to the US lies not in a repeat of grossly "theatrical"
attacks like those that occured on 9-11. It lies in conventional "car bombs" and IEDs that are easy to make and deploy. And the more people there are in the world that hate America enough to come here and attack us, the more vulnerable we are. When "going to the mall" is no longer seen as risk free because of the possibility of a terrorist attack, the US economy will collapse, and the terrorists will have achieved a great deal with very little investment.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 14, 2006 01:39 PM | Permalink to this comment

I don't find it implausible at all that sufficiently wealthy terrorists could buy a bomb in Russia, which would circumvent the issue of whether they could build a gun-type bomb.

Even building a bomb becomes more plausible, once you quit thinking of Osama huddling in a cave in Waziristan, and start imagining some ardent fellow working in Pakistan's nuclear program who helps smuggle materials out of the lab.

Posted by: Anderson at September 14, 2006 02:18 PM | Permalink to this comment

I'm certainly no expert, but the suggestion that a nuclear terrorist attack is "more likely than not" strikes me as a vast overstatement of the risk. Terrorist groups like al Qaeda have not shown any ability to get there hands on even chemical or biological weapons, which are much more ubiquitious. All of their attacks, even the most successful ones like 9/11, have been decidely "low-tech." Moreover, I've been thoroughly unimpressed by the intelligence and sophistication of most al Qaeda operatives. There are a few smart ones (KSM, Osama, Zawahiri), but the majority seem to be more like Jose Padilla and Zacarias Moussousi, i.e., not very smart and a little unstable. I think we often overestimate their abilities.

Further, I think we overstate the risk that a nuclear-armed state would choose to give such weapons to al Qaeda. These governments would have to know that if a bomb went off in a U.S. city, they would be presumed guilty. And the odds are relatively high that such a plot would be broken up and linked back to the offending government. I don't see Iran or North Korea taking that sort of existential risk.

This is not to say this isn't something to worry about. It's not a totally implausible scenario. But is it a "more likely than not" scenario? I highly doubt it.

Posted by: Anonymous Liberal at September 14, 2006 04:24 PM | Permalink to this comment

I find it utterly implausible that any private terrorist group will get a nuke within the next ten to twenty years, unless the technology changes significantly.

What's less implausible is that some government might arrange to use a nuke for their own purposes, if it could be blamed on private terrorists.

So for example, imagine that US support for israel were to weaken considerably. Are there elements in the israeli government that might smuggle a nuke into the USA and give it to an arab group to use here? You better believe it. Many israelis believe that US support is vital for their national survival. And there are many people in the israeli government who will do absolutely anything that is necessary for their national survival. Of course there is no such threat while the USA shows unconditional support for israel and needs no special event to solidify that support.

My point is not to speak out against israel. My point is that the threat that some government will accidentally give private citizens access to nukes that may be used irresponsibly, is far less than the threat that deranged government employees may use nukes irresponsibly, and perhaps blame it on private terrorists.

The deranged terrorists have to get nukes from people who have no reason to trust them, and no particular reason to believe they will do what the nuke-givers want. The deranged government employees already have access to nukes and can call on the resources of their governments, within whatever limits their government positions impose on them.

Far greater threat.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 14, 2006 04:43 PM | Permalink to this comment

It seems plausible to me that terrorists might get a nuke from one of three sources:

1. Russian black market.

2. North Korea, which has a history of selling weapons to whomever will buy, and unlike Middle Eastern regimes is itself an unlikely target for Islamist terrorists.

3. Pakistan.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 14, 2006 05:07 PM | Permalink to this comment

There are tremendous technological barriers to the successful detonation of a nuclear device in an American city. However, it is clearly an objective for elements related to al Qaeda. The threat is real enough to warrant precaution.

One glaring element in threat-deterrence that has been neglected in the analysis I'm familiar with is public relations. It has been noted that bin Laden and al Qaeda endured a backlash within the Muslim world for their barbaric attacks on 9/11. The Arab street, however, is now quite inflamed by our actions in Iraq, Lebanon and with the Palestinian peace process.

We must attack the potential of nuclear terrorism on multiple fronts. We must secure both the weapons and the materials necessary to fashion weapons. We must deny terrorist organizations facilities to develop complex WMD programs. We must counter proliferation. Domestically, we must establish intelligence organizations (such as something like MI5) to monitor what occurs in our borders. Cities like New York and Washington need additional funds to build defenses. We must also work with our allies to track individuals that pose a threat.

But, one important defense is the moral high-ground, in addition to the technological and martial heights. This defensive "weapon" may be the most potent element in this long-term struggle.

Posted by: Chris at September 14, 2006 05:32 PM | Permalink to this comment

Terrorist groups like al Qaeda have not shown any ability to get there hands on even chemical or biological weapons, which are much more ubiquitious.

And which have much less bang for the buck.

Look, unless 20/20 goes out and does a sting where it buys a nuke, we're not going to *know* how easy/hard it is for Qaeda to get one. All we know is that it hasn't happened yet. Which was excellent proof that hijacking planes and crashing them into tall buildings was very unlikely, right up to 9/10/2001.

Posted by: Anderson at September 14, 2006 07:10 PM | Permalink to this comment

Be careful what you wish for: would it be completely desirable for India & Pakistan to give up nukes? Notice that since acquiring nukes, both countries (and the US) have been very careful to avoid India-Pakistani tensions from developing into full fledged war.

Let's face it: nuclear powers have fought through surrogates where the target state was without nukes. Its akin to letting one's dog poop on one's neighbors lawn! One reason Western Europe is now more peaceful than Middle East is that nukes have made war impossible in the former

So under the current international system, the US trying to stop proliferation is self serving. Stopping proliferation is an admirable goal, but it should not be pursued in isolation... rather it requires a change in the world order as significant as the Treaty of Westphalia.

Posted by: Eliot at September 14, 2006 07:21 PM | Permalink to this comment

We've been planning for airliners to fly into stuff for a long time. Our nuclear plants are designed to withstand an airliner strike without breaking containment. WTC was designed to get an airliner strike and not fall down. Bin Ladin was surprised when it did fall down, apparently they'd seen the studies too. We get three main possibilities about that:

1. The planning was done badly.
2. The actual construction didn't meet spec.
3. There were bombs planted etc to make it happen anyway.

Conspiracy theorists prefer #3 even though the others are more plausible.

We've had a long time to plan for nuclear bombs in US cities. The plans ought to be secret, but every now and then I read something about them in Readers' Digest etc. It appears we have a bunch of little hand-held sensors that can detect the gamma signature of bombs, and if a bomb is suspected then a bunch of people spread out over the city in heilcopters and zero in on it, and they raid the site where the bomb is. And we've had a whole lot of tests or false alarms.

Are the stories at all accurate, or are they written to get terrorists and foreign governments to do the wrong thing and get easier to catch, or are they entirely fantasies that might get bluff our enemies into giving up entirely? I dunno, I haven't seen anything from a source I'd trust.

I doubt the Bush administration has managed to gut the nuke detection program. And if they have it can be revived as soon as Bush is gone. Assuming it's there.

If 20/20 buys a nuke, I hope they arrange to set it off to prove they got the real thing. There are lots and lots of ways to fake that. If you buy a nuke, better buy several of them and test one before you pay for the others.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 14, 2006 07:34 PM | Permalink to this comment

But can't you see how different those two things are? What allowed 9/11 to happen was a failure of imagination. No one (or at least not enough people) anticipated that a terrorist group would want to do something like that. But from a technical standpoint, hijacking planes and crashing them was a relatively easy feat. All the terrorists needed were box-cutters and some pilot training. By contrast, getting your hands on a nuke, smuggling it into the U.S. without detection, and then detonating it, is an incredibly difficult task. It's not totally implausible, but it would be pretty damn hard to do for a rag tag bunch of terrorists operating out of caves. To say that such an event is "more likely than not" strikes me as alarmist nonsense.

The original Afghanistan-based al Qaeda network isn't likely to have that sort of logistical capability anymore, if it ever did. Osama and friends now serve mostly as inspirational leaders to copycat cells in Europe and elsewhere. At best, they provide these next generation terrorists with training and advice, not hardware. The threat now is similar to the one we faced before 9/11, i.e., creative terrorists finding ways to inflict damage through relatively ordinary means (such as hijacking or blowing up planes). These guys are likely to utilize weapons and tactics they can build or devise in their flat in London. They're not likely to go to Russia or North Korea in search of nuclear weapons.

Posted by: Anonymous Liberal at September 14, 2006 07:44 PM | Permalink to this comment

I also find it extremely odd that there is not more of a focus on Pakistan. Given that the government of Pervez Musharraf has just negotiated a cease-fire and given al Qaida and the Taliban a safe haven to operate from within their borders, how far-fetched is it really to consider that sympathetic elements of the Pakistani military might funnel nuclear material to al Qaida? The threat of a dirty bomb is far more ubiquitous, and conceivable. While not as flashy (pardon the pun) as a nuclear device, its effects would be just as devastating. A couple grams of HEU in Timothy McVeigh's U-Haul truck would have made a huge swath of Oklahoma unlivable. How much more deadly could the detonation of a cargo ship filled with a few grams of uranium and a couple tons of fertilizer and oil be in the harbors of Seattle, Los Angeles, or San Francisco?

-James. F. Elliott

Posted by: James F. Elliott at September 14, 2006 08:28 PM | Permalink to this comment

By contrast, getting your hands on a nuke, smuggling it into the U.S. without detection, and then detonating it, is an incredibly difficult task.

I just don't buy that. The first two merely require opportunity, and I don't think the technical knowhow to detonate a ready-made bomb can really be that arduous to obtain. Are there no Muslim engineers? As James Elliott & others note, "remember Pakistan."

But, goodness knows, I am happy for you to be right and me to be wrong.

Posted by: Anderson at September 14, 2006 08:44 PM | Permalink to this comment

sorta off topic but.....

allowed 9/11 to happen was a failure of imagination. No one (or at least not enough people) anticipated that a terrorist group would want to do something like that.

this kind of thinking has always bothered me, because there is the implicit assumption that it would have been okay to hijack an airliner and hold the passengers hostage, etc., e.g. even the densest person obviously recognized that passenger jets had been hijacked in the past by terrorist. The failure of 9-11 wasn't a failure to stop airplanes from flying into buildings, it was a failure to prevent hijackings. Period.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at September 14, 2006 09:29 PM | Permalink to this comment

I agree with several other commenters in that al Qaeda does not have the technology or expertice to build an atomic device. I also think that those in command are too smart to build a dirty bomb, because they would probably end up with radiation poisoning. If they have their underlings do all the work, without direct supervision, they would not end up with an effective bomb.

If it were me, I would find a way to buy a small but fully built bomb and then expode in the oil fields of one of my not-so-friendly neighbors. The resulting loss of the oil supply would both help cripple the US and make the remaining crude oil suppliers (one of whom funds my little group) that much richer.

I can then push my religeous agenda into the chaos of the country that has lost its only source of real income. Certainly there would be disruption amongst the Arab states, but again, in chaos there is opportunity.

Posted by: Mr. Don at September 14, 2006 09:56 PM | Permalink to this comment

I doubt the Jihadi that have been recruited and trained in Iraq are going to pose much of a threat to the US mainland, but I think they'll be a huge problem for the governments in US client states like Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and for US citizens and corporate interests working in those states.

9/11 happened because almost everyone charged with preventing it was asleep at the switch. This is no longer the case and the worlds intelligence community is specifically targetting radical Islamic organisations. If one of these outfits obtains a nuclear device it will be their greatest prize and I think they're unlikely to risk losing it by smuggling it into the US, with all the risk and logistical dangers that would involve.

I think they're more likely to target US bases in the Middle East region - CENTCOM and the Air Force Base in Qatar, maybe, or one of the permanent bases in Iraq. The Ras Tanura oil refinery in Saudi Arabia must also look like an awfully tempting target.

If any civilian city is attacked I think it will be Moscow, as part of their ongoing war against the Cechen separatists.

Posted by: Danyl Mclauchlan at September 14, 2006 10:32 PM | Permalink to this comment

Could AQ build their own weapon? Not likely. Could they buy one from desperate folks in Russia or NK or sympathetic ones in Pakistan? Possibly, and it's certainly more likely than building one. But if they bought one, how big or heavy would it be? Wouldn't logistics tell us quite a bit about what's possible?

Posted by: Kurzleg at September 14, 2006 10:43 PM | Permalink to this comment

If it were me, I would find a way to buy a small but fully built bomb and then expode in the oil fields of one of my not-so-friendly neighbors.

Right. We may be too narcissistic in thinking what Qaeda would do with a nuke. How clustered are the Arabian oil fields?

But if they bought one, how big or heavy would it be? Wouldn't logistics tell us quite a bit about what's possible?

They *can* be quite small, as John McPhee's interlocutor (forget his name) described in The Curve of Binding Energy (which, recall, ends with a visit to the newly-constructed WTC and a meditation on how easily the towers could be toppled ... easier than they guessed, it turned out).

Now, did (say) the Russians actually build them that small? Anyone know? Are we talking "tactical nuke" territory here? There are two-man portable tac nukes, saith Wikipedia.

Posted by: Anderson at September 14, 2006 11:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

Aside from the big what if, if Muslim terrorists could get nuclear weapons ,is the question of if they have the will or desire to use them. This is not a small matter. It's been said Osama is willing and that's possibly correct. As to the many and growing list of Osama wannabes I'm certain more than a few would be willng. Iran's leading cleric supposedly said recently they cannot be used. If that's a political statement against the loose cannon president or aimed at just projecting a moderate image for Iran I don't know.

I've been of a mind for 10 years or so that some fanatic jihadists probably would use if they could but have always held out hope that it's possible that the simple moral arguement against use which is so widely held might in the end check them if and when the came into possession.

I think it's fair to say that most people including most political leaders would not condone first use. Certainly that has always been the unquestioned US position post 1945, until now. Now however there is a very open question about Cheney's, and thus Bush's, desire to use nukes first. Many think it's probable we will use nukes on Iran next year. I'm among that camp.

The growing belief that the US will use nuke first makes restraint by terrorists, if such a thing exists, less likely. If and when we strike first it will be a call demanding a response against us and increases the chance it will happen.

Little mentioned in this sort of 2006 nuclear calculus is what would Cheney/Bush do if we were hit first. Here is the answer. We would strike back massivly. Against who one might ask? Just about anyone I say, especially Muslims.. I wonder if the jihadists understand that? Bye bye Mecca.

Posted by: rapier at September 15, 2006 12:14 AM | Permalink to this comment

What I'm worried most about on American soil in the next few years isn't from Al-Qaeda, but from Hezbollah cells. I have no idea about their nuclear/dirty bomb capabilities, but that's just my gut after the events that transpired this summer in the Middle East.

Posted by: Alan at September 15, 2006 12:40 AM | Permalink to this comment

The Iranians have long claimed they don't want nuclear weapons and that their interpretation of Islamic law forbids using them. Ahmadinejad has not departed from that to the best of my knowledge.

Ahmadinejad has called for Palestine to be re-unified by an election which would include the Palestinian diaspora. Western journalists routinely distort that into 'threats' against Israel.

As far as claims that Ahmadinejad explicitly threatened that Iran would get nukes and attack Israel with them, I think I recall such nonsense here and there on the web. I don't recall if any of them were made by credentialled pundits, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of the wilder neo-cons went that far.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 15, 2006 02:34 AM | Permalink to this comment

Some time ago I read an article claiming 'suitcase nukes' are mythical. The author purported to have seen the smallest nukes the Russians made, and they were about footlocker size.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 15, 2006 02:37 AM | Permalink to this comment

Why, Alan? It looks like Hezbollah is pretty much focused on Israel.

rapier: "Little mentioned in this sort of 2006 nuclear calculus is what would Cheney/Bush do if we were hit first. Here is the answer. We would strike back massivly. Against who one might ask? Just about anyone I say, especially Muslims.. I wonder if the jihadists understand that? Bye bye Mecca."

Which adds incentive for a number of countries to acquire nuclear weapons. The Bush administration quite blatantly used 9/11 to justify previous plans of conquest, so it's 100% that an even bigger attack would be used to 'strike back' at those the administration wants to hit. When somebody has demonstrated that they like to 'defend themselves' against targets of convenience, ...

Posted by: Barry at September 15, 2006 02:58 AM | Permalink to this comment

Why would Bush nuke Mecca, when he has a great relationship with the Saudis? Nuking Mecca is a Freeper fantasy.

Posted by: David Tomlin at September 15, 2006 03:29 AM | Permalink to this comment

Why would Bush nuke Mecca, when he has a great relationship with the Saudis?

Because he can?

Posted by: J Thomas at September 15, 2006 02:15 PM | Permalink to this comment

Some of my thoughts on this subject are summarized here. I agree with just about everything Graham Allison says. Our best hope of stopping nuclear terrorism is to choke it off at the source; the supply of special nuclear material (SNM) needed to make a bomb. We should be using our resources to account for and control SNM. We should not be wasting it on a vastly expensive and disruptive Maginot Line of radiation detectors at ports and nodes in the stream of commerce that have a negligible chance of stopping anything more dangerous than kitty litter. We need to cap the number of nuclear armed states now.

As for those of you suffering from the Hiroshima Fallacy, the idea that any terrorist nuclear device must be at least as sophisticated as the first weapon used against Japan, you are deluding yourselves. The threat of nuclear terror will be imminent as soon as terrorists get their hands on SNM. If they have SNM, they will have the bomb PERIOD! Forget 10 to 20 years. If you think a couple of chunks of SNM driven together by a crude explosive device, or even a strong spring, would be harmless, you are whistling past the graveyard, my friends. You need to wake up.

Posted by: Helian at September 15, 2006 02:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

Footlocker-size is plenty small enough to smuggle in and then detonate in Times Square.

Posted by: Anderson at September 15, 2006 04:46 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Footlocker-size is plenty small enough to smuggle in and then detonate in Times Square."

25 kg of U235 or 4 kg of Pu239 are the unclassified amounts considered sufficient to make a nuclear weapon. That's all you have to smuggle, and you don't even have to smuggle it all at once. The complete bomb minus the SNM can be put in place at the target without leaving a radiation trail. The parts necessary to make a crude bomb would not need to be smuggled in from overseas. They could easily be procured or manufactured in place. The SNM could then be brought in, installed, and the bomb detonated in minutes. The idea that bombs can only be smuggled in one piece ranks right up there with the Hiroshima fallacy as a dangerous delusion in the area of nuclear smuggling. The smallest size of a complete bomb is a moot point. It's frustrating to see so many people out there pontificating about how hard it might be to smuggle a nuclear bomb who have zero expertise in the field and not the faintest clue what they're talking about.

Posted by: Helian at September 15, 2006 05:08 PM | Permalink to this comment

Don't forget New York and most of the other major cities in the US are either port or coastal cities. That means one does not even need to get the weapons to port security let alone past it. A nuke blowing up on either of New York's two rivers will do just as much harm as one in Times Square.

And J. Thomas,
about the WTC being designed to stand up to an airplane crash, there are three caveats about that. The first is that it was only tested, at least by the original engineers for a 707, which was the big jet of the time. Second, in 1945 I believe a B-25 or B-17 flew into the Empire State Building during a low dense fog. Finally, the test as to whether the building would stand was essentially an intellectual excercise to see how good their building was.

Posted by: jon at September 15, 2006 05:53 PM | Permalink to this comment

"A couple grams of HEU in Timothy McVeigh's U-Haul truck would have made a huge swath of Oklahoma unlivable. How much more deadly could the detonation of a cargo ship filled with a few grams of uranium and a couple tons of fertilizer and oil be in the harbors of Seattle, Los Angeles, or San Francisco?"

Where, oh where do they come up with this stuff? Don't look now, but coal is about 2 parts per million uranium and thorium. How much of it do you think gets blown out into the environment after your local power plant has been going full blast for a year or two? Hint: It's more than a few grams. Why don't you do the math for us, and let us know how much it will jack up the natural background radiation if a couple of grams of HEU is distributed over a "huge swath" of Oklahoma? We could use a good laugh.

Posted by: Helian at September 15, 2006 08:34 PM | Permalink to this comment

Blogs are a low-bandwidth medium. Like a hologram where a piece of thepattern gives you the whole complicated conspiracy theory turned even fuzzier.

I can believe that if McVeigh had spread a few grams of plutonium it could have reduced property values in a large swath of oklahoma city for the foreseeable future.

Plutonium is very very toxic, and it has an extremely bad reputation among people who aren't particularly numerate. Imagine the real estate agent trying a rational argument. "You have to understand, you have a 28% chance of dying of cancer anyway. Living in this neighborhood would only increase that to 31%. Look at the quality of life you'd get and for $10,000 less on the mortage, and I'm sure you'll see what a great deal this is."

Posted by: J Thomas at September 16, 2006 05:06 AM | Permalink to this comment

Jon, my central point wasn't to claim the WTC should truly have stood up to an airliner crash. My point was that it wasn't something the genius al qaeda thought of that nobody could have predicted. It was predicted long ago and planned for. The plans just didn't happen to work out.

I remember about 20 years ago reading about the planning for nuclear power plants. The reporter was describing how they looked at lots and lots of tremendously unlikely accidents and designed to prevent those accidents from causing too much problem. "For example, they have to make the containment impervious to an airliner crashing into the structure. What's the chance of an airliner every crashing into a nuclear reactor? Surely less than one in a billion. But they worked out how to be safe from that." I read a sentence that was almost exactly like that, and I kept reading, and about 20 seconds later it hit me. They weren't preparing for an accidental plane crash that happened to land on a reactor. They were planning for a hijacked plane to get aimed at a reactor. And they didn't report it that way because they didn't want to give people ideas.

A side issue: If al qaeda had hit the towers and taken out precisely the brokerage houses they were aiming at, and maybe some of the people above (but maybe a lot of those survived and just waited it out until they could be rescued) they'd have had a fine propaganda coup. It would have been marginally better for them. We'd pay a bit more attention to the passengers who got hijacked and killed, but mostly it would have gone about the way it did -- somewhat less outrage on our part. It would have been fine for them. They didn't need to knock down the whole thing. They'd actually have been better off with a smaller event that didn't cause as much outrage.

Similarly the Bush administration and the israelis and everybody else who stood to benefit from 9/11 would have done about as well from a smaller event. It really doesn't make sense to pack three towers with explosives to make sure they fall down. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning is extremely unreliable because real-life conspirators are no more required to make sense than conspiracy-theorists are.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 16, 2006 05:25 AM | Permalink to this comment

According to several accounts, most notably in the New Yorker, various Al qaeda intellectuals, thinkers, strategists, and leaders were and are most upset with the 9-11 attack, as it resulted in a "catastrophe" for the organization, in public relations, dispersal, captures, killed, and disruption. This does not mean that some within Al qaeda would not consider a nuclear attack, but there would certainly be strenuous dissent.

Al qaeda isn't that interested in the United States, nor is it motivated by some sinister sadistic desire to kill Americans. It has specific goals, and they are limited to the Islamic world and Israel. The United States is implicated because radical Muslims view themselves as victims of Western Imperialism (of which the United States is the foremost contemporary representative), the United States had, and has, combat troops on the Arabian peninsula, and the United States is viewed as the patron of reactionary, parasitic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

The idea that "terr'rrists" are innately irrational, and plan and execute attacks randomly, has been challenged by Pape, who makes a strong argument that attacks follow a rational, predictable pattern keyed to two criteria: 1. Western combat troops on the ground in Muslim nations, and 2. occupations. The United States could, after all, end its occupation of Iraq, and abandon its bases on the Persian Gulf. But then, Empires don't behave that way; they don't even consider such rational alternatives.

It is of course possible that Allison's worst nightmares will be realized; after all, anything is possible. The United States may also be hit by a destructive asteroid. Likelihood is another matter. I'm always amused when insurance peddlers like Buffett are quoted on the likelihood of disasters. What do you think he'd say? It's OK, don't buy a policy rider?

The most likely source of any nuclear strike within the next decade, as most of the world knows, is from the United States. The US military has already developed attack plans that integrate the use of nuclear weapons in nuclear strikes upon non-nuclear nations (a plain violation of the NPT). Rather than obsess over Tom Clancy scenarios, perhaps we should prepare for the massive blowback after we nuke some hapless "evildoer."

Posted by: MD at September 16, 2006 05:15 PM | Permalink to this comment

"The idea that "terr'rrists" are innately irrational, and plan and execute attacks randomly, has been challenged by Pape, who makes a strong argument that attacks follow a rational, predictable pattern keyed to two criteria: 1. Western combat troops on the ground in Muslim nations, and 2. occupations."

The claim that attacks follow a rational, predictable pattern does not speak to the rationality of the attacks themselves. Are you claiming that, because terrorist attacks follow "a rational, predictable pattern," the form taken by their attacks must, therefore, also be rational? In that case, the slaughter of thousands of civilians with airplanes, the release of nerve gas in subway stations, and random attacks with biological agents such as anthrax spores, must be rational. It is hardly a stretch to argue that nuclear attack is similarly rational and, therefore, likely.

"The United States could, after all, end its occupation of Iraq, and abandon its bases on the Persian Gulf. But then, Empires don't behave that way; they don't even consider such rational alternatives."

Here you turn your own argument on its head, revealing, in the process, the particular shade of the ideological blinkers you are wearing. If terrorist attacks follow a rational plan, and come in response to 1. Western combat troops on the ground in Muslim nations, and 2. occupations, then nuclear attack must be more, not less likely, according to your own argument, unless you are arguing that there really are no Western combat troops on the ground in Muslim nations, no occupations, and none are likely to occur in the future. You have, apparently, concluded that the presence of western combat troops in Muslim nations and occupations are, themselves, irrational and/or immoral. So what? That doesn’t make them any less likely. Or are you arguing that the fact that the great MD himself is taking the time to enlighten the leaders of non-Moslem countries in the comment section of BD will inevitably result in those leaders turning away from irrational and/or immoral actions that might provoke a nuclear attack in future?

“The United States may also be hit by a destructive asteroid. Likelihood is another matter. I'm always amused when insurance peddlers like Buffett are quoted on the likelihood of disasters. What do you think he'd say? It's OK, don't buy a policy rider?”

Here you appear to be claiming that the likelihood of a nuclear attack is comparable to that of a hit by a destructive asteroid. In other words, while you feel that pronouncements like this by Buffett are “amusing,” you feel that you are qualified to make them yourself. What, may I ask, are your professional qualifications for making such claims that make you so superior to Buffett? I submit that Buffett or any other reasonably educated and intelligent human being who approaches the subject with an open mind can learn enough in one week in such areas as the rudiments of nuclear engineering relevant to supercritical masses of SNM, fundamental unclassified facts about the nature and theory of operation of nuclear weapons, the destructiveness and effects of nuclear weapons, the incidence and amount of smuggling of nuclear materials that has already occurred, and the effects of different types of radiation on health to render him or herself quite as capable of discussing nuclear terrorism intelligently as about 99% of the “experts” currently out there pontificating about the subject. To actually add value to the discussion, of course, one must also have an open mind and a certain capacity for creative thought.

“The most likely source of any nuclear strike within the next decade, as most of the world knows, is from the United States. The US military has already developed attack plans that integrate the use of nuclear weapons in nuclear strikes upon non-nuclear nations (a plain violation of the NPT). Rather than obsess over Tom Clancy scenarios, perhaps we should prepare for the massive blowback after we nuke some hapless ‘evildoer.’”

Here, again, you reveal your inability to think outside the particular ideological box you happen to be in. Once again, you are really arguing in favor of the likelihood of nuclear terrorism, not against it. What, exactly, might the “massive blowback” in response to a US nuclear attack consist of? Is it “irrational” to conclude that it might include a terrorist nuclear attack on us in response? In fact, throughout your post, you don’t really argue that nuclear terrorism is unlikely. What you are really arguing is that, if it happens, it will be the fault of western troops in Muslim countries, “occupation,” or a nuclear first strike by the US, all of which are either happening now or are, in your opinion, likely to happen. The inescapable conclusion of your own arguments is that nuclear terrorism is more, not less, likely, unless, of course, you consider it likely that the leaders of the US and other western countries will “get religion” in the very near future and become virtuous like you.

As far as a nuclear first strike by the US is concerned, I consider what “most of the world knows” about the subject irrelevant. For “most of the world,” that conclusion is simply a statement of ideological faith. However, I do happen to know a few things relevant to that discussion. The fact that I have not chosen to invariably discuss nuclear terrorism in the context of the possibility of a US first strike myself does not imply that I consider such a first strike unlikely (are you listening, Gregory?) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that a nuclear attack will occur in the next decade, I don’t think it is reasonable to conclude that the “most likely” source of such an attack will be the US. I do consider it a very likely source, again, assuming, merely for the sake of argument, that such an attack will occur.

There is a great deal of agitation within our military and the weapons community at the moment for the development of “mini-nukes.” The argument, in a nutshell, is that, if we have mini-nukes, potential enemies will consider it much more likely that we will actually use them than any of the weapons in our current arsenal, and will, therefore, be deterred. Of course, the flip side of that coin is that, if we do develop mini-nukes, we actually will be more likely to actually use them. There are a number of arguments for first use of nuclear weapons that seem “rational” to some people in the military and weapons communities. For example, suppose we have discovered a massive cache of biological weapons in North Korea, stored in bunkers. Computer models may show that, if we tried to take out the cache with conventional weapons, the result would be release of a large plume of the biological agent from its containment and the resulting deaths of hundreds of thousands of people downwind. The same computer models might predict that a bunker busting nuke could take out the cache, eliminating the biological agent, with a much smaller likelihood of causing substantial “collateral damage.” Under the circumstances, first use of a nuke would be “humane.” It somehow never seems to come up in the models that, rather than carry out a nuclear first strike, it may be wiser not to attack the cache in the first place.

I submit that scenarios like this should scare the crap out of us. (Are you listening, Gregory?) They should scare the crap out of us almost as much as the possibility of a nuclear first strike by terrorists. If we conduct a nuclear first strike, we will be legitimizing a retaliatory nuclear strike on ourselves by terrorists, and we are much more vulnerable to nuclear attack than they are. A few of the more far-sighted of our politicians have scented the danger, and are taking steps to counter it. I can only hope many more will take up the fight. The possibility of a nuclear first strike by the US is real, and represents a mortal danger, not only to the citizens of the US, but to the world at large.

Posted by: helian at September 17, 2006 12:37 PM | Permalink to this comment

The blowback from a nuke attack on Iran will be far far less than you think. The moral outrage will be huge but besides that it will be bussiness as usual.

In the Middle East the fear of an acendent Iran and a Shia Crecent will be eliminated. The Saudi's for one will be relieved and let's not forget Osama hated the Shites too. Europe will squawk but Europe has a problem which is growing large with their non native Muslim populations and while knocking Iran down now won't solve those problems the destruction of hopes for a newly powerfull Persia might be expected to demotivate potential millenial Shia radicals.

Pakistan is another matter and who knows if Iran in chaos will destabilize that regiem and of course the control of its nuclear arsenal. This is no small matter but the likelyhood is Pakistani nukes will end up headed for India who will counter attack massivly. Presto, Pakistani problem solved.

China isn't going to like it but can't do much about it. The great oil game will go on as dispersal of Iranian oil will be messy and China will try to play a role there.

Bussiness however will go on as usual. That's what counts. In fact such would be bullish since the 'crisis' will give the Fed ample reason to flood the markets with liquidity on a scale rarely imagined, if necessary. In addition capital will tend to flow more strongly to the US since the demonstration of our willingness to preemtively attack anyone with nukes will be the ultimate example of our safe haven, for capital, status.

Posted by: rapier at September 17, 2006 12:58 PM | Permalink to this comment

Mmmm. What's worth saying, given all this?

OK, first. Terrorist nuclear war would be limited nuclear war. Fake terrorist nuclear war -- done by governments with a terrorist mask -- would also be limited nuclear war. This is something the US government has done a lot of analysis on.

Second. We need to be prepared for a limited nuclear strike regardless how it's delivered and regardless who sent it. How many resources we put into that might vary with our sense of how likely the strike is, but we must prepare regardless. We must prepare to deal with a successful nuclear strike on one (or two) US cities.

Third, if we're serious about securing the nuclear material, that means we're pretty much giving up on nukes as an alternative to the oil shortage. Power from plutonium is cheap. Power from enriched uranium is expensive and limited. We have a LEU surplus now. Make a serious attempt to build power plants and that would turn into a severe shortage quickly. It would take time to expand our uranium mining and the known resources are limited. It's much harder to secure every power plant than it is to secure a few weapon sites. It would be way expensive. Security in this case means giving up cheap nuclear power when we deal with the oil issue.

Fourth, if we nuke somebody (or if somebody nukes us) it will not be business as usual in either case. there will be a world consensus that this must not happen again. If we're the ones who get nuked and we don't nuke anybody back, then the rest of the world will probably follow our lead about how to keep it from happening. If it's us nuking somebody or we nuke somebody back, most probably the rest of the world will demand total nuclear disarmament. And we'll go along. A lot of us will agree and the rest won't have a choice.

So now more detail.

----
Our strategy for dealing with a limited nuclear attack has always been that we try to hit the enemy back just as hard as they hit us, and then stop. We aren't willing to let an enemy profit by a nuclear attack on us, but we don't want it to turn into a ful exchange, either. Civilians sometimes talk about terrorists setting off one bomb in one US harbor and in return we nuke every city in iran, or nuke Mecca, etc. This is stupid. If a bomb goes off in the USA and we don't know who did it, given our past doctrines it isn't unlikely we'll take a list of our current nuclear-armed enemies and pick one -- perhaps at random -- and hit them as hard as we were hit. If we choose to hit, say, pakistan after somebody nukes DC, we'll hit Islamabad and then hit as many other pakistani towns or cities as it takes for us to make feel like we're making up the difference between DC and their capital. We will claim we know for certain that they were responsible. This is as close as we can come to following the plan, and it seems like the most likely choice. Another choice would be to hold off for a month or more while we collect intel data and decide who did it, and in the meantime we can shut down the US economy while we look for more bombs.

----
We aren't serious about preparing for a limited nuclear attack. Katrina made that obvious.

I read something somebody wrote about the british before WWII -- they were expecting air raids and they knew they couldn't stop them. And they distributed gas masks and neoprene capes to their whole city populations, expecting that the germans might launch a gas attack. Likely the gas masks wouldn't have done a whole lot for causualties if the germans *had* dropped nerve gas. But they told the civilian population something about what to expect. Their government couldn't keep it from happening, but it was going to do what it could for them in case it did happen.

One thing we could do to prepare several million anti-radiation treatments, and keep them ready for untrained but literate citizens to use. But look at what that involves. The treatments are a small part of the cost. There's the cost of storing them, and being ready to move them to the right place on a hour's notice, and then distributing them to perhaps millions of victims quickly in a disaster area. I think it would be better to make several hundred million treatments and give them to everybody ahead of time. They last for years, and we'd get some economy of scale, and they'd do some good that way. Lots of people would lose theirs, and probably half the people in the country would start using them if one city got nuked, etc. But some of them would be right where they were needed after a nuclear strike. We saw what happens when DHS tries to move supplies.

It isn't enough to spend a whole lot of money trying to knock down missiles. It isn't enough to try to infiltrate the terrorist groups we think might attack us. It isn't enough to invade unfriendly nations that we think might get nukes. We need to accept that we probably will get nuked despite our best efforts not to, and get ready to take care of the victims and rebuild.

----
We like to pretend that we're the only world superpower and we can do anything we want and the rest of the world can't stop us. There's some truth to that. As long as the rest of the world is arguing among themselves we have most of the initiative. But if we persuade the rest of the world that we're a rogue superpower they won't be divided and we'll have big problems. I think a nuckear first strike on our part would be enough to eliminate our superpower status. But we won't know for sure until we try the experiment.

Posted by: J Thomas at September 17, 2006 05:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

The blowback from a nuke attack on Iran will be far far less than you think. The moral outrage will be huge but besides that it will be bussiness as usual.

Rapier, you might want to reconsider your nickname. Rapiers are supposed to be sharp.

Bombing a few Iranian nuke sites is not going to topple the regime, leave Iran in chaos, or eliminate the Persian/Shia "threat."

Any nuclear attack that *did* those things would be mass murder on a scale not seen since WW2 and would certainly motivate a nuclear attack on the U.S.

See Helian's comment above about uncertainty even amongst the terrorists as to whether a major attack on the domestic U.S. is a good idea. Incinerating Tehran would remove all doubts on that score.

Posted by: Anderson at September 18, 2006 10:24 PM | Permalink to this comment

The ban on reprocessing is not going to continue forever. Without reprocessing, 95%+ of nuclear fuel is not burned, which means that known reserves will run out in 50 years instead of 1000.

Too, the nuclear waste problem is nearly 20x worse than it would be if fuel were reprocessed.

It may be that it's possible to burn U238 directly, in a steam-mediated reactor a la CAESAR, but I'm not holding my breath. The bottom line is: either no nuclear power (unfeasable in this day of global warming and unstable, decreasing oil supplies) or find a way to use all the fuel. Right now that means reprocessing and/or breeder reactors.

Posted by: mac at September 20, 2006 03:15 AM | Permalink to this comment

"The bottom line is: either no nuclear power (unfeasable in this day of global warming and unstable, decreasing oil supplies) or find a way to use all the fuel. Right now that means reprocessing and/or breeder reactors."

Agreed. Breeders have their problems, but, if we do return to nuclear power, they make sense to me. As you say, why throw 95%+ of the fuel out the window? Letting a lot of unreprocessed fuel sit around laced with plutonium doesn't make much sense to me. If control of it is lost in 100 or 500 or 1000 years, most of the plutonium will still be there, recoverable by simple chemistry by anyone smart enough to avoid frying himself with radiation, and bomb-ready as soon as it's extracted.

Posted by: Helian at September 20, 2006 02:08 PM | Permalink to this comment

LIght-water reactors do not make sense for power plants. They're expensive to run. The fuel is expensive and it stays expensive. The main good thing about them is that we don't know how to use them to make nukes.

So imagine you were running iran. And of course you'd be running it responsibly. Would you look for alternate energy? Of course. The oil will mostly run out in 20 years or so. That's over the horizon for an 80-year-old but anybody else might live that long.

Would you build hydroelectric dams? Gasohol? Run the country on solar panels? Or would you want nuclear reactors?

Foreigners would say, "Why do you want nuclear power? You have all the oil you could ever need." When oil is at $70+ a barrel and heading to $100. How about if foreigners told us, "Why should you import oil, you could run your power plants by burning $100 bills, you can print as many of them as you need." When you burn a barrel of oil that 3 years from now would go for $100.... You could say it doesn't cost anything because you just pump it out of the ground. But every barrel you spend making elecriticy is a barrel you could have sold. An opportunity cost somewhere around $70-$100.

So of course you want nuclear power, and of course you want breeder reactors. But the USA says you can't have them because you might make bombs. Instead you have to settle for expensive light-water reactors and you have to let some other country charge you for reprocessing the fuel. But see, as energy gets more expensive the high-energy-input reprocessing will get more expensive too. A light-water reactor that's marginal now will get completely uneconomic when energy costs rise.

So of course you want to keep the whole fuel cycle in your country, and you want a cheap fuel cycle. But the americans say you can't do it because it would let you make nukes.

And it would. Workable reactor designs give you material for bombs as a side effect, whether you're looking for it or not.

Likely iran is looking for a bomb. After what happened in iraq I'd want one if I was in charge there. But they'd be doing all the same things and making the same arguments if they weren't interested in bombs.

And we're going to face that with pretty much every country that looks seriously at alternate energy. Nuclear energy is a dead mule unless you do thorium or breeder reactors. And if you don't have another source for lots of energy, you'll look for a way out of NPT. Why should the USA get to tell you you can't have alternate energy, just because they don't want you to have nukes?

Posted by: J Thomas at September 21, 2006 04:46 AM | Permalink to this comment

The Bush administration made an important conceptual advance in recognizing that the gravest danger lies in what Vice President Dick Cheney termed the "nexus between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction."

Excuse me, but when Cheney talks about "weapons of mass destruction," without distinguishing between the various types of weapons covered by that term, he is simply demonstrating his lack of interest in America's national security.

Weapons of mass destruction fall into three categories: chemical, biological, and nuclear. Terrorists have obtained and used weapons in the first two categories. The poison gas attacks on the Japanese subways system killed a dozen people. The anthrax attacks in 2001 killed five individuals. Although these attacks were tragic, al Qaeda has demonstrated that other approaches are more deadly.

In constrast, an attack with a nuclear weapon, even a small one, would be vastly more deadly than any attack that al Qaeda and its allies have carries out to date.

If Cheney had warned about "the nexus between terrorists and nuclear weapons," he would have been right. Grasping it might have been an important conceptual advance for him, although most people who think seriously about national security had grasped the concept decades ago.

But instead, Cheney conflated chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, as though they all posed the same threat. They aren't. Cheney is either mistaken, or is trying to confuse the American people.

Posted by: Kenneth Almquist at September 21, 2006 09:31 AM | Permalink to this comment