Goin’ Fission

Dr. AQ Khan is the famous Pakistani nuclear scientist (a metallurgist by training) who leaked detailed blueprints to both North Korea and Iran on how to refine fissionable plutonium/uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Making the weapons is the easy part: a small non-nuclear explosion in a contained shell shoves two less-than-critical-mass (critical mass = the point when it creates nuclear detonation) lumps of high grade plutonium into one lump of critical-mass plutonium. Boom! Make that a really, really big BOOM!

The hard part is getting enough weapons-grade material in sufficient quantities to make an explosive bomb or warhead. “Only certain fissile isotopes of plutonium and uranium can be used in nuclear weapons. For plutonium, it is plutonium-239 (Pu-239), while uranium has uranium-233 (U-233) and uranium-235 (U-235)… Pu-239 is produced artificially in nuclear reactors when a neutron is absorbed by U-238, forming U-239, which then decays in a rapid two-step process into Pu-239. It can then be separated from the uranium in a nuclear reprocessing plant.” Wikipedia. While there are several methods of such extraction – “reprocessing” – the method conveyed by Dr. Khan involved a massive and complex array of high-speed centrifuges that very slowly extracted minute levels of fissionable material, aggregating enough for a weapon over a very long period of time.

“Though never convicted of a crime, Dr. Khan, a hero to his people and the Muslim world, was placed in house-arrest, but was released fully in 2009: “Early yesterday, the Pakistani scientist at the center of one of history's worst nuclear scandals walked out of his Islamabad villa to declare his vindication after five years of house arrest. ‘The judgment, by the grace of God, is good,’ a smiling Abdul Qadeer Khan told a throng of reporters and TV crews.

“Moments earlier, a Pakistani court had ordered the release of the metallurgist who had famously admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Through years of legal limbo, Khan, 72, had never been charged, and now he never will be. ‘The so-called A.Q. Khan affair is a closed chapter,’ a Pakistani government spokesman said.” Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2009

But General Electric has (??) recently made a scientific break-through that should make it vastly easier for nations with their laser technology to secure enough weapons-grade nuclear material to make thousands of bombs and warheads. Ain’t that wonderful?! “One idea, a half-century old, has been to do it with nothing more substantial than lasers and their rays of concentrated light. This futuristic approach has always proved too expensive and difficult for anything but laboratory experimentation… Until now… In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton.

“That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds and the secret gets out, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect.” New York Times, August 20^th. No one in the government will verify that this technology is actually online and working; it is beyond top secret. But if the New York Times can get this story, and if making the actual weapons is a slam-dunk, a technology available online or in a public library, could lurking and massive danger be far behind? It only take one well-placed nuclear device to disable Israel or to bring the U.S. to financial Armageddon. Should we be concerned? I am.

I’m Peter Dekom, and some research really seems quite unnecessary.